Gratitude

The notebook had been a gift from her Grandma Rose on her 15th birthday. Wrapped in brown paper and string – an aesthetic cultivated for Beth’s benefit, rather than Rose’s – it was a neat plain black, compact, unobtrusive, unassuming. She had loved it.

Grandma Rose always had been good at buying her gifts. It was as if she knew the shape of her soul; maybe because her own soul was cast in the same mold, formed in Beth at birth in her bones made from her mother’s bones made from Rose’s bones. And so, Beth wrote her grandmother’s name at the top of the first crisp, creamy page, her teenaged handwriting neat and florid.

-

When she picked up the notebook again at 25, it was with shaking hands. As a teenager, the book had never been far from her mind – or her person – but it had been years since she had thought about it now. It seemed so much smaller than it had done in her memory. She brushed a trembling finger over the soft black cover, dented and marked with use. Her old gratitude journal… it was unfathomable to her that there had been a time when she could fill it cover to cover, that she had found so much joy in the mundanity of her young life when as an adult she couldn’t even bring herself to be happy about $20,000. Twenty. Thousand. Dollars. Even thinking of it, just seeing the figure in her mind’s eye, made her feel physically sick. She didn’t want it. She didn’t want it.

Pushing the thought away, Beth opened the little book. The tactile sensation of it felt like home, the aged, well-thumbed pages pleasantly rough and warm under her fingertips. A familiar sense of calm washed over her. Her breathing slowed.

She started from the back. She had finished the book at 21, a pleasingly auspicious age that disinclined her to replace it. She would go out into the adult world, and her gratitude journal would stay in her youth. She wondered now if that had been such a good idea. She flicked through grandiose descriptions of sunsets, of flowers, of birds in trees – she never had grown out of her sentimentality – until, at last, her gaze fell upon a name.

-

James Mullins had been her first love. She wasn’t too proud or too embarrassed to admit it. Yes it sounded predictable and silly, but it was how she had felt. Their relationship had been sweet, momentous, but ultimately fairly brief. He actually featured in her gratitude journal quite heavily in the time they were together, but that last entry had been made some months after they broke up, the pain having finally ebbed. She had thanked the universe that they had had what they had, that her first real relationship was a good one, that they had been wise enough and strong enough to separate when they were no longer in-step with each other. They had said that they would stay friends, and she supposed they were friends, but they didn’t really talk. They certainly didn’t see each other. So it felt strange to be standing here on his doorstep now, all these years later.

She knocked. She waited.

There was a light breeze, but it wasn’t cold. The sound of a motorbike in the distance. She scratched the back of her ankle with the toe of her other foot.

At last, the door opened.

“…Beth?”

She offered a weak smile. “Hi.”

It took him a moment to recover, but the confusion and surprise soon evaporated from his face, replaced by his old warm smile. “Hi!” He let go of the door, stepping forward with his arms open to pull her into a hug, kissing her on the cheek. “What are you doing here? Is everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine.” She slowly raised her arms to return his hug. “Can I come in? I want to talk to you.”

-

“I don’t understand what you’re telling me.” He sat opposite her in a modest living room, all dark leather and modern art prints.

“What’s not to understand?”

“I just…” James shook his head. “Five thousand dollars? That’s a lot of money to just give someone for no reason.” He paused. “Especially an ex.”

“Look, you don’t have to understand. Just tell me that you’ll take it.”

His face was creased in a frown, eyes searching her, trying to meet hers. “Is everything alright?” he asked again, softer this time.

She gave him that same weak smile. “Yes.”

He didn’t look like he believed her.

“Just let me do this for you. I can’t… I can’t talk about where I got the money. But it’s good money. Go on vacation, buy a car, whatever. Please just take the money. I don’t want it.”

He shifted forward in his seat. “You’re not in trouble, are you?”

“No. I’m not.”

He wanted to know more, she could see it. He wanted her to talk about it, confide in him, so he could comfort her and make it all okay. But that wasn’t his job anymore.

She left $5,000 lighter.

-

Beth took her time looking through the journal, turning back the days and months and years, little moments that she had thought she had forgotten. The day she had found an extra chicken nugget in her McDonald’s carton; the day she had woken up early enough to take the first bus to school, and was able to spend an extra 20 minutes reading in silence before class; the day she had nearly fallen in the river, but hadn’t. Things she had no reason to think about now, but little moments that had made her happy, immortalised in her young hand in her black book.

