Opening the letters...

I have no idea what I'm opening here. I've been told that these are the letters that tell the story of my great-grandmother's leap for love -- from England to Canada. I met her once, when I was two years old. I remember liking her and that she had a funny Welsh accent. She was 95 then, the same age as her husband. If I have the story right, they both died at the age of 98, two weeks apart.

Sitting in front of me on my bed, in the room I grew up in, is a package. It's been slipped into a white plastic bag and tied with binder twine. These, I've been told, are the letters that my great-grandmother sent back home to tell of her life in Canada. I have never seen these before.

But, I've now untied the knot and... wow, this is going to be hard.

Inside the bag, I have pulled out an old scrap album. It's brown, broken, and there are three embossed flowers on the front. Inside, there are postcards organized and held at the corners as though they were photographs.

I've just grabbed five or six postcards that I found pushed into the edge of the binding on the first page. They're stories of who is sick, who is well, and who made a safe voyage so far. They're dated 1904-05.

I've just realized that I don't actually know the name of my great-grandmother. I don't ever remember hearing it. So far, I'm just guessing that these were written by her.

Wow... I just also realized that the painting above my head that I described earlier is of a house just down the road from where she would have written these. My mom had painted it from two photographs I took near the family farm in Saskatchewan when I was 16... it's the same land on to which my great-grandmother made her leap.

I'm still reading...