Anyone here like thrift stores? Instead of doing much stitching the past five years, I added thrift stores to my hobby list. It helps to have friends who love them also. In Tucson, we are lucky to live near some retirement communities that feed into several thrift stores and that seems to be where I find the best items.
I always look at the books, recent and old. A few months ago I found a lovely children's book called "The Child's Treasury." It wasn't in fabulous condition but I adore old children's illustrations and this book was packed with them:
Aren't they gorgeous? They'd be even better taken with something other than my camera phone!
I bought it and brought it home and it took me a few days to thoroughly go through the book and when I did, I was almost brought to tears.
First I saw a pressed flower, not unusual inside a book:
I flipped through a few more pages and found more flowers:
And then I came across a sympathy card and a pressed flower:
And yet another...
And finally the mystery was solved:
This book must have belonged to a young girl who died. I can imagine her mother adding the flowers and the cards to her daughter's favorite storybook after the funeral. I was incredibly glad that I had found it. All I could imagine was another thrifter perhaps dropping the flowers from the book, or throwing them away and using the book to pull illustrations for crafts. Yes, that was big imaginings on my part! I hope whoever might have found it would have realized it was special.But it doesn't matter because I found it!
A superstitious friend told me "I'd get rid of that book, it's probably haunted!"
What? Of course it isn't haunted. This is a book full of love, full of happy moments between a mother and her daughter. I can picture the mother reading her precious daughter stories before bed. This book was special to two people at least. They are both dead now. Perhaps whoever cleaned out the retirement home of the mother didn't realize anything about this book and it was put in a box to take with other items to the thrift store. But love lives on even after death, it is an unbreakable bond between parent and child and I consider myself blessed to now be the keeper of the book.
6 comments:
How beautiful. Thank God it was found by someone who would treasure it. At first I thought it would be neat to be able to research and figure out who the mother and daughter were, but then I thought, it doesn't matter. It can stand as an expression of love between any mother and daughter.
We lost our baby earlier this year, and we hadn't had the time together to even gain a book to remember baby by. It warms my heart to see this little act of love that is standing the test of time (and what luck! This is my first time visiting your blog!) SF
What a beautiful find. It's lovely to think that it will be treasured by you now. xx
What a beautiful find. I think you were meant to find it .
I'm so sorry for your loss, Anonymous.
Anonymous, mother's hearts are the same everywhere and you have my sympathy on the loss of your precious baby.
Thanks for visiting everyone.
That touched my heart! You're right......mother's hearts are the same everywhere. Thank you for sharing your find.
Paula
Oh, Deborah, this is so beautiful and touching!
I'm a college librarian, and we recently had to "weed" our collection to get rid of some outdated materials (particularly in areas like science, medicine, etc). I loved flipping through some of the candidates for discard and finding random ephemera...nothing like this, more like old gum wrappers used as bookmarks and such.
I love that you found this are can keep it intact as a loving tribute to mothers and daughters everywhere throughout the ages.
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