Patricia

Jul 28, 2025

After my mother’s suburban basement barely withstands the yearly spring flooding, some heirlooms come to live at my house. In a bin of family photo albums, I find Grandma Pat’s two surviving scrapbooks. In everything except leather color and content, these scrapbooks look the same. I start flipping through the first. Warning by Jenny Joseph. Then two newspaper clippings of married, overweight tattoo artists who travel the country in their parlor van. A postcard joking just one more payment, then it’s ours! above a dilapidated shack. Letters to an editor: the pony express had faster delivery. Then a short article on illegal ivory trading—how to tell if your ivory is made of mammoth or not. Sex offender moves to town on the same page. Then comparing the ten commandments across different versions of the Bible: Jewish, Protestant, Catholic-Lutheran. An advertisement for Baxter County Funeral Home and Cremation Society. A 1996 article by Ann Landi called “The War of Words.” Then another article on revenge and forgiveness. Pat’s highlighted this section: “an act of revenge is growth-promoting, says Dr. [Harvey] Rich [M.D.], when it strengthens our sense of self, when it makes us feel that we deserve respect and can protect ourselves.” Then my favorite two pages—the original clipping of Richard Roeper’s 1994 Chicago Sun-Times article “Whatever He May Have Done, O.J. Simpson Can’t Spell” and on the next page, roughly six-hundred thousand bajillion photocopies of the same piece. Next page. A clipping from Time about what to do if your identity is stolen. Then an e-mail from a friend: most people do not have a foot-long foot. More clippings: prayers that shake the universe; an article by Valerie Joseph on the lasting impacts of racism in Georgia; an article by Elizabeth Berg on the blissful ignorance of childhood; Shelby White’s article “What Every Woman Should Know About Her Husband’s Money” and an ad for Arkansas’ natural beauty across from one another; the first e-mail she sent from her own computer, printed out, addressed to my parents and precious baby girl; statistics on Arkansas’ most racially diverse counties; a simple, half-inch piece of yellowing prose which reads “without hope, all we can do is eat and drink our resources as we watch the planet slowly die” and I have no clue where this might have come from. Then a brochure for the Baxter County Library, and rates for PJ’s Lodge on the White River. 200-pound Alligator Snags Angler’s Attention! A small child riding on the back of a Watusi bull. Did Linda Tripp have more surgery? Articles about the Master Gardeners. God put this in my net. “In a stellar salad, if the Sun were a pumpkin about a foot in diameter, Mercury would be a tomato seed about 50 feet away. Venus would be a pea about 75 feet away. Earth would be a pea about 100 feet away. Mars would be a raisin about 175 feet away. Jupiter would be an apple about 550 feet away. Saturn would be a peach about 1025 feet away. Uranus would be a plum roughly 3225 feet away, and Pluto would be smaller than a strawberry seed nearly a mile away.” Hold onto your $1 gold coins! All the United States presidents in order, up until Bill Clinton. The Andy Griffith cast doodled on an Etch-a-Sketch. An advertisement wherein an elderly woman wearing a Girl Scout uniform delivers cookies to an unsuspecting customer. Fifty Years of Sex: from oppression to obsession. An op-ed from a doctor who performs abortions, and an op-ed from a woman suffering from multiple miscarriages. An article about a woman delivering a “stone baby” after carrying unknowingly for sixty years. A collage of articles on politics, feminism, marriage—punctuated nicely by a bumper sticker which says I know I’m not perfect but I’m so close it scares me! An advertisement of a small blonde boy with huge porcelain-blue eyes—and my brother’s baby picture on the same page. Nearly twins. A page of comics and many men on motorcycles. Let bygones be bygones, one article instructs. Flies can’t get into a closed mouth. An anti-war column, clippings from the Elk Club; another collage of top public high schools in Arkansas, district funding, teacher salaries, student ratios. “Papa Don’t Preach: Why Some Fathers Don’t Relate Well to Their Daughters” and a photo of my grandfather gardening taped down next to three valentines. And finally, on the last page, my grandmother’s handwriting: do geese see God?