My Grandmother's Gift

The gift wasn't addressed to me. It had no  tag or festive paper. Truth be told, my grandmother had no idea that there would ever be a Twylla to pass along her book to. No one even remembered that the book existed for almost 100 years.
My aunt, the last surviving child of my grandparents' six, discovered it "somewhere" and passed it onto my brother, among other memorabilia. He thought that as a writer, I might like it. "Like it," of course, is an understatement. It is the most precious of Grandma's possessions I could have ever imagined holding in my hands.

I didn't open it immediately. I waited for  a quiet morning  when it was just Grandma, the book and me. I took it to the Hendrix College library (see last blog posting), still empty of students. I sat at a table with my hands on the crumpled plastic bag, recalling a photo taken of Grandma when she was newly married. I imagined her touching the pages, finding her own quiet moments for reading.

I slowly, carefully – so as not to damage a single fragile page – removed it from the plastic.

Little Women, one of my favorites, given to Grandma (May) by her older sister, Carrie.
All I could do was breathe.  Without the inscription, it would have still been a treasure, an 1880 edition – published only 11 years after Louisa May Alcott submitted it to the Library of Congress as a newly written book. But with the inscription, it held a story of its very own. A gift given from one sister to another – like sisters Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy, whose stories filled the pages in front of me.
For the next hour, I turned every page, pausing to read a paragraph here and there. I  secretly hoped that I might find a letter Grandma had written, stuck between pages, then forgotten. Maybe she had left words in margins or favorite passages underlined – tangible remembrances.
But nothing, until near the end.
I turned a page and discovered a single brown hair.

Had it floated to the page as she was reading? Then she had closed the book and set it aside, with no way of knowing that the next person who would see it, 
would be...me?
I will show the book to my own grandchildren and tell them stories of their great-great grandmother who taught me how to play Scrabble and dominoes, let me help her pin sheets to the clothesline, sat beside me at church every Sunday, altered my wedding dress. And who, once upon a time, had a sister who gave her a special book.