Daddy. The ones we lost. Please share yours.

[Hekate]

39. Thanks all for helping me find a positive memory. He bought the Great Books....

The Encyclopedia Britannica salesman came by and he bought that too. We were so poor -- my mom never forgave him for the Great Books.

I remember playing with the Britannica before I could even read, looking up all the colored plates (there were only a few in those days, like gemstones; all the ships and RR trains were in b/w). When I started being assigned essays at school, I used it, though I didn't know how to distill and cut.

Oh yes, the World Book set. Mom was all for that.

She herself was an avid reader her whole life and taught us many things, as well as reading stories to us. She was a teacher to her marrow. So I read to my kids and my daughter reads to hers. We get that from her.

But sad about the Great Books. In their old age, Mom moved them to another state and told us all to come and get whatever we might have left behind that she hadn't already cleaned out. I told my youngest brother I wanted only 2 things: the cookie jar, and the GB set.

I lined them up with my college paperbacks, just to see how many I personally had read. When I looked into them, I found Dad's signature, along with what I think are the various dates that they were either delivered or that he read them.

I thought: this was his college education, the one he never had. This was his yearning. And I remembered a time when I loved him.

And cried a little, as I am now.

The cookie jar sits in my kitchen. I gave the GB to my son some years later, with only a little of the story. And let it go.