The next name she came to was one she never would have expected. Mr Valance, her high school Math teacher. She had written about how grateful she was to have a teacher who cared so much about his subject, even as it seemed so dry and difficult to her. She’d had other teachers ignore her or even berate her when she was disinterested in their subject; not so Mr Valance. He had always made them laugh, always tried to engage them. She kept reading.

With a jolt, she realised the specific day she had written this entry. Something had made her cry – something she didn’t remember now, something inconsequential. It wasn’t in Math, but Mr Valance had seen her in the hall, pulled her to one side, spoke to her in a low voice, so different from the upbeat energy that fuelled his lessons. He’d stayed with her until she stopped crying and extracted a promise from her that she would come find him if she ever needed to talk. They were both late to their next class.

Funny. It had meant so much to her at the time.

Beth didn’t feel like reprising her scene with James – it would be weird, anyway, so many years later, with a teacher who probably didn’t even remember her. Instead, she pulled a piece of paper from her desk drawer and wrote Mr Valance a very nice, very grateful letter. She enclosed a check for $800.

-

Of course, not every person mentioned in her notebook had had a significant impact on her life. There were little favours from classmates, acts of kindness from strangers. She sent out little emissions of $100 or $500, sprinkling them anonymously across her past, hoping they would do some good. For people she had no hope of tracking down, she would scour online fundraisers, a silent donation in honor of a small kindness done in her past, paying it forward.

After many hours, she was down to her last $5000, and her last few pages. She felt… lighter. Cleansed. But she wasn’t finished yet. She knew which names would be on those last pages, the first pages of her book.

Amelie Karofskey. Her best friend since kindergarten. Her shadow for nearly two decades. They hadn’t spoken since they had a huge fight just before leaving for college, but she had been one of the very first entries in the journal, and her influence was weaved through the whole thing.

I am grateful that Amelie is my best friend.

Today I am thankful I have someone to talk to about boys.

I’m glad that I don’t feel lonely right now.

The fight had been about nothing really, just all the stress and fear and growing pains of moving away from each other and becoming different people had exploded in a cascade of emotions, and then stubbornness and convenience stopped them from ever making up.

She was ready to make up now, though. She had re-experienced her whole teenager-hood, she had reached out, if only in a small way, to people from that time, and more than anything else she knew that she missed her best friend. She loved her. And, more than that, the fact was she needed her right now. The two of them had been so close, they had known everything about each other, known each other’s families. Only Amelie would understand. And $5000 – minus $10 for a new gratitude journal, she decided – would buy them a great road trip to reconnect on.

There was one final name in the notebook before that, though. Taking a deep breath, she turned to the first page.

-

It was a cold day, but that wasn’t the reason that Beth was shivering. She pulled her coat closer around her. She wished she had stopped to buy flowers.

“Hi, Grandma,” she murmured into the wind.

There was no reply, of course. Beth knelt down, brushed a few fallen leaves off of the freshly turned dirt of the grave. “I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner.” Her voice was soft, private. The hand holding her coat closed was clenched hard. “I’m sorry… I’m sorry for being so angry.” She sighed. “And I’m sorry I didn’t keep the money.”

There was no one else in the graveyard. It was just her and Grandma Rose.

“I hope you approve of what I chose to do with it. I know you always said the inheritance was for me to do something special, but… I hope you understand. I hope you know it was special.” Her voice was beginning to break. She took a shaky breath, trying to keep herself together. She had come here for a reason, after all.

She took the little black book from her pocket. “I have something I need to say to you. I used to say it all the time, you taught me how to say it, but I think… I think I forgot. And I’m sorry for that. But I’ll say it now.” She closed her eyes, breathed out slowly. She placed the book at the bottom of the headstone, next to the bunch of roses. “I just wanted to say thank you. For everything.”

The leaves whispered in the tree in response. She kept her eyes closed.

She didn’t know how long she knelt there, but stayed until her knees and her back were sore, her cheeks raw and wet, her mouth dry. She wiped her face and stood, and smiled.

As she walked away, she pulled out her phone, and carefully dialled Amelie’s number.