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I never knew my grandmother was a writer until she showed me her story one day. She’d fiddled with art here and there, and she’d written a poem or two that she thought about putting to music someday. Still she never mentioned anything about writing stories. I’d always wondered where I had gotten that creative side of who I was.
“I can’t believe I found it,” she exclaimed from the back room as I sat in the living room digging through old scrapbooks of newspaper clippings and ancient photos.
“What’s that, Grandma? What did you find?” I loved hearing the sing-song voice when she was excited about something.
“I found my old notebook,” she cheerfully called. The joy in her voice was enough to make me put down what I was digging through and search her out so that I might better understand where her emotions were coming from. She didn’t get excited too often, but there was always a good reason for it when she did. Just as I was standing to go find her, she popped her head out from around the corner, holding a thick stack of paper stapled at the edges. It didn’t look much like a notebook to me.
“What is this,” I asked, reaching for the papers. They appeared to be typed on an old typewriter with an offset “H” key that smacked slightly higher than the other letters did each time it struck.
“It’s my Hilltop of Roses!” Her large frame towered over me still. I’d never get to be as tall as this statuesque woman before me. At twenty years old, I realized I got the short end of the stick in the gene pool. My hair was red, my body was covered in freckles, and I never grew past five feet six inches. She had raven black hair in her youth, a towering presence at nearly six feet tall, and a stunning face and figure in any photo I ever saw. “I wrote this when I was only eighteen,” she smiled broadly.
“Oh gosh, can I read it?”
“Yes, you may,” she gently corrected me. “But don’t judge it too harshly. I was young when I wrote this, and it might not be very good. I haven’t seen it in so long that I don’t remember anymore. I retyped it in 1962 and had it stapled together, but this is the story exactly how I originally wrote it.” She beamed. “I bet you didn’t know I was a writer.”
“I didn’t, no. How many things have you written?”
“Just this one, so not enough to really call myself a writer, I guess.” She groaned her way down onto the couch beside me and nodded. “Go ahead,” she prompted. I felt a pang of guilt at reading her story while sitting beside her. I hated the feeling of people reading my own work before it was done, and I didn’t want her to feel the same about what I was about to do. “Oh, I’m too nervous,” she grumbled. She groaned her way back onto her feet and headed back to the room where she’d found the story hidden among her things. “Just come get me when you’re done reading it,” she grinned.
“Okay, I will,” I nodded, noticing that the story was only about 30 pages long. It would be a quick read. I settled back against the couch and flipped to the first page.
“Hilltop of Roses” reached across the top of the page as the title.
For the next half hour, I sat there completely engrossed in every word she had written. It was a beautiful story of a man and a woman who fell in love before the first World War (then known as the Great War) broke out. He had to go off to war, but the two were married in a secret ceremony before he did. She promised she’d wait for him, and he promised that he’d come home to her. The war raged on for many years. About the time she had given up on it ever coming to an end, the end of the war was finally announced in the news and the nation was overjoyed. With great anticipation, she awaited his return, only to be disappointed day after day. She feared that perhaps he had been killed in action. Finally, word came through that he was alive and being liberated from a prison camp, and he’d be on his way home soon. When he finally got home, he had five dozen roses in his arms, one for each year he was gone. He could barely carry them all. He’d promised to give her a dozen roses for her birthday every year for the rest of her life. The two grew old together and had five children, who then grew up and had their own children. For each birthday, she received a dozen roses. He planted a rosebush on the hill behind the house for each child or grandchild born. One day when he didn’t wake up in the morning, she knew there was only one place he belonged, so she had him buried on the hilltop of roses, so he could be a part of the love he’d shown to her for all those many years.
I set the book down and wiped tears away from my eyes. As it turned out, my grandmother was quite a remarkable storyteller. I sniffled a bit, closed the book, and set it beside the scrapbook on the table. As I stood to find her and tell her what a remarkable story it was, a slight movement caught my eye. There she stood, peering at me from around the corner.
“Did you like it?”
“It was... I don’t know. I don’t know how to say it. It was beautiful. But if you and Grandpa never had anything like that, what inspired you to write it?”
“I wasn’t always married to your Grandpa, you know.” A sly smile spread across her face. “I had someone once. Someone I loved very much.”
“You never told me,” I stared at her.
“Just because I didn’t tell you doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. There’s a lot I haven’t told you, Kiddo.” Her smile grew, and the normally bold woman looked sheepishly down at her feet. She was a remarkable force of nature and seeing her suddenly turn shy at a private memory intrigued me. I needed to know more.
“What was he like?” I felt as though I were the four-year-old child once more, holding my breath and hanging on to her every word, wanting to know what she would tell me next. Did she roller skate down the state capital steps with her first love? How long ago was it? She’d met Grandpa during World War II, did her first love die in the war or something? Where was he? Why didn’t she marry him? She’d mentioned that she had loved and lost it, but it never really struck me that she meant that she had been in love with someone.
“Tall, dark, and handsome,” she grinned mischievously. “Come on, I’m hungry.” Fearing I wouldn’t get much more out of her if I didn’t push, I refused to let the matter die as easily as she had tried to distract me.
“Okay, but at least tell me what his name was.”
“What do you think of trying that new hamburger place out there, off of Highway 5 for dinner,” she offered, again trying to distract me from my new search for the truth.
“That’s fine, but we can’t go until you give me at least something to go on.” I stood up and crossed my arms, every bit as determined as she was. She reached for her cardigan, turning to face away from me. She shrugged into the knitted garment in complete silence and glanced downward again.
“His name was Arthur,” she sounded so sad. “I loved him very much.” She sniffed only once, wiped at her face with the back of her fresh sleeve, and turned once more to face me. “Are you ready to go?”
“Sure,” I smiled. “Grandma?” I wanted to say something, but I had no idea what to offer. I wanted to ask if Grandpa knew. I wanted to ask if Arthur died in the war. I wanted to know if my mom knew about Arthur. A thousand more questions were running around inside my brain, bouncing around like a rubber ball in a concrete room. I wanted to know if he broke her heart.
“Yes, Dear?”
“Thank you for telling me.” It was all I could manage to get past the lump in my throat.