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I may have screwed up the date, but I figure she's about 58 years old. No flames on my math skills please, but feedback is always welcome
Evening Journal Entry November 21, 2046
I went in to look at it tonight. Tonight, of all nights, it seemed appropriate. It seems like years since I've had the urge to hold it, to run my fingers over the edges of the pages and imagine I can slip into the beautiful scene on the cover. Then I catch my image in the mirror on my daughter's vanity and I realize.... it has been years. Decades. This precious volume used to live on my shelves, cared for, loved and protected, just as I was by my dad. He kept his promise.... and I kept mine.
After I first received the book, it took me almost a month to read it all the way through. I was a strong reader for my age, don't get me wrong. It was more the subtext that I had trouble with. For a girl as young as I was then, this story was... difficult to grasp. My dad offered to explain, but I declined. She'd given it to me, after all. I felt I had an obligation to try and understand it myself before asking for help.... an obligation to live up to the expectations I saw in her eyes as she crouched there in front of me, passing on what had meant so much to her and the mother she still missed so intensely.
I kept it to myself for a long time, seeing it as a treasure to be hoarded. Until I had my own child. For weeks before her eighth birthday arrived, I struggled. That age is hard to buy gifts for. Do they see themselves as stretching eagerly for their teen years, or are they clinging to little girl things and wishing time wouldn't speed so fast? I wasn't sure and I hadn't the courage to just sit her down and ask. I debated and questioned until, while preparing for bed one night, I saw it sitting placidly in my bookcase and knew I had my solution.
The following night, after party and cake and friends had been satisfactorily dealt with, I took her final present to her bedroom and sat down on the bed with her, exactly as I remembered my beloved friend had done with me. As Cathy unwrapped her gift, I told her the story of the woman who had given it to me when I was eight; how she had grown up sad and angry, but, with the help of a very special man, had found her heart again and ended up saving countless lives by destroying a terribly evil place run by terribly evil men. Cathy, of course, giggled and stated plainly her opinion that I was telling her a concocted story. I merely gazed somberly into her eyes and assured it her it was all true. I think, eventually, she believed me.
She read the first chapter to me, as I once read it to Parker, then we closed the book gently. I placed my hand over her hand on the cover and extracted from her the same promise I had made so long ago, but with one addition; she had to swear to pass it on to her daughter. In three days she will. She'll be coming by tomorrow to pick it up. It'll be wonderful to see her again, but losing this book..... I'm being silly, I know. I'm not losing the memories, and neither will Maggie, my granddaughter. Cathy has told me she'll gladly pass down the story with the book and she'll do it just as I did..... the way it should be.
As I studied the cover tonight, I realized something else. Like me, the colors have faded a bit with time, though I've done my best to preserve both the book and myself. What hasn't faded, and never will, are the memories of those hours with an extraordinary woman who found the strength to open her heart to a child and, in turn, helped me to see my father and myself in a new light.
Tonight, she's been gone twenty years. Sometimes, I forget she's gone at all. I still feel her.... brushing my hair, helping me pick out clothes that turned me into a perfect Parker clone. Thinking of the priceless expression on my dad's face never fails to make me laugh even in my darkest times.
Tonight, before I give the book away, I'll sit here on my bed and read that first chapter of "Little Women" aloud for the last time. I know she'll be here with me, just as she was the first time. I can already feel her presence as I lift the book and carefully open to the first page.....
Debbie Macneil *nee* Broots
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