Self as Informant

The smell of pipe smoke fills my memories when I recall the times my father would reach up onto my grandfather's bookshelf and retrieve the Blake Reader from the shelf. We lived in Beaufort, South Carolina when my grandfather moved down from New York City to the very exclusive retirement home that my father had provided for him and my grandmother. They had views of oak trees and a small wildlife refuge was nearby. When my father died in 1996, the first item I retrieved was this Blake Reader, a one hundred year old school book that my grandfather shared with his sisters in the school house he was taught in while growing up in Milageville, Georgia. My father cherished this book because he also grew up reading it. It has become so weathered now. The pages are crisp with sadness of generations lost. Yet, the Reader is a part of a history that I can no longer unveil. My grandfather's pipe smoke trailing back to the library where my father taught me how important it was to get every word just right; I would have to repeat any words that I misread. I hold the book in a frozen food bag with rubber bands and memories; waiting for my daughters to unleash the faint smell of pipe smoke and over one hundred years of history from my ancestors; young and old.