My Grandfather's Gift

My grandfather was an interesting character. He never let stereotypes get him down, physically or mentally, and never once did he bat an eye in the face of danger. He took the world head on and expected it to take him the same way. I loved him, a lot.

From his long grey beard that he would dye the strangest of colors, to that weird fedora he refused to leave the house without, he was my favorite person in the world. Without a doubt, I was his as well.

Whenever I went over to his house (which somehow always smelled like sweet honey roasted pecans) he’d read me stories. They were usually the big, long fantasy books about wizards and dragons, and J.R.R Tolkien type stuff. On a rare occasion we’d watch the movie after finishing the book. If my grandfather left me with nothing else, he gave me the good knowledge that a book is always the predecessor to the movie, and one must always read the book before watching the movie. He also taught me that movies brutally murdered many of the great works.

I remember his house with a distinctness that can only come from having been there for so much of my life. The rooms were small, but when the whole family came for a holiday, they somehow seemed to expand. The mottled stone walls were beautiful, though my grandfather always found them too dull. He said my grandmother didn’t decorate very well. That’s probably why after she passed away, he painted his room to be red, yellow, and orange, the colors of pheonix feathers he would say.

The living room was the centerpiece of the whole house. Every Christmas all of us grandkids would gather fluffy pillows and blankets and sit on the cool floor. The downstairs wasn’t heated nearly as well as the upstairs, but we didn’t mind. We’d sip hot chocolate and sit by the fire, twisting gifts in our hands to try and guess what secrets were underneath the colorful wrapping paper.

I loved everything about grandpa’s house. I loved grandpa even more though. Everyone did. Despite how weird people thought he was, they all adored him, down to his most quirky details.

I never thought of them as quirky because, I mean, who really thinks their grandfather is weird, but some things about him were always unexplainable. For instance, he always carried around a little black notebook. He would never let that thing leave his side. It took me a while to figure out why, and that wasn’t until I’d inherited it, but when I did, I fully understood.

………………………………………

“Ah! Taki drop it!” I squealed at my little grey and white puppy. My nice, new wedge shoe was neatly pressed in between her teeth.

Taki had a sense for mischief, and she never failed to find it. In fact, it was almost intolerable just how much she found it. She came barreling towards me and stumbled into my lap, in between my crossed legs. One grey ear flopped over her sapphire-colored eye as she looked up at me. I shook my head and pulled the shoe out of her mouth. She was hard to stay mad at with that cute little face.

I moaned. It was predictably covered in slobber. Luckily though her teeth hadn’t dug too deep and there were no bite marks.

I patted her furry head. “You’re a very naughty puppy, do you know that?”

She barked perkily, as if to say “yes, got any more shoes I can chew on?”

I laughed and fell back into the soft green grass, Taki playfully nipping at my fingers. A smile painted my lips. It’d been a while since I felt this happy.

After my grandfather’s death a few months ago, my world was spinning out of control. He’d been my favorite person ever, the only one who ever really got my outlook on the world. Nobody understood me stuffing my face in a book, but he and I both knew, dying in battle against a huge, fire breathing dragon, was much better than any way you could die in the real world.

But even if we hadn’t been so connected, he had been paying for my college tuition, and I was taking my last semester to a bachelor’s degree. If I just had enough money to pay for it, I’d be set to go for the future, and my career in writing. It didn’t necessarily require a degree to continue publishing books, but it would definitely help me get an enjoyable job while I wrote my next novel.

Education was important to me. It was another thing my grandfather understood. He was a retired man with three different doctorates. I had always wondered how he managed to pay for my college classes with no job. I guess I’d figured he’d had a big retirement fund.

“Ada!” The familiar voice of my roommate Janet filled my ears. I perked up, accidentally pushing Taki off of my chest. She yelped, and turned over on her back in the grass. “Your mom sent me with something for you.”

I smiled at the brown faced girl stepping through the grass. Taki ran to greet her, taking big strides for such tiny legs.

Janet worked for my mother’s catering business, so she’d almost always bring back something. I grabbed her hand, and pulled her down onto the ground. She laughed, blowing at her frizzy brown hair, and running her fingers through Taki’s soft fur.

My recently adopted puppy had taken quite a liking to my roommate. Sometimes I wondered if her loyalty was to Janet more than me.

“How do I make her like me as much as she likes you?”

Janet shrugged. “You can’t. I’m just a generally likeable person.” She posed, extending her hands underneath her chin and smiling.

