An heirloom

At home, my mother found our old post office savings books. The balance on mine was €1.65.

At home, my mother found our old post office savings books. The balance on mine was €1.65. The state is welcome to that unclaimed pebble. Between the Kelly green leather covers lay delicate paper receipts tracking lodgements and withdrawals, the former all marked with my late grandmother’s signature. Small, regular deposits that built up over the years into funds for holidays so I could buy souvenirs for myself from gift shops, the type of purchases I’d spend hours mulling over. Fancy rocks, snowglobes, Celtic symbol earrings. In Rome last month, I picked up rosary beads from the Vatican and Pantheon shops. Talismans for loved ones. I thought of my granny and how wonderful it would be to come home to her with a small blessed bounty.

A few years ago, I read an academic journal article about what analysing a specific woman’s bank account in the 18th or 19th century told us about her life. How her layabout brother drove her desperate and dwindled her earnings. How she kept a family afloat. Unwise investments, the ebbs and flows of the market, also shaped proceedings. If a university library saw fit to acquire my bank statements in a hundred years’ time, my ghost would set data centres alight.

My savings book tells the story of a woman who cherished her granddaughter and expressed her love through a small weekly pilgrimage to the post office. I have decided to keep the booklet beside my bed, a place where she kept rosary beads bought from shops near apparition sites. I don’t count hail marys before bed. Instead, fading loose paper whispers between my fingers.