I can’t help but laugh along.
“You’re great, Liam. That was fun,” he says.
I smile back, standing there watching him. He heads back toward me with a hand outstretched, which I grab and begin shaking.
“I’m so glad you came tonight.” He’s grabbing my forearm firmly and his eyes are swimming in the parking lot lights. His ears rise with the strong muscles of his smile.
“I’m glad you invited me. This was fun. I needed this tonight.”
We stand in the parking lot, our hands locked together, my forearm tensing under his firm grasp, for longer than we should.I’m not sure who is smiling bigger, and there’s almost a dare to be the first to let go. A heat begins to rise up the back of my neck. When a car turns a corner, we are suddenly glowing in the headlights and we release simultaneously, exchanging goodbye nods as we head toward our respective vehicles.
When he reaches his car, he turns. “Maybe I’ll see you around at work next week,” he’s hollering across the parking lot.
“Maybe so. Until then,” I say, climbing into the cab of my truck, settling into the seat.
The ghost of me handing that cardboard coaster to a stranger materializes in my mind with a surge of surprise, or embarrassment, or joy or something I can’t name, and I grab my forehead with a sharp smile and a firm shake.
In the rear-view mirror I watch Matthew slide into his car and pull away.
“You do realize that every time you write back to me, there is a personal challenge!” the journal reads. “I intended to send you on an adventure, but somehow you keep reversing it. I don’t know why it keeps surprising me.”
The sloppy blue writing in the journal makes me smile. It’s almost easy: easy to read, easy to write back, easy to be me.
Easy. In a world where I seem to want to make things difficult.
“I took your challenge. I became a kid again. And I learned something very important,” the journal reads.
What follows is pages of childhood memories at their finest. Making brownies just like they used to with grandma. In the backstory, there’s a brother and a sister and more mess than you can possibly imagine. The chaos and the measuring and the waiting and the fun is detailed in a way that makes me feel like I was there. In fact, I think I lived a piece of this in my own family.
“She didn’t care about the flour on the counter,” it says. “Or on our clothes.”
My favorite part was the extravagant amount of chocolate chips, and then the waiting. Waiting for it to bake. Waiting for it to cool. Making the chocolate frosting, and then covering the brownies. Everyone worked together, four knives and four arms spreading chocolate everywhere. There was licking of fingers, and smearing on faces, and eating until everyone was sick.
My brain digs deep and finds the same joy and sweetness from my own childhood.
“But it didn’t turn out that way for me this time,” the journal says, “My brownie-making experience wasn’t the same. I tried to relive it, tried to make them on my own. I essentially made a giant mess, and very chocolatey brownies,” it says. “The brownies were fine. Extremely sweet and indulgent. But lonely. I think I’ve discovered that the best part of making brownies was the people I shared it with. Even though the brownies hold the biggest part of the memory, I realize now that the brownies didn’t matter.”
I stop reading and have to think about this.
It was the same for me. It just hadn’t clicked: The best part of my be-a-kid-day wasn’t the shoes or the swings or the sweetgum balls. It was…
I’m staring at the page.
Thinking of Martin.
“I don’t mean this to sound sad.” the journal continues, “I had a great time. It was just a reminder that life becomes memorable only because it’s shared.”
I find myself reading the words aloud.
“That’s the thing I learned from being a kid again.”
It’s a lot to take in. My mind throttles through the laughs and messes and joys I’ve experienced my whole life. But, insteadof thinking of events or trips or things, I’m seeing the faces and smiles and laughs that make those memories what they are. The people who make them real.
I turn the page and almost can’t breathe:
“Let’s do something together,” the journal says. “But separately. It’ll be like a date, but on our own. Then we can share our experience with each other when it’s over.”
I stop reading and stare for a minute.