Peering at the front inside cover of the battered book, I noticed something for the first time. I had opened the copy of Alice in Wonderland to show my younger son that it had once been my book – that it said “Shannon Brescher” in the front.

But my name wasn’t the first one in the book. No, elementary school-me had crossed out someone else’s name and written mine below it. I peered at it to try to make it out. Above my name, visible underneath the black marker line, it read: “Patty Brescher.” My aunt.

I’ve never been close with my aunt, as she lived quite far away. I always heard stories of her as a wild kid, falling out of trees as a younger child and running off to music festivals as a teen. As an overachieving rule follower, this never resonated with me; that whole perspective was terribly alien.

But the book also reminded me that she was an avid reader, who liked to lose herself in stories. That there was this other side of her that I hadn’t experienced much. Looking back, it makes me think of an awkward kid, who maybe wasn’t quite understood by her parents or peers. Who didn’t feel like she belonged or fit in. Hm, maybe in retrospect, she wasn’t so different from me after all.

That blackened out name evoked a vision of my aunt as a kid, curled up reading the book. And me as a kid, perhaps sitting on my bed or like Alice herself, under a tree. And of me with my son, sitting on his bed, snuggled up.
That book, being held by three separate sets of hands, connected by story and family. Three generations, over five decades, bound together by this weird and wild book of adventure and confusion.

“Hey look,” I said to my younger son. “That’s my aunt’s name, Pop’s sister. She actually owned that book before I did.” He just sort of shrugged. He may not understand the significance now, but I’m so glad that I noticed that name above mine. And if we write his name in the book, maybe one day as an adult, he’ll have the same experience too.

Do you have any books that have been passed down generations?