The First Book I Ever Owned

This weekend, while dusting off a shelf and moving it to another room, I paused to really see something that’s always been there, my very first book.

It isn’t printed or bound, and it doesn’t have an ISBN. It’s made of cloth. Soft pink pages stitched together by hand, painted with animals and flowers, and signed, “By Grandmother Beals.” My grandmother, my namesake, made it for me when I was born. It’s as old as I am.

Time has softened it. The fabric is faded, the edges a little worn, and nearly fifty years of washing can’t erase the marks of its long life. But it’s never been lost. It has always sat somewhere close, quietly waiting, a small, steady reminder that she is still with me.

I realized this weekend that I’ve been moving so fast this year, I stopped noticing it. But there it was, as it’s always been, holding the same quiet truth it did when I was small: that love can take the shape of something simple, handmade, and enduring.

This little book is more than a keepsake. I think that book wove itself into me. I can trace its thread through everything that’s come after, the stories, the words, the quiet hours spent trying to make sense of it all.

Long before The Seeker’s Lessons, before Quiet Cup Press, before I ever thought of myself as a writer, there was this pink cloth book, soft with age. It reminds me that love leaves marks that don’t fade, and that creativity isn’t something we learn; it’s something we remember.