I have a fetish for old books. I think of the eyes that originally read them and the world in which they lived. I ran across an old math book just this week on my bookshelf.  I gently opened the brown pages and noticed the copyright, 1912. Curious to see how math processes were taught back then I opened the second page and noticed six names in the same elegant script penciled across the top right corner.  I assume six children had to share this particular math book including the second child in the second column, Jeannie Lillard, my great grandmother.

Interestingly the next page also lists, in Jeannie’s grown handwriting, four of her children including my grandmother. I suppose she helped her children work their sums through this book as well.

If I could go back in time, I would sit down with Jeannie and help her tell me about those days, the days before The War to End All Wars.  I can piece together what it must have been like from other great grandmother’s who did write their stories. But the treasure of Jeannie’s life is lost to me.

This is how I would help her tell her stories. I would not start by trying to get the whole thing; I want to get it one piece at a time. I would concentrate on her earliest recollections. My questions would go something like this.

Jeannie, tell me about the first house you lived in.  What were your neighbors like? Did you own any animals? Were there any favorites?  What did your dad do for a living? What did he look like when you were a girl? Tell me about your early school years. Where did you go to school? Who was your first beau? Who was your best friend? What was the funniest thing you remember doing with her? How would you describe your home? How long did you live in that first place? What caused you to move from there? What was your religious upbringing?  What was your greatest sorrow as a child? What was your favorite Bible story when you were a child?  If you could have given yourself advice when you were a girl what would it be?

I would help her knit together a simple eight-chapter book from these questions. And what a treasure that would be!

I am so glad to have a small piece of her girlhood, so blessed to have a math book where her teacher carefully penciled Jeannie Lillard. Now I am determined to gather the bits and pieces that I can, and start with my own parents and even my own stories for my own great-granddaughters, who will look back and want my history as I long for hers.