A page from the calendar of Henry J. Lambin, Sr. Credit: The Museum of the Ordinary Extraordinary.

Today on From the Archives Friday, we have a page torn from the calendar of Henry J. Lambin, Sr. (1876–1955). Lambin, in addition to being my grandfather, was 41 year old, unmarried traveling insurance salesman who lived in Chicago. On the back of the page, a note, likely describing a request for insurance coverage:

A note in pencil written on the back of the calendar page. Credit: The Museum of the Ordinary Extraordinary

S.G. Schert
XXXX Farragut Avenue
500 furniture
more —
Frame house on cement foundation.

At the time that Lambin jotted the note, the world was still enmeshed in World War I. The first documented case of the flu pandemic would appear in March of the following year. Lambin lived at home with is mother, his sister and three unmarried brothers. His office was located in the in the Home Insurance Building, an architectural marvel, located in Chicago’s Loop, designed by William Le Barron Jenney.

Home Insurance Building (1885–1931). Credit: Chicago Architectural Photographing Company, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Over a century has passed since this tiny note was scratched in pencil. The frame house on Farragut (recently heavily remodeled) is still there. The Home Insurance Building did not fare so well, it was demolished in 1931. So much of what was then is no more.

Yet, somehow, this tiny note, this little slice of a moment in time, this reminder of something to be done, managed to survive a century past the task attributed to it.

There is a world where the expanse of time is so fast, that the intervening century between when my grandfather penned this note and I picked it up, is just a moment, and we are both right there. There is something absolutely extraordinary in that.

This note reminds me that life isn’t lived all at once. It is lived in increments, tiny moments strung together, moments that we continually attempt to knit into a cohesive whole. We rarely really know what comes next, what will really matter in the years to come, or how the endless array of choices we face will play out, yet we are made of these moments.

A few years after he wrote this note, my grandfather married Barbara Pickel, who worked as a public stenographer. My father was born a year later, followed by my aunt who was born the following year.

This note reminds me, that if we are made of moments, it seems even more important to pay careful attention to them, the people in them… and to take notes.