Old Rockers and Old Books

Bruce Springsteen rocks!!

He has amassed 15 studio albums, 12 other released live albums and compilations, 18 Grammy Awards, 1 Academy Award, 2 Emmys, and ranks #14 of all times in units sold (63.5 Million units), but most of all, he plays, writes, sings and lives from the heart. Living Proof that he means something to a whole lot of people.

I am cleaning my house for the first time in eight years (I've been gone, not lazy). Some of the things I am finding are out of this world. Case in point, a 1967 copyright edition of The Beauty of Motherhood, a Hallmark poetry collection. It is a nice book of collected works about, you guessed it, the beauty of motherhood. In addition to works by such well known people as Edgar Allen Poe, Victor Hugo, Lord Tennyson, Longfellow, Teddy Roosevelt, John Quincy Adams, Emily Taylor, Walt Whitman, Milly Walton and someone I've never heard of before, Ano N. Ymous; there are some nice illustrations by Frieda D. Senn. On the very first page front, facing the inside of the front cover, is an enscription. It reads:

To Barbara,
to be read in the quiet hours or at times when you especially need inspiration.


It is signed by Thelma Cullins.

Anyway, it is very important to me that this book, which was a gift to my mother, Barbara, makes it to the hands of my daughter for the birth of her first child. I am a huge believer in the family bond, it means everything. I want my children, nieces and nephews to know their grandparents. I want those kids to know their uncles and aunts. I want those kids to know each other and all the family stories that should be passed down from generation to generation. This sense of understanding of who we are as a family and where we came from and how we got to where we are today is important to me to pass along so they will know who they are. This book, eight inches by four and a half inches by a mere one quarter inch thick, with just 68 pages in total must be given to my little girl at the moment she stops being MY little girl, because the date under that enscription. That date, in that book, which I found in my house after being gone eight long years is just three days after I was born into this world. This book was a gift to my mother at the event of my birth. How it made it's way to my house I have no idea. I do not recall ever seeing this book before, but like Bruce Springsteen, it sure means a lot to me.