A Memory of Long Ago

A couple days ago, while I was driving down Stewarts Mill Road; I passed a house with a lot of trees in the yard.  At first, I wondered how cool it must be in that much shade.  When I looked through them, there sat an old lady in a chair with a pen and tablet in her hand.  I was quickly whisked off to a time long gone.  It was 1974 and I was five years old.  I am the small child standing at my Maw’s side watching her write in her tablet. 

Maw was my Great-Grandmother; she came to stay with us after my sister was born.  Oh, how I use

to love to watch her write.  I knew, one day, I was going to grow up and write as much as she did. 

Maw had an address book the size of the yellow pages (for those who remember those); she kept it with her tablet and pen at all times.  Today, we have Facebook to tell us how many friends we have and are able to write to; oh, but back then, if you knew a lot of people, you kept their info in an “address book”.  Every time she came, I had to run out and get a note pad, pen, and address book like hers.  I remember wanting to write so bad my heart ached.  “Maw, can I write to one of your friends, please, pretty please?”, I would cry and plead.  She would then flip through the pretty worn and tattered pages of her address book, looking for a person we both could write.  I had no clue what I was going to say, but someone was going to see it, even if they couldn’t read it. 

When it came time for her to leave, I would be so heart broken.  Only she would have that big, thick address book with addresses to our friends.  I would beg her to leave the address book so I would have someone to write to.  We would sit and copy addresses from her book to my book before she left every time.  I can remember thinking, I can’t wait to get old, because being as old as she was, you have met a lot of people to write and put in your “address book”.

The woman under them trees will never know how grateful I am for such a reminder of a memory of long ago.  Today, I drove down that road again to see if I could find that house or the old lady and could not find either.  I tried to find the front yard with the thick tree covering; nope, could not figure out which house it was.  Strange how memories pop up like that.  Whatever made that one pop up, I hope it keeps doing it.