When Dreams Run in the Family

It’s a week or so after we’ve moved into our new house in Roanoke, Virginia and I have finally begun the excruciating task of unpacking the book boxes, of which there are many. As I pull book after book out box after box, I begin to consider how I want them organized this time around.

Should I group them in alphabetical order by genre, a hodge podge as before we moved (keeping series’ together, of course), or try something new?

An author I follow organizes many of her books, apps, and other such things by color, and I’ve seen a few other beautifully organized book collections arranged like this. I threw caution to the wind stacking books on the desk and floor by color, sorting them one by one into their place. I’m quite happy with the way my old family bookshelf turned out housing all of my old friends.

I like old things, antiques, if you will. I have an old type-writer that doesn’t work which we found in the small shed beside my grandparent’s house in Mississippi. Ryan had to grab it out of the cobwebs because I wanted it, but refused to step inside and be eaten by bugs. I have one of those old, blue suitcases you might see in a movie like White Christmas, with the rusty latches and small keyhole.

It’s the history of these objects that I truly love, more than the objects themselves. History and the marks it leaves on people and places is one of the reasons I loved our house when we first walked through the freshly painted walls. There are details in older houses you don’t find in new homes anymore, which I think is such a shame, but I digress. I think that’s one of the reasons I love to write, the idea that I’m leaving something behind for someone after me to find. A story, a notebook, an old, faded copy of Julius Caesar by Shakespeare.

In the hustle of unpacking, putting together a new desk, and adjusting to life so far away from family, the little book got pushed aside with the intention of finding the right spot for it in the house. I didn’t want it sit just anywhere. It would be lost among the color-coded books in my grandparent’s over one-hundred-year-old bookcase. No, it needed it’s own place.

My dad gave me this little book that’s about the exact size of my hand and very thin. The brown, hardback cover hides the words of the title in dark ink, visible only in the right lighting. The title is surrounded by a laurel wreath square, there are blotchy spots near the bottom, and the edge of the top is fraying away. Holding the fragile thing in your hands, you feel as if you’ll break by breathing, but slowly you open it up to the cover page inside.

Penciled in scribbles spell the word fools several times, for reasons we don’t know, but big above the title is a name in elegant cursive revealing the previous owner of the book from 1922, Ellen Bennett.

We had the pleasure of hosting my parents over a weekend recently. During their visit, we took them to a well-known antique store in Roanoke, happening across a small collection of old books very similar to Ellen Bennett’s Julius Caesar. Looking at the dates within their pages, the small book from our house was brought to mind.

I mentioned the book to my dad, remembering it was from his side of the family. He said it was his grandmother’s, my grandfather’s mother,, Ellen, or as we knew her while she was alive, Nan-Nan. Yes, I still have memories of her white curly hair inside my grandmother’s kitchen.

My dad told me what the small book had already confirmed, she was a writer too. Scattered throughout the pages are markings and annotations, even two poems. Ellen Bennett wrote a column in the local paper near her home of Love Station, aptly called Love Notes. She even a wrote short book titled Love in My Day.

It seems Ellen passed on more to me than just her name, and how grateful I will forever be for that gift. But she is not the only woman in my family with this gift for words. My Great Aunt Lena wrote poems to and for her brothers who went to war, for her sisters who found love, for her niece, my aunt, who died, and for so many more people. My Aunt Cathy writes even the simplest text message in a way that conveys her love and caring.

Looking at my family history, it seems only natural that God would pass a love of writing to another. Perhaps there is a deeper reason. Writing on my own is scary and vulnerable and hard. Writing with these women and so many others doing the hard work right now makes it a little less scary.

Can you find the links in your family? Are there ways you see your gift through the generations of your family? I would love to hear about them.