“Dad, do you want to see how much I wrote?” my youngest son asks as I tuck him into bed saying “goodnight” and “I love you.”
“I do!” I answer excited at his expressed own.
“It’s down there,” he tells pointing to a desk that hangs from the foot of his bunk beds. “Can you get it for me?”
It’s a journal of blank, unlined pages for either writing or draw with brown leather cover that ties closed with a strap.
I reach for it and hand it to him in his bed. He opens it, fans the pages as I look on whir of writing making out very little except a line near to last page I catch that says “I like playing football.”
“Wow!” I speak in admire and congratulations.
“Where should I begin?” I ask.
“No, you can’t read it!” he asserts, countering my inquire.
“Oh,” I respond. I misunderstood what it was he wanted of me.
As a writer too, I understand and honor the sacredness of privacy and given trust that what one writes will not be read unless another is invited in offer of the words. Some stories, it’s only in this trust that we are able to tell truths.
Journals and writing, in practice, are strange. For all our guards, we still want known, but something in us is afraid.
Will we be accepted? Will we be rejected? What if something of us we treasure deeply is unwanted in opened offer? Worse, what if this something of us, given in intimate of vulnerability that is shared-self, is mocked, ridiculed, or used in way that hurts us?
Fears of a writer—private, sentimental, and deeply feeling souls.
And so we write our stories. And so we write our dreams; create within a rich and hidden life almost no one ever sees though we still wish it known: to share and show in openness to others—if only we knew who and that our words are safe.
Until then, we write and tell our words dreams to audience of self. Yet, by writing, they become more than dreams. Written, they are more than vacuities of thought. Written words to page, they are given body, and by this form and presence in this world—life.
I hope one day he finds a friend with whom he can share his words. I hope one day he finds a friend with whom he can share his worlds.
I hope he continues writing. I hope he finds in it a joy as I—a lifelong pleasure costing little more than mind and time with so much gifted, equally free, in its practice, makings, and return.
“I am proud of you,” I tell him.
How much is the person we become defined and shaped early on by the recognitions and attentions from those we love and desire to make proud?
I do not know, but I plant a seed as others sowed in me.
He is happy. He is proud.
He hands the journal back, and I return it to his desk—closed covered and bound in wrap of leather tie.
One more time, I say, “Goodnight.”
One more time, I say, “I love you.”
We breathe fire-breath goodbye.
I hope one day he finds a friend with whom he can share his words and, too, they love the worlds that they discover.