January 21, 2010

Fourty-seven years ago I received a book in the mail from my Aunt Kate. She was living on a farm in Ohio at the time. It was a ‘fat’ hardcover book. I believe it was the first book that was truly my own--the start of my personal library. There were many books in our house, especially in dad’s study. I loved spending time there. It was my first encounter with Bonhoeffer, Trueblood, and J.B. Phillips. I liked to read the parts that dad had underlined and the comments he scratched in the margins. Dad must have noticed me ‘reading’ The Cost of Discipleship and directed me to another shelf (I would have been 9 or 10 at the time). True stories of man-eating leopards and tigers set in India, Kon Tiki, Dry Guillotine, and The Count of Monte Cristo are what come to mind. While more accessible to my young mind, they were still a over my head. Now, on that special day I received my very own book from Aunt Kate.

Last night I received a phone call from her eldest son asking me to speak at her funeral and granting me license to work with the message in a manner that freed me from the constrictions I expressed in yesterday’s blog. I felt great relief. I went to the shelf in my library and pulled out that book Kate had given me so long ago….the first book that I remember reading from cover to cover that truly gripped me. I’m going to read it again. Nobody’s Boy by Hector Henri Malot. Inside the front cover in her own neat handwriting she wrote: To Jon---“somebody’s boy” –Auntie Kate’s. 1963. It’s that apostrophe s at the end of her name that I never noticed until last night. It brought tears to my eyes. Such a small expression of love that continues to have life even now that she is gone.