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Lost and Found
As a child, the best part about visits to my grandmother's house was not her delicious pies, cakes, cookies or Sunday dinners. It was her attic.
Atop a flight of 15 squeaky, wooden steps was a world of treasure and adventure. It was a place where I could escape adult conversation and find peace. Through the north and south windows streamed bands of sunlight filled with dust particles that danced like tiny abductees
fighting to escape an alien tractor beam. A musty smell flooded the entire room, and scary shadows creeped into every corner, but the abundant treasures there gave me the courage
and curiosity to visit again and again.
There were trunks full of old pictures, yellowed editions of the Saturday Evening Post and bags of cats-eye marbles. Like real eyes, each one was different....a different color, a unique stare. Portable closets with creaky hinges housed Army Air Corps uniforms protected in moth balls, vestiges of a war long past, and
small pieces of furniture sat draped in faded cloth covers.
I was allowed to take home several items from grandmother's attic: my dad's old desk, a bag of marbles, a military flight
cap. One of my favorite attic finds was an ivory letter opener with an Indian head carved at the top. My grandmother would never let me take it home, saying, "You must leave that here, Michael, so you'll have it to play with
each time you visit me."
Grandmother passed away in 1982. When my family cleaned out her house, no one could find the letter opener. My wife Fran and I claimed her old living room set, but gave it to Goodwill a few years later. As we were carrying it out of our house, we tipped one of the chairs and out fell the letter opener. I heard my grandmother's soft, sweet voice say, "You can take the letter opener home now, Michael."
Not long after that day, Fran and I drove by the vacant house, and I thought I saw my grandmother in the south attic window. I blinked my eyes, and she was gone. I still have the letter opener. It rests safely in the desk in my den.
Nothing attached to love is ever lost.
Michael J. Matre '74 | News/Editorial
Fairfield, Ohio
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