Trashed Notebooks

Before mom's hands began shaking, she decided to copy the Bible. Like a scribe, she treated things holy. Washed her hands and her heart. Sharpened her pencil fresh. Sat with a clean spiral notebook with a yellow cover. The color of joy. 

She started with Genesis. She stopped in Leviticus when she couldn't recognize herself in the curves and accidental jots and tittles (Matthew 5:18). When her hand refused to stick the graphite to the page and looked more like conducting Sousa's marching beat. 

Last week, while taking out the garbage, I saw pressed ribbon that used to hold old letters. Frayed and flat with time. Faded against the flaked rust at the bottom of the dumpster. The swath of blue prenatal appointment cards, nineteen sixty six confetti. 

A few black and white snapshots of some folks I knew, but never when they looked like that. School teacher versions of mom over the decades peeked between plastic, tin foil, and Coke zero cans because there's no place to recycle here. 

One of the plastic bags, stuffed full, cinched tight, stretched thin exposed the ribs of spiral notebooks. I could see the familiar MEAD yellow cover, cascading steplike over La Mirage yearbooks embossing the the strong flex Great Value multi-purpose trash bags. 

All those words. Time. Effort. Prayer. A monumental effort interrupted. Each successive page holding the marks pressed into it from the previous. I've climbed headfirst into dumpsters for so much less. But, I just stood there looking at them soaking up the sodden chicken trays and adult diapers. 

I left them there. Those sacred scribed words that spoke the world into being. His physical prosodic provision, words and care in a sodden stinking mess of age and loss. Fitting earthly treasures. She cried the other day, lamenting that we will have no financial inheritance. 

Mom, our inheritance is. Because the inheritance is who you helped us to become...because of your attention to living by every word that comes from the mouth of God (Deuteronomy 8:2-5). Her words aren't discarded, trash. Her words, His words live in me. 

Do not say to yourself, My power and the might of my own. hand have gotten me this wealth."  (Deuteronomy 8:17).