Dear Gram,

I was going through some old boxes today while I was packing (can you believe I’m going to college next week?) and I ran across that old drawing of yours.

Do you remember the one?

It was my eighth birthday, and you drove the whole three hours just so you could give me my present. I was lying on the floor, messing with the gizmos and gadgets I had unwrapped that morning, when you drove up, and my mom went to answer the door. I remember you had this fat manilla folder, will papers sticking out the end, with curled, yellow edges and smudges on the backs. You had heard that I was into art those days and wanted to give me one of your own drawings.

Tomorrow is my eighteenth birthday. I can’t believe it’s been ten years.

I remember those musty drawings all spread out on the floor, everything from sketches to finished masterpieces, figure drawings to fantastic abstract patterns. They were all sorts of sizes - little thumbnails to papers that had been folded over in order to fit in the folder. I remember the smell - they smelled like the way your house smelled, old and faded, but still alive and exuberant.

I loved visiting your house.

The one I picked out wasn’t all that flashy - just a sketch of a little girl. Lopsided pigtails, lopsided grin. It was just in pencil, clearly a fast flutter of the lead on the page as you tried to capture the image before it left your mind. But I loved the way the girl’s eyes winked at me, the way the sun glanced off her hair, the way her nose was crinkled in joy.

But I didn’t understand.

I didn’t understand the lack of color in the drawing. The lack of conclusion. So I offered to color it for you. To finish it. And I can still remember the disbelief on your face. On my parents’. When they said, “It’s okay, we can make photocopies for you to color. Why don’t we frame this one as it is?” But I didn’t understand, even then, what was wrong with continuing on the skill put into the piece before me. Yours, mine. A family legacy.

I understand now.

I understand that John Hancock in the corner of the page, the hasty scribble that’s been re. I didn’t before, but I do now. I have my own scribble now, and I’ve added it to countless smudged pages, infinite hurried sketches. And that scribble makes a world of difference to me. And I know it did to you. Because a signature is what says,

“This is mine. My own. I am its creator and it is precious.”

So I’m sorry. I’m sorry I wanted to change your perfect creation, to add to something that didn’t need anything in addition. I wish I could tell you that creating has lead me through the joys and the miseries, the ups and the downs, the extraordinary and the ordinary of life. I wish I could say that I love that grinning girl with her pigtails and her twinkling eyes and crinkled nose, just the way she is. I wish I could say a million things, but I can’t.

Because I know a letter addressed to heaven will never arrive.