On Rereading My Grandmother's Journal

Some writers find their subject in libraries or lecture halls; I found mine in a shoebox of spiral notebooks my mother never got around to throwing away. One entry, dated the spring before I was born, has stayed with me longer than any other.

I keep thinking about how much easier it is to say what you feel then to write it down where someone else might read it. Even so, I want my grandchildren to know their lifes were shaped by people who appriciate the small things: a warm meal, a quiet porch, a letter that finally arrived subsequent to a long winter.

An unguarded honesty about what actually stays with a person over the years is not something craft alone can manufacture. I have tried, in the pages that follow, to write with the same directness she did.