On a shelf in my living room, currently wedged between the Oxford American Writers’ Thesaurus and a wicker basket of souvenirs, is a small leather journal. Seven years ago when my husband bought it, its pages were blank. Today, four moves, three states, and two countries later, they are full of memories of friends --friends who have shared a meal, friends who have stayed the night, and at times, friends who dropped by for coffee but ended up sharing a meal and staying the night.
People always ask, “What should I write?”
Whatever you want.
“Do I need to start on the next page?”
If you like.
Always, in the end, six-year-olds proudly scrawl their first and last names across the face of two pages and are disappointed that there is not enough room for their addresses as well. Modest great-aunts leave notes of appropriate gratitude and well wishes. Spouses hand it off to each other self-deprecatingly confessing, “I have terrible handwriting” or “he’s better at this sort of thing.”
And slowly its pages filled. Soon we began shoving scraps and bits – business cards, ticket stubs, and thank you notes – between them, collecting paper reminders of permanent friends.
Most days it sits contentedly on the shelf. But occasionally, when it falls into a pair of chubby little hands, I find myself on my knees picking up those same bits and scraps. And I vow to organize it, to nicely glue the odds and ends into a scrapbook, to lock them into exact time and space once and for all.
But then, the clutter feels personal somehow, the messy disorder a testament to how friends never precisely and always unexpectedly enter and exit our lives. And so it stays the same, and I simply pick up the business cards, ticket stubs, and thank you notes, reliving the memories as I do.
Some of you have signed that little brown journal wedged between a thesaurus and a wicker basket of souvenirs. I hope many more of you will. But until then, for here and now, please leave your memories and comments below. Write whatever you want, wherever you want, and remember, I don’t mind messy penmanship.
People always ask, “What should I write?”
Whatever you want.
“Do I need to start on the next page?”
If you like.
Always, in the end, six-year-olds proudly scrawl their first and last names across the face of two pages and are disappointed that there is not enough room for their addresses as well. Modest great-aunts leave notes of appropriate gratitude and well wishes. Spouses hand it off to each other self-deprecatingly confessing, “I have terrible handwriting” or “he’s better at this sort of thing.”
And slowly its pages filled. Soon we began shoving scraps and bits – business cards, ticket stubs, and thank you notes – between them, collecting paper reminders of permanent friends.
Most days it sits contentedly on the shelf. But occasionally, when it falls into a pair of chubby little hands, I find myself on my knees picking up those same bits and scraps. And I vow to organize it, to nicely glue the odds and ends into a scrapbook, to lock them into exact time and space once and for all.
But then, the clutter feels personal somehow, the messy disorder a testament to how friends never precisely and always unexpectedly enter and exit our lives. And so it stays the same, and I simply pick up the business cards, ticket stubs, and thank you notes, reliving the memories as I do.
Some of you have signed that little brown journal wedged between a thesaurus and a wicker basket of souvenirs. I hope many more of you will. But until then, for here and now, please leave your memories and comments below. Write whatever you want, wherever you want, and remember, I don’t mind messy penmanship.
