Treasured
Chapter One
INTRODUCTION
My Grandfather’s
Box
Memories by Mail
A battered cardboard box arrived by mail a few weeks after my grandfather’s death, postmarked from the small West Texas town where he lived most of his years, the town where a crumbling cemetery now cradled his remains.
Inside the box, suspended in weightless drifts of white Styrofoam, a smaller, more pungent box was buried. An old cigar box.
Like young Jem Finch of To Kill a Mockingbird, I lifted the lid of my newly arrived treasure chest in private. But instead of carved soap figures, marbles, and other childhood collectibles, I saw a handwritten note: “Here are some of Pepaw’s things.” Then, in an obvious afterthought: “He kept these.”
The well-meaning aunt who sent this shipment must have intended to place some final mark of punctuation on my grandfather’s interrupted ninth decade, but for his youngest daughter’s youngest daughter, the box formed not a period but a colon. Meet your grandfather, it seemed to say. Maybe you didn’t know him so well after all.read full excerpt from: Treasured ebook
