A Book and a Typewriter

My father’s typewriter sits on a shelf in our living room beside a biography of Julie Andrews that my mother only got halfway through. The history of childhood that he wrote after he retired is upstairs in my office; her cane is tucked out of the way in a corner of our stairwell. They don’t have any special meaning for my daughter, any more than my parents’ photographs of the first schools they taught in have any special meaning for me. It makes me wonder from time to time if meaning is conserved like mass and energy and angular momentum, or whether meaning is like an old house that each generation renovates to meet its needs, only to have the next generation renovate again.

Time to make another cup of tea. If you came in peace, be welcome.