The Stamp Collection

My dad has collected stamps since he was nine. This year, at seventy-four, he decided to give the collection to my daughter, who is also nine.

They spent every Sunday of the spring at the dining room table with the old albums, a magnifying glass and a pair of tweezers. He showed her a stamp from Tanzania with a giraffe on it, a tiny triangle from Mongolia, and one from 1958 that he'd traded for his entire baseball card collection when he was a boy.

He tells her the story of where each one came from. She writes the stories down in a notebook in her careful, loopy handwriting.

Last week she bought her very first stamp with her own allowance: a sheet of national park stamps from the post office. She put it in the album on a fresh page, labeled "Ava's collection begins." My dad didn't say anything. He just put his hand on her head.