|
Late in his life David C. Fischer, of Fjord, Wisconsin, married a widow who often speaks fondly of the man to whom she was married for nearly forty years. This past week Fischer’s wife showed Fischer a 191-page fill-in-the-blanks Hallmark book titled A Grandparent’s Legacy—Your Life Story in Your Own Words that she had given her late husband late in his life, and which she had repeatedly encouraged him to use as a guide for setting forth a record of his extraordinary youth and adulthood. The book features a handsome padded cover; a ribbon bookmark attached to the spine; heavyweight tan pages printed with an elegant typeface; and evocative, open-ended questions, each followed by what Fischer judged to be generous space in which to compose a reply.
Fischer paged through the volume and saw that the first two pages of the book were neatly filled in, but the remainder of it was entirely unmarked. “You can lead a horse to water,” Fischer’s wife pointed out, “but you can’t make him write.”
Fischer, ever appreciative of a nicely turned truism, resolved to include his wife’s declaration in any family history that he himself might someday put into print.
♦
|
