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A quote: “There are no secrets that time does not reveal.” ~~ Jean Racine
I’ll start with a story …
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She had even outlived her own son, my grandfather, by the time she finally gave in and went into assisted living. Meemaw grumbled until she found out that her new digs include a Happy Hour every Friday. Wine? Gossip? She could hardly wait.
But her house! Yikes. While it was the place we all returned to for holidays and oohed-awwed over the heartpine floors and hand-carved newel posts, the house had been built by Meemaw’s own great-grandpa in 1868. No amount of lemon-oil could hide the smell of old. And no one in the family now wanted burden of restoration.
I helped haul old 70s furniture to the curb last weekend, attic for me today!
Lots of loose photos (who ARE these people?), old receipts, work orders, magazines … geez, did no one believe in tossing stuff out?
I work my way back to the oldest corner. Big old steamer trunk looks promising. More old pics and, ooo, stack of letters tied in a faded ribbon.
I blush at the eloquent, but explicit, language between husband and wife. I glance at the dates – Civil War? Women dressed in 50 pounds of clothing but wrote like this? Dayum!
But I read each one, working down the stack (stopping to fan myself from time to time). The last envelope feels a bit heavy. A key and letter that changes everything.
Boy, howdy! We are not selling this house!
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Now, it’s your turn.
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. featured image, cropped, Adobe Stock standard license.
Cameron says: I looked at the papers strewn on the table. My relatives rolled their eyes at the mess; grandpa held onto these keepsakes and resisted all efforts to throw them out. When he was dying, he asked me to preserve them with the promise I’d understand soon enough.
So my mother the minimalist neat freak threw her hands up in resignation. “Fine. But you can’t keep them here. They’ve been in the attic for years and I want to free up space.”
When I got home, I looked them over. Pictures of places long gone, my grandfather standing with people of some importance judging by the clothes, letters written in cursive that few people my age would understand.
But then I saw it. A couple of random sentences that looked like shorthand but I knew what it was. I grabbed a magnifying glass and smiled.
“If you are reading this then I’m dead and you know what you see. Write a letter to the person you see on this paper and tell him who you are. The rest will be made clear.”
The alien that responded welcomed me on board and from there I got to learn what was out there.
Phoenix says: The Inheritance
Three months after her grandmother’s funeral, Claire was cleaning out the attic. It smelled of mothballs and memories, with every step she took kicking up a small cloud of dust. In the back, on a forgotten desk, she discovered the shoebox. Inside were photographs, letters, and an old camera.
The first photograph she pulled from the box was a young woman in uniform standing beside a fighter plane. The resemblance was unmistakable. Other photos revealed exotic locations: Egypt, Hong Kong, Moscow. Letters bore official seals and code names. One read “Agent Nightingale”. Claire’s hands trembled when she read her grandmother’s real name. It wasn’t Mary Henderson, but Maria Volkov.
Untouched for forty years, the camera still held undeveloped film. In her darkroom, Claire processed the final roll. Images emerged like ghosts…her grandmother, young, beautiful, and fierce. Documents exchanged in shadowy alleys. And a man, a Soviet defector Claire recognized from history books, who had changed the course of the Cold War.
A note lay buried beneath the photographs: “For Claire, who always wondered. Some secrets are there to keep us safe. Love, Nana.”
Wondering what other secrets might be hidden in the box, she reached for the envelope bearing the words, “For Your Eyes Only”.
Cameron says: Nicely done!
Cleaning out Great-Grandma’s house was a monumental chore. Much as Dad’s siblings and cousins wanted to keep the old home place in the family, it just wasn’t possible. The world had changed too much from when she and Great-Grandpa had bought it, back when the US was riding high on our victory over the Axis powers and the Cold War was just beginning to cast its shadow on the peace. For starters, what was a huge spread in 1946 simply wasn’t an economically viable farm in this day and age — and none of the family really were where they could come out here and live in this big old house with its associated farm buildings.
I don’t know how Cousin Janelle and I ended up in the attic, only that we were going through the trunks and boxes full of long-forgotten keepsakes squirreled away over Great-Grandma’s long life. To be honest, it made me think of an archeological expedition, digging through layer upon layer of habitation. By the door I found boxes with thank-you notes in childish scrawl, sometimes adorned with equally rough illustrations of whatever gift had prompted the note. I recognized more than a few of my own, from when I was in Kindergarten and first grade.
Move a little deeper, and I started finding such odd things as a cafeteria menu from the local high school, which had consolidated with two others back in the late 60’s. The purple spirit duplicator ink was faded, and had probably remained readable only because it had been kept away from light and air. But I could still see the mark where it had been stuck to the refrigerator — the old one I saw in photographs from the time, with its mechanical latch rather than the modern magnetic gasket — so it could be referenced through the week. The prices seemed unimaginable — fifty cents for the whole meal, and a nickel for a milk to have with one’s sack lunch.
But the biggest surprise came when we opened a little brass-bound box tucked by the chimney for the big fireplace in the living room. There was a pile of letters, some originals, some the V-mail photostats that were printed from microfilm to save weight in trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific shipping.
Except most of them were from someone by the name of Herbert Mason. Just reading the tender words made me feel awkward, because I’d been under the impression that Great-Grandpa had been her only love.
And then I found a letter in Great-Grandpa’s handwriting, although firmer than what I was used to seeing. It was an account of an encounter with a German unit, and how Private Mason’s courage had saved their squad, at the cost of his own life, and she should be proud of him.
I was a child of peacetime — even the Energy Wars were before my parents met, when Dad was still up here in Indiana, doing engineering work at an airbase, keeping cargo planes in good shape for our ANG airlift units. But I’d heard enough war stories and read enough history to imagine how it went. Great-Grandpa finding Great-Grandma’s letters in his slain buddy’s pack, remembering a picture of the steady girl back home this man had shown everyone, and realizing that there would be no official notification to this young woman unless Mr. and Mrs Mason were willing to reach out to her — and took it upon himself to reach out personally.
From that correspondence had grown a relationship that led to her decision to meet him on the dock in Boston, then come back here to begin farming far from her own upbringing.
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