Grandma’s hands are almost never still. They’re usually guiding a needle through a hem, repairing a worn sock, or knitting something warm. But tonight, when I stepped quietly into the room, she was studying an open scrapbook resting on her knees, her fingertips tracing a page, braille-like. Her expression was far off, softened by something remembered.
I sat down beside her, asked gently, “What are you remembering, Grandma?”
She glanced down at the scrapbook. Soft-edged postcards, delicate cutouts, lace-like scraps of patterned paper formed delicate designs upon the old paper pages. Nothing matched perfectly, colors having faded at different rates, some bold and vibrant still, paper edges uneven, embossed foil still catching light. “Pieces of life,” she said. “Things Mary Marguerite doesn’t want time to steal from her.” She said her name with a small smile, as though politely greeting someone she hadn’t seen for a long time.
When I asked where the earliest pieces came from, she said her childhood home, a modest dairy farm in Elgin, Illinois, where she and her three sisters grew up. The rhythm of chores shaped everything: milking before sunrise, cooling cream in tin pails, listening to trains rumble to and from Chicago. “A simple life,” she said. “But simple doesn’t mean small. You learn to watch closely, to see change coming before it reaches you.”
She turned a page filled with black and white photographs of dazzling white buildings. Her hand stilled. “That,” she whispered, “was the year Father, your Great Grandpa, Herbert Hutchins, took us girls to Chicago’s World Fair, the Columbian Exposition in 1893.”
Her father was slowing down with age, but he insisted they see it together. All four of us and Pa boarded the Chicago & North Western, filling two facing seats, passing sandwiches, laughing as the cars clattered forward full of people eagerly anticipating a grand spectacle. We transferred to what is now known as the "L" which took us to Jackson Park.
The White City, as it was called, truly delivered: the brilliance of it, the clean glow of plaster facades that looked like marble, sunlight sparked across the lagoons; reflections wavered like living silver. “It was beautiful,” she said, “but it was also unsettling. So much change, so fast. Electricity, engines, machines that seemingly outthought their operators. It felt like walking into a place built entirely out of possibility. She chuckled softly. “Middle-aged women aren’t as quick to embrace the future as young girls are.”
And then she told me about the Ferris Wheel. How it towered 24 stories tall above the Fair, each of its 36 cars large enough for 60 people. They stepped slowly into the car and rose slowly. Past crowds, rooftops, the shimmering lagoon. At the top, they saw Lake Michigan, a deep, boundless blue merging with the sky... merging with eternity.
“It frightened me,” she admitted. “Not the height, though that was something, but the thought of how far the world might rise beyond what I understood.”
For a moment, her hand stood still over the Ferris Wheel image. “And then,” she continued softly, “Father said something I have never forgotten: “Mary Marguerite, the world will keep climbing. You can stand still and let it frighten you, or you can climb with it.”
She turned a page. Her voice grew quieter. “Years later, when the Great War came, and when I lost my boy, your great-uncle, I was so afraid of what the world had become. All that progress, all that invention… for what? It cost so much.”
Her eyes shimmered, but her voice did not waver. “But then I remembered that view from the top of the wheel. The fear. The beauty. The wideness of things. And I realized something: grief makes the world feel small. But life… life insists on rising.
She closed the scrapbook gently. Her hands, still at last, rested on the worn cover.
“Climbing doesn’t erase the loss,” she said. “But it keeps you from living inside it. That’s the lesson I learned. And that’s what I want for you.”
She looked at me with a gaze strong enough to lift both of us. “You’ll see heights we never dreamed of, my girl. Don’t be afraid of them. Your world will keep rising, keep spinning. Go with it!”
I placed my hand over hers, feeling the quiet, fierce truth of her lesson. Wonder does not erase sorrow, but it can keep you moving forward.
by Margaret Bednar, December 8, 2025
This is linked with "Sepia Saturday #804". The prompt called for an image with needlework or such. How I wish I had an image with needlework or knitting - I WILL be on the look out for such a photo. However, I did use the image as a starting point for my story - I wasn't happy with my original beginning - and the image I used - it actually looks like she is uncomfortable without something to do with her hands!
Also linked with "Poets and Storytellers United #206"
I collect memorbillia from the 1893 Columbian Exposiition (Chicago's World Fair) and also love vintage scrapbooks loaded with paper treasures. This was a pleasure to write and, yes, my Great Grandfather attended. I wonder if he rode the Ferris Wheel? My Grandmother wasn't born yet, however, she did attend the 1915 San Francisco World Fair (also known as (PPIE) Panama-Pacific International Exposition.
How cool is that?
