“Book forty-two covers 1984,” the clerk said.

“Keep the book flat on the felt table and turn the pages by the cloth edges.”

I lifted the heavy gray leather book off the steel shelf and carried it to the wide wooden desk in the corner.

The pages smelled of old bookbinding paste and dry paper dust.

I turned the thick cream pages until I got to entry number four hundred twelve, recorded on August fourteenth, 1984.

My mother’s legal signature was at the bottom of the page, pressed with the round wax seal of the county registrar.