"I wish you luck"

Growing up, I could never keep a diary. I tried, of course – it was something young girls were supposed to do – but it never lasted. My hands would cramp from writing too much, everything spilling out like water over the edge of an overfilled tub. My hand couldn’t keep up with my brain, as one of my 4th grade teachers said when discussing my messy penmanship. Then there would be days, weeks, months where I would forget, the diary sitting forgotten, and I would feel guilty and resume. Then I would start writing again, trying to “fill in” the imaginary friend that was the little black book my mother bought me to “help me express myself”. But I would get tired of trying to relate everything that had happened in the interim, so I would always give up.

I come from a long line of diarists; well, at least one. My grandmother didn’t have the strongest grasp of the English language, but she certainly liked writing things down. Memories, conversations, day-to-day minutia…it was all recorded in her diaries, all stashed away somewhere in her bedroom. I never read them because I was never that curious; like most young people, my interest barely extended past what impacted me directly.

But I knew they existed, of course, because she talked about them. Her evening routine was eating a square or two of chocolate, drinking hot tea, watching her soap, recorded that afternoon, and writing in her diary. Even as a child, I envied the order of such a ritual.

When grandma passed, my mother and I were charged with cleaning out the house so it could be sold. Every trip to New Jersey, (a five-hour drive from our home in upstate New York) was a gut punch, a reminder that nothing would ever be the same again. No more driving in (too late) to be greeted by grandma, sitting up on the faded floral print couch until we arrived. No more sitting with her at the round kitchen table, catching up. No more relaxing in the living room, watching Turner Classic Movies while I mocked the romances (“yeah, of course, Judy Garland, you’re going to give up your life to stay with this jerk” I would say while my grandmother and mother sat, teary-eyed). No more driving on terrifying Route 4 alongside people who seem to have forgotten how to drive responsibly, or going to the Westfield Mall, or waiting an infinite amount of time to turn from Paulison Ave onto the side street where my grandmother lived. No more helping her in the garden, or reclining on the patio, with her watching the birds splash in the birdbath and me reading. No more trips to the Jersey shore, where she would “put her tootsies in the water” as she would say, wading up to her swollen ankles in the ocean while I waded out further. No more daily phone calls, where she offered sage advice like “I wish you luck” or “don’t waste your life” whenever I complained about my problem of the day. She generally said the same things, especially towards the end, but it was still a part of my life that would never come back.

I would miss the dusty old house, one of the few on the street where she lived situated on a corner lot, a yard with enough room for a garden, two sheds, a patio, and even a little hill that my cousins and I sledded on when we were little. I knew eventually it would be bought by a large boisterous middle class family that would scar the walls and keep things in disarray, not the “professionals” she had envisioned. She was a holdout, the last of the “old neighborhood”, and lamented “the good old days”. She often called the police when her neighbors played their rap music too loud, or when they parked in her handicapped space. We watched, bemused, while she complained about her neighbor “stealing her birds” because she threw out more (and bigger) pieces of bread to attract them to her yard. Now, I could see how she felt, especially as she got older and felt the world shifting, but at the time, I didn’t understand. So I’m sure she took to the diaries to vent her frustrations.

We found them one day, in a shoebox. It was the bottom left one, with an obscure, long-forgotten brand name on the cardboard box topper. Inside, lined up neatly, were about 20 little black books. All identical, all seemingly the same size. The years were marked on the spines in tiny gold print, and one, sadly, was 2018. This year, the year she passed away.

“Mom, I found grandma’s diaries,” I said, lifting the box as evidence.

“Finally I can read what she said about me,” my mother joked, but I could tell from the slight flicker of emotion across her face that she feared what she would read. My grandmother’s friend had said at her funeral that although she “loved her children,” she always complained when her daughter and son came to visit. “They overstay their welcome,” she would grumble, “I just want my house to myself.” My grandmother was not a cuddly woman.

I pulled out the 2018 diary; she had to have made some entries before she started deteriorating in the summer, I thought. But underneath the diary, two things caught my attention. A small, cream-colored envelope with my name on it in her small, cramped script, taped to a small black leather book. She had somehow had my name stamped on the cover in tiny, fancy embossed gold letters. Inside it said, “tell your story”. I turned my back to my mom, who was sifting through old magazines and opened the envelope. I saw the top edge of a check, and immediately realized that it was probably the birthday check she gave me every year, but something was wrapped around it. I pulled it out, looked at it, and did a double-take. It was a $20,000 check. To me. From my grandmother. Last year she gave me $20 for my birthday. This year, she’s giving me this?!? Even though my mind was racing, I had the presence of mind to fold it into thirds and stick it in my bra. I unfolded the letter, and read.

Christie

Don’t waste your life. I wish you luck.

Grandma

The little black book from 2018 had entries that grew shorter and shorter. Towards the end, perhaps realizing that the books would be found sooner rather than later, my grandmother wrote me a note. I am not going to say exactly what the note said, but she basically gave me instructions for living. Whenever I had a question, or needed some sort of guidance, I should reach for one of the books and flip to a random page and see what the words suggested.

When I was 30 years old and needed direction, I flipped open the 2015 book. It was from a year which I see now was a turning point, but at the time, nothing seemed to change at all. I was still working freelance, still trying to be what I thought “girls my age” should be. If only I had had the understanding and presence of mind to understand what these shifts meant. If only I hadn’t clung so hard to certain ideas, people, things, that I thought would make me happy. It’s amazing what you realize when you start to grow up. The page fell open as if it was meant to be. In the middle of a paragraph in which she recounts a conversation with me, I was hit with words that suddenly made sense.

Don’t waste your life. I wish you luck.

Those words, which previously had struck me as simplistic and condescending, were what I needed to hear. I decided to start thinking for myself.

What did I want? What did I need? What would I do if I didn’t try to force my life to look a certain way?

I started brainstorming and writing out what I wanted my life to look like. Silly, simple, too “law of attraction”, you might say, but I needed to get a picture of what I needed or wanted so I avoided everything that wasn’t that.

So what did I do with the $20,000? I usually would have rushed out and had a shopping spree, but cooler heads prevailed. I put the money in savings.

One thing had always been present in my life. Writing. I wasn’t the best, I knew that, but I always loved to tell a story. I had had many ideas for books over the years, but I decided to finally put one down on paper (or in this case, in a word document). For so many years, my life was dominated by fear – of not being good enough, talented enough, pretty enough, smart enough. I stopped caring and just did what I wanted to do, on my own terms. And yes, I started writing in a journal, in a little black book, just like my grandmother.

Years later, my book was published. Then came the series, and then, success. True fulfillment. Love, for myself and from others.

Over the years, I accumulated more little black books and stored them in a shoebox. I wrote my hopes, dreams, and fears, the things I had learned, wisdom only experience can bring. Someone once said youth is wasted on the young, and they are right. I taught my daughter what I had learned, and luckily, she was less stubborn than I was. I also supplied her with little black books every year, to write in. She filled them and stacked them on a closet shelf.

As was my new custom, when my granddaughter approached her 18th birthday, I mailed her a small black leather book with my daughter’s name, an envelope with a check within, and a note. You can guess what the note said, but I added something.

Your grandmother told me, “Don’t waste your life. I wish you luck. I want to add, “Be Brave and Live the Life you Want to Live.”

And so she did.