Elderly Woman Recalls what a Book Was

A dim light from the kitchen flickers occasionally as she adjusts herself on an old rocking chair. She takes something from the table and blows the dust off.

She says it’s a book.

It has a hard cover and is filled with paper, apparently bound together so you can flip through it.

Hm.

We try swiping the front of it with two fingers but nothing happens.

“I remember when I was four years old,” she says, then pauses for an eternity.

We thought she might have…yep, she fell asleep. We glance at each other then lift the book in front of her face to try and access it that way but no joy. We let the object fall onto the table so it makes a loud thud.

“I remember when I was four years old,” she says again, as if nothing had happened. “I got that book for my birthday.”

Our minds can’t comprehend her ever being four. But that’s probably not what we should be focusing on right now.

She tells us that the object holds stories and ideas and that it is meant to be read. She starts to relay how much they (the blocks of paper) have shaped her life and then there was something about treasure and empathy and then more about being connected to the human race but the whole time we are trying to picture her as a four year old child.

Really, it was a lot of words to try and take in all at once.

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