I snickered. “Sure, that’s what it is. What did mom send you with this time?”

Her face suddenly turned sullen, and she slipped a finger into the pocket of her yoga pants. The thing about those pants that made me borrow them often, was the wide pockets that they hand. They were wide enough to hold a can of coke. In fact, that’s usually what they held.

This time though, she pulled out a smooth covered, little black notebook. My breath caught and I recognized it right away. It was my grandfather’s, the one he always carried around with him. It was barely twice the size of my hands, and nested in both of my palms, it looked out of place. My sun kissed hands had never graced the soft cover of the book, let alone been in ownership of it.

I swallowed and started to flip the front cover open.

“Oh, wait!” Janet said, pulling something else out of her pocket. “This was from your grandfather too.”

She handed me a manila envelope, tightly sealed and graced with the letters of my name in my grandfather’s bubbly handwriting.

Janet took this cue to stand up and tell me she had homework.

I sliced through the white envelope and slipped out a piece of crinkly notebook paper. It read:

“My little Ada,

Oh dear. Well, I’ve been sensing it for quite a while. It’s quite odd to know you’re going to die, and not give a dragon’s last breath about it! It’s been my time for a while, and I think I’ve just been elongating it, but alas, it’s finally come. And as my favorite grandchild,”

I smiled with teary eyes. “I’ve given you my most prized possession. Soon you’ll understand why I had it with me so much. It was a wonderful thing, and helped me a great deal, but now, it’s yours.” A stray tear slipped down my cheek. I could almost hear my grandfather’s crackly voice whispering these words. “There’s just one thing, and it’s important. Don’t open it, until you need it. Now, need is not buying new books. I know, it’s absurd, because as I’ve said, books are some of most important things in the universe. But some other things, as you’ll learn, are actually more important. I know, you’re probably thinking ‘why would I save this for anything, it’s just a silly notebook’, but it’s so much more than that. I give it to you to finish paying for your college tuition. Open it and you’ll find everything you need for that. But after that, only open it in your greatest need or the need of others. Always help others with it. You do not want to fall into the pit of greed as others have.

Love you,

Grandpa”

My eyebrows creased in puzzlement, and I inhaled a shaky breath. It was almost like I was back at my grandfather’s house, listening to him tell us stories with his voice that always reminded me of cracking open a walnut. I knew I was struggling with my tuition, but what did this notebook have to do with the 20,000 dollars I needed to finish school at an Ivy league college?

My fingertips brushed the black material. It felt like fish scales and snake skin mixed together, slimy and thin, almost like how I’d imagine a dragon would feel. I’d never really examined the notebook that well, but as I did, small gold lines curved along the siding, and a number seven sprouted out of the material. There was a small flash inside of the book’s pages, illuminating the grass beside me more than the sun.

I dropped the book on the ground, in caution, and a slight bit of fear. Nothing happened. Carefully then, I held onto the front cover and flipped it open. There was the most beautiful artwork I’d ever seen. My grandfather’s favorite colors, red, yellow, and orange, illuminated a beautiful phoenix on the first page. Its wings spread across the soft paper, almost seeming to glow. He didn’t write anything, but apparently others did.

Flipping through the pages, I discovered that hundreds of people had owned it before my grandfather. This included the Queen of England, and significant people such as presidents from the past. The dates dated way back to the eighteenth century and each letter had different handwriting, a new date at the top, and a curvy gold lettered name signed at the bottom. My grandfather had not written a letter in the book, instead he’d drawn the pheonix. That always was him, rebelling against tradition.

I read the letters, as enthralled as any book nerd would be, and by the time I’d gotten to the last page, my heart had sped up and I’d come to a conclusion. So many of the letters talked about the notebook, the power of greed, and money. They all talked about the book giving them money. My hopes picked up as I reached the very end of the book.

Right then, I made two unconscious decisions.

One: I would never let anyone else know about this. I would pass it off as my grandfather’s book of stories, and use it to gift people money, whenever they needed it most.

Two: I would follow my grandfather’s last wish and only use it in great times of need.

When I flipped the last page, I found that my suspicions were correct. There was a check, embedded between the back cover and the soft paper. I pulled it out with shaky hands, and carefully closed the book, resting my hand on the cover.

My eyes grazed the number engraved at the bottom. It was a check for twenty thousand dollars. Right then, as I closed the book, and took it in my room to lock it up in a chest of my most prized possessions, I could feel the warm smile of my grandfather looking down at me from heaven.