Jaki Jean on Finding Jack's Aggieland Volumes for Janet

Before noon today, my sister Janet came to spend time with our mother Jean.  I ran errands, I came back with some groceries, heated Jean’s lunch, & began to wash fruit.

During my sister’s visit, we talk about what is going on in her life & later, from my vantage point in the kitchen, I see her wandering, looking at bookshelves.  So I ask her if she is looking for something.

Daddy’s Aggielands.

I cannot remember the last time I laid eyes on my father’s annuals from Texas A&M, but I know that this is important to my sister.  I always assumed that she had taken them, as the only one of our father’s children to become an Aggie.

When I told Janet that I always thought she had those annuals, she was not convinced.

My sister’s daughter, Emily Kate Douglas, is going to graduate from A&M this December.  I thought, these are part of Emily’s heritage as an Aggie, something her mother wants to make sure she is going to have.  This is something my Father would want.

So, after my sister left & I folded sheets (I am plagued by folding sheets).  I go an expedition.  I begin with a blue trunk, covered in dust.  It is falling apart & I know it needs to be emptied & discarded but throwing away things that are falling apart is hard for me these days.

In a dust covered, falling apart blue trunk, I find my father’s Aggielands & some bowling trophies.

Tomorrow, when my sister brings me a lawyer’s bookshelf she does not need in her new abode, I will give her those volumes.  

Because I know what they mean to her, what they will mean to my niece Emily Kate, & what making sure the volumes found the right home would mean to my father, Jack.

 

Of course, I expect all parties to remember that I am on page 299 in the 1957 volume, along with a pressed flower next to my picture,

Gig em.