A Gift like this comes along only twice in a lifetime ~ #BlogHerWritingLab 2016

A Gift like this comes along only twice in a lifetime ~ #BlogHerWritingLab 2016…

My Dad knew I loved to write.

As a child, I wrote little poems as birthday gifts. I wrote little stories and try as I may to illustrate them, I had not one ounce of artistic ability.

Didn’t matter to my Dad that I couldn’t illustrate.

He loved my writing.

One day, my Dad came home with a gift. A typewriter. An Underwood. Old. Heavy. Noisy. Perfect. He had discovered it in a closet of his workplace when extensive renovations were being completed. He rescued it from being tossed out like yesteryear’s trash.

I remember the feel of the paper and inserting the paper so carefully that turning the wheels to that click, click, clicking sound made for perfect paper placement. I remember pressing the circular ivory keys. I had to press hard to make each letter keys strike the paper.

This gift was a gift of a lifetime to a young girl who loved to write.

Many years later, I lugged this old, heavy, noisy typewriter to my first apartment after college. Of course, it had been replaced for modernization and ease by a brand new 1960’s-style invention for my high school and college years, but I could not part with that gift from my Dad.

My Dad died in 1975, the most devastating loss to me. That typewriter has always remained a reminder of a Dad’s love for a little girl who loved to write little poems and stories.

I have lugged this old, heavy, noisy typewriter to every single apartment and every single home I’ve lived in. My 4 children have inserted paper and turned the wheel to that click, click, clicking point and pressed hard on those circular ivory keys. Over the decades, the keys have gotten stuck. The messy typewriter ribbon had been removed and the messy ink had dried to the cracking point.

All the while, my husband, who never met my Dad, has given this typewriter a place of great honor in our home.

Grandkids have come along and pressed on those keys, stuck half-way up or all the way up or all the way down like kids in a huddle — keys with deep dust and wear with years and decades.

This past year, heading into the holidays, my husband and I were deep into home renovations and lots of our stuff had been stored.

One day, my husband came home with a gift. A typewriter. An Underwood. Old. Heavy. Noisy. Perfect. He had secretly taken my treasured typewriter that had been stored with our stuff to be refurbished. Like new, or as new as possible for that old friend. A surprise for me.

A gift of a lifetime to a woman who still loves to write. (And still cannot illustrate!)

We placed my old, heavy, noisy, perfectly perfect Underwood on top of a perfect, old cabinet in our home office with a vintage-style clock on its left and a kaleidoscope on its right.

Time.

Words.

Swirls of Life’s Most Beautiful Colors.

That never, ever end.

We keep a piece of paper clicked into the typewriter for our grandkids to write a word or few, or for the little ones to press a letter or two. Who knows what little poems and stories will come from this. What stories that typewriter still has to tell.