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Health & Fitness

What You Do Today Really Matters

How far will your ordinary day reach into the future?

My most prized possesion is an old account ledger, started on July 14th 1852 scribed by my father's mother, Blanche Tharritt. It is written in perfect grand looping style and slant, painstakingly in pen and ink. This is not to be confused with ink pen as this required a quill to be dipped in a bottle of ink. No crossouts, no misspelling, no ink glops.

When the journal was used up with notations of transactions, my father's grandmother pasted children's stories cut from the nightly newspaper, on top. 'The Bylow Bunnies' written by Grace May North were collected, pasted, read and reread. These stories were written in rhyming style, which is probably the most challenging way to tell a story, even a little child's nightly one. The Bylow forest community blossomed each night and the Bylow Squrrel Boys and Bylow Bears had their own adventures.The opossums, skunks and sly fox [in the most scarey places] romped with humans in a family world. The humans were feared, not their friends even in the nicest story. Boy's with slingshots being yesteryears terrorists.

The pages are yellowed and tattered, unbound and crumbling and as I turn them, I am met with the little surprises that only today can enjoy. Underneath my Grandmother's signature, my father's baby brother scribbled his name, Edwin, and made several attempts to copy the number's and letters his mother had first recorded.

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I have tried to just count the entries but little pieces of the pages flake away, best they should be counted as read while curled up with a child in my lap. There are 31 bunny tales, 31 squirrel tales, and 31 bear tales, with a few off shooting stories. so my count is never completely accurate.

Long ago I vowed to reclaim this book by copying it over, but I never did. Truth told, it isn't what it is today that is so precious to me and mine, but the original that makes for a twinkle in my eyes.

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I was told that this is one of two journals of stories and that the other was passed down to another branch of the family. Never having heard of it, nor seen it,  I can't be so certain. To me this is unique and irreplaceable, like my family.

Through many moves it has been hand carried and cherished. Many years ago, I thought I lost it and feared the worst, searched the Internet for the author, publishing newspaper [long gone], and generally went mad with loss over it. Two years later while emptying a dresser I found it, carefully wrapped and placed for safe keeping. Now it has it's own little shadowbox so it doesn't get mislaid.

I am looking at it today and giving thanks, for the journal, the touch of my grandmother's writing, my great grandmother's dedication to collecting and of course, reusing a useful thing. I give thanks too for the nights my father sat and read to me, just like his grandmother read them to him and his siblings. I read them to my little ones and hopefully they will read them to theirs.

I think of the author, and her writing, as well as the world she was writing in. I marvel at how the little stories had not only glimpses of life, but how to behave and protect oneself from dangers. I wonder at the editor who chose to print the stories and the print which was hand set and inked onto the newspaper.

Times change and we don't always think of the little things we set our minds and hearts to. Sometimes necessity forces our hand and other times we choose at our leisure to make some little contribution to our world. Bigger, better, new and improved, see it today and forget it tomorrow...but, maybe not. Maybe not.

Maybe the end of one story is just the beginning of another, and another and another. This story I have shared is mine and writing it today has revealed a little bit of living on a gray, chilly day, November 22, 2011, toasting to July 14, 1852.

Thank you for being my little "Patch" into the future.

Mary

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