4.1

To my granddaughter Ingrid -

Once a very wise woman told me to document my life, for the ordinary things which make up my days may not be ordinary to someone in the future. And so I listened to her, and documented the ordinary. I documented the process by which I removed dust from workshop jars, and the color and number of birds who came to feed at my stoop in the mornings, and the particular qualities of the smoke that rose when I first relit the athanor and a wild joy rose in my chest. I wrote so many documents that I began to find them underfoot; a half-sentence on the properties of salt under my pillow, a paragraph on the pattern of my slippers tucked behind the crucible. My documents filled the workshop, spilled out into the garden, found their way into the hands of neighbors, lovers, strangers.

And then I found I carried a child, and my heart also became my document.

For written in my heart is my son’s first kick from within my womb; beside it is inscribed the sight five years later of his upturned eyes, appearing exactly like his father's; and surrounding them are a thousand other surprises, other moments when I thought to myself, “I did not know it would be like this.” You, too, are written inside me, Ingrid, for the love that I felt when I took you into my arms taught me something new about my own grandmother, connected me all at once to the past and the present and the future.

Now my heart beats less swiftly, and as I prepare myself for my final journey I think often of these moments and sights which I keep inside me but have not documented. And so, Ingrid, I leave some of them here for you:

- My father’s old brush, still speckled with unused paint
- The sunlight falling on a barrel of cool water
- Your slow-spinning arms as you hid from your mother, pretending to be a windmill
- My little son, holding his cupped hands out to me, offering me a spring tadpole
- The sapling from my childhood that, struck by lightning, refused to die

How much life is contained in small things, Ingrid. How little we know.

Soon I will go to a place I visited in my youth, a place where I was meant to one day return. Perhaps one day you may find yourself there, among the other women who have lived and then returned. But for now, you must let me document what I have learned here, one last time:

No one is born fully-formed. We all must start at the acorn and work our way down.

I leave to you my carvings, and the box which you have so often asked about, and all the various writings at which you have laughed. But perhaps most importantly, I leave to you the pages I have not yet filled. They are yours, Ingrid.

Document your life.