*I know this was only supposed to be 100 words, but I liked where it was going so I went with it…Sorry...
I was gifted an old book some years
ago, retrieved from the home of my deceased great-grandfather. Its cover is cornflower blue, like my least
favorite Crayola, though with time, it’s faded into more of a lifeless
grey. On the front cover clouds of mildew
stain the title: Poe.
Poems and Tales. The spine
rests in a deformed slant because of a rip in the interior binding. The cover’s corners are all bent inward and
the edges are frayed, but the pages sewn inside are well persevered, save for the
subtle bleach of persistent sunlight. On
the very first page, the work of a typewriter lines the edge. “Starling
Williamson March 19, 1931” The
“t”, “r”, and “l” of the first name are bolder.
I run my fingers over their indentation and feel the concave they make
in the old paper. I wonder if the keys
were sticking.
The first stanza of “The Raven” is
graffitied with shaky pencil marks annotating the meter of the poetry. I picture my ancestor, hands aged and
unsteady, teaching a grandson how to scan lines. The boy is impatient in Pappy’s lap and whines
about being released so he can resume hide and seek in the corn field with
cousin Mark. With the sigh only familiar
to tired old men outrun by time, the grandfather excuses his impatient pupil
and re-reads the poem that entertained his
youth. “And my soul from out that shadow
that lies floating on the floor shall be lifted nevermore.” His voice is coarser than his last
recitation, now grated by two decades of the harsh airs of the coal mine, but
the lines still stir in him the same profound captivation they cast in his
adolescence. He shuts the book and
returns it to its place on the shelf where my father will find it a lifetime
later, vaguely recalling that Poe is a favorite author of mine. And so the heirloom’s cycle lives on.
Or so it’s romantic to think. Truth is, from all I know of my father’s family, the men were rough and callous. Farmers, coal miners, factory workers with a few years stolen by the army. They lived selfishly and loved scarcely. It’s hard to imagine any relative of my father cherishing literature the way I do. But then, that’s the magic of used books. In their covers, all tattered and torn, await two tales: the adventure penned by the author, and the mystery woven by old clues left by a book’s former master. Proper students of English crave the first, ready to dissect the prose and poetry into a barrage of existential metaphors pondering the purpose of man. But readers – those who lust over the perfume of an old leather-bound as much as the legend its crisp pages hold – readers, crave the second. Because readers understand that though a story may be conjured in the mad mind of a writer, it lives in the sweaty thumbs that smudge the type halfway through a chapter, in the saliva-slicked fingertips that turn the sticking pages. Stories live in the hands of those who treasure their existence, ageing as they are handed down through generations. Real stories are read in the clouds of mildew on cornflower covers. And in the deformed slant of ripped spines. Real stories are “Starling Williamson March 19, 1931” with the “t”, “r”, and “l” typed too bold.
Or so it’s romantic to think. Truth is, from all I know of my father’s family, the men were rough and callous. Farmers, coal miners, factory workers with a few years stolen by the army. They lived selfishly and loved scarcely. It’s hard to imagine any relative of my father cherishing literature the way I do. But then, that’s the magic of used books. In their covers, all tattered and torn, await two tales: the adventure penned by the author, and the mystery woven by old clues left by a book’s former master. Proper students of English crave the first, ready to dissect the prose and poetry into a barrage of existential metaphors pondering the purpose of man. But readers – those who lust over the perfume of an old leather-bound as much as the legend its crisp pages hold – readers, crave the second. Because readers understand that though a story may be conjured in the mad mind of a writer, it lives in the sweaty thumbs that smudge the type halfway through a chapter, in the saliva-slicked fingertips that turn the sticking pages. Stories live in the hands of those who treasure their existence, ageing as they are handed down through generations. Real stories are read in the clouds of mildew on cornflower covers. And in the deformed slant of ripped spines. Real stories are “Starling Williamson March 19, 1931” with the “t”, “r”, and “l” typed too bold.
This is phenomenal. A part of literature for me is making a connection with the past, and you have found a way to expand upon this idea by showing that we can connect with the readers as well. Ironically enough, because of this we treasure the connection to the reader more so that the writer. The only thing I would suggest is to say that the grandson is your grandfather, and to describe what he is doing because of what you know about him. "I can imagine my grandfather playing hide and go seek because..." I think this could be expanded into something truly magical.
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