Catch Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary podcast: https://youtu.be/yUpXQVBTcuA
or read the transcript below:
THE SECRET LIFE OF OLD BOOKS
The seventy-year-old greeting card spins itself out of an old book I am opening. It falls gracefully to the floor of the shop. I bend to pick it up, forgetting for a moment the volume from which it escapes.
It’s a pink and lavender card all prettied up with a sleeping kitten, a vase of spring flowers, and spritely accents. It reads, HAPPY BIRTHDAY Daughter DEAR.
I can’t help but open this evocative little keepsake. My interest in the book wanes. What could possibly be inside this personally-addressed communique?
The printed verse is perfect for the time in which it materializes. “Just as you’ve fulfilled our dreams, And made them all come true, We hope your future, Daughter, dear, Will do the same for you!”
Clearly signed in ink, “Love Mother (over).”
“Over” means that seventy years ago people actually wrote extended notes inside cards, on the blank page you find by unfolding it completely.
Here, in bold cursive script, is this particular message:
“Dear Virginia! Sugar I didn’t forget your Birthday but it is kinda hard for me to do things that I need to get around to. I am sending a Xmas pkg. I hope you want open it I dont know your new address but hope you get it O.K. I know you all are enjoying your new home. I hope you all have a merry Xmas. Write to me–I love you–Mother.”
I re-fold the card to its original form. I regard it as a tiny treasure long forgotten and squirreled away within the pages of a forgotten novel. I wonder what happened to the well-loved daughter who received it. I hope that her remaining friends and family recall her and her mom fondly. I hope somebody someday finds this cheerful little love note inside this old book. I hope it will endure as a marker.
As I acquire books of olde for my library, for my bookshop, I am careful to fan all pages for notes and keepsakes and notations and secret messages.
I should be satisfied enough with simply preserving and enjoying each book that finds its way to me. But in the process of examination and cherishing, what lies within becomes important, too.
Judging each book by its cover hardly even begins the treasure hunt that awaits me
© 2021 A.D. by Jim Reed