"Heart Throbs"

Book Intro

Last fall I lost both my Grandmothers, five weeks from one another;

Weeks into November I dreamt of Grammie’s house when I was a child.

I dreamt I was staying the night in the old guest room, the blankets, the crisp sheets just as they always were. The bed made just like a nurse, the bottom and corners tucked in tight and taught so the toes cannot hang out from the edge of the bed. The only thing about this dream that wasn’t accurate was the built in bookshelf at the footboard.

Something about it made me curious, I crouched down to scan the titles and I saw one of my books there on this shelf. The title printed on the spine “Heart Throbs.”

A book that my grandmother had given to me….well actually, I think that she leant it to me.

***

(When I moved Downeast from up North, there are a lot of things that were left behind at the folks in between. My mother sorted and packed many of my things and put them “up overhead” as we call it. (The space built in the peaks of the garage.) )

When I awoke I instantly knew it must be there.

***

The first pages are about ready to free them-selves from the old binding. It was a gift given to my grandmother from her friend Olivia Beal. It was given to Olivia by Lynwood Foss, January 1, 1912. I know this for it is written and dated in cursive on the first blank page.

The next page, the title page reads:

Heart Throbs-The Old Scrap Book –
In prose and verse
Dear to the American People and by them contributed in the $10,000 Prize Contest initiated by the National Magazine 1904-1905
Grossett & Dunlap New York

And on the back of that page reads:

Limited copyright, 1905
The Chapple Publishing Company LTD. Boston, Mass.

All these words squarely margined inside text boxes, the pages yellow and consistent with it’s age, the font tiny, all enveloped in that old book smell.

The next pages include the foreword written by the editor of National Magazine describing the break down of the cash prizes and the content he expected to receive:

“Wholesome good cheer, humor, comfort, hope-those things that make dark days endurable and sunny days enduring. In this way I hope to get those priceless little gems which you have always looked for in your favorite periodical. –Heart throbs-yes, heart throbs of happiness, heart throbs of courage, heart throbs that make us feel better. “

Words like this continue for the next following page until Joe Mitchell Chapple ends this foreword by saying:

“It is certain that such sentiment and humor are dear to all Americans and that these heart throbs of the sons and the daughters of the people are the pulse of the nation.”

The next four-hundred and sixty nine pages are just that, moments that make the heart throb.

At the end of the book on the inside cover, written in cursive is my grandmother’s given name.

***

I took a trip up to the folks in search for that hundred and five year old book; and sure enough I found in packed away in a box up overhead.

The cover gray with dark blue lettering across the front and the spine, it’s ripped and tattered covering you can see right down to the binding, the gray cloth on the top layer, the second layer brown paper and the third looks almost like gauze.

Come to my surprise, I had booked marked a page with a piece of paper. On that paper I had marked all the pieces from the book with titles or relation to Mothers. Imagine that.

***

I keep it close now, sifting through its pages carefully, seeking out what she wants me to discover from this vintage scrap book. It rests on the bookshelf next to my grandfather’s New Testament Pocket Bible, a gift for me when he died many years before. Now they rest side by side, aged and sentimental, together as they should be.

Even if my Grandmother leant this book to me initially, the weeks following her death, she came to me in a dream and gave me this book; the old gray binding, the four-hundred and sixty nine yellow pages of wholesome good cheer, humor, comfort, hope- for I needed it to make those dark days endurable and sunny days enduring, I needed those heart throbs that make us feel better.