Fact-in-point: my Grandmother Neva
was a lover of facts and her journal entries
always began with the temperature and weather.
She also noted what she paid for bread
and how much she saved, sometimes a nickel.
Hidden in these lists of facts was the sinister
happenings of fate, an unplanned narrative
like the time she baked snickerdoodles
for a cousin in Mulvane and mailed them
to save the trip from the farm. The costs
added up—so much for ingredients, so much
for packing, the cost of gasoline to drive
into town to the post office and then, the breakage
cost. Half were crushed and she did not receive
the gratitude bonus expected. Two days later,
the journal notes “Could have bought them for less.
Should have told her to buy her own.” That is
the woman I remember, indelible.
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