The Power of the Written Word

It was golden hour and Nora was getting restless. She blew a strand of her not quite straight, not quite curly honey colored hair out of her eyes as she sunk into the plushy love seat in the guest room at her grandmother’s house. The shadows of the paned windows made squares of orange light on her white hoodie. At least it was white at some point, now it was dull grey with faded doodles Nora had drawn with various types of pens when she was bored. It was her favorite. She wore blue jeans with one knee poking out with a sharpie drawn smiley face. She looked over at Lilly, who was perfectly content sitting on the four poster bed with a book.


“What are you doing Lilly?”

“Reading.”

“You always read! Let’s go explore!”

“I’m decompressing, we’ve been traveling all day,” Lilly started to mumble, talking more to herself than to Nora, “talk about a sensory nightmare.” 


“Come on! How often do we get an opportunity to explore such a big cool house?!” 


Lilly peaked over the edge of her book, one eyebrow raised. Her hair was split perfectly down the middle with two lavender colored snap clips holding her straight dark hair securely in place. She hated getting hair in her face, or rather and perhaps more importantly, stuck to her ultra shiny clear lip gloss. Seeing how she applied it at almost predictable intervals, one may think she was very concerned with her appearance. However, it was more of a comfort than a vanity item to her. Lilly was wearing a crew neck lavender sweatshirt with a white polo shirt underneath and tan cargo pants. She always wore cargo pants on flights to her grandmother’s. One pocket for lip gloss, one pocket for her i.d. card, one pocket for her boarding pass, and one pocket to put the miscellaneous things that Nora accidentally left laying around. As she read, her perfectly white sneakers swung back and forth in a rhythm. Paradoxically, Nora’s shoes and socks were laying on the floor as if they were a bread crumb trail leading you straight to where Nora had landed. 



“Is that a real question?” Lilly asked, “Regardless, the answer is two weeks in the summer, three days during spring break, and a week during both Fall and Winter break. So, approximately 28 days a year, give or take, given schedule changes and weather conditions.” 



Lilly blinked, looking up at her younger sister in slight disbelief. By this point, Nora was now hooked by the arm on the end column of the bed swinging back and forth and groaning out of boredom. It seemed Lilly was hoping, just for once, her sister would be satisfied by her answer and she could go back to reading. Lilly was literal. Nora was more of a, ‘in the spirit of what she was going for,’ kind of person. Lilly smiled a little, but it was unclear if it was at a line in her book or because of Nora. Despite being as different as the sun and the moon, the girls had an unspoken appreciation and understanding of one another.



“Can you be fun, just for once? You’ve been reading all day!” Nora plopped vertically on the side of the bed so abruptly it made Lilly jump a little. Despite this, Lilly continued reading as if nothing had happened. Nora turned on her pouty face “Please, pretty please, with all the candy in the world on top, I just want to spend time doing something fun with the best sister in the world!”



“Fine.” 


“Really??” Nora lit up, she jumped off the bed and did a little dance. “Come on let’s go!,” Lilly sighed carefully placing her book mark and gently closing her book.



“I need to get my things in order. I like my things where they belong, you know this.” 



“Adventure! Adventure… Do we need an adventure playlist??,” Nora got out her phone and started typing, “Lofi? Aesthetic… no… dark academia! Oh! I need my shoes, wait, who needs shoes? Not this girl! What else could we use?” Nora rapidly tapped her finger on her lower lip looking around the room.

“How about we do what you always tell me and just go with the flow? Aren’t you the one who says,” Lilly gave a slight pause, “Oh that’s right, ‘The universe has your back’?”

“You know what! You are absolutely right!” Nora skipped to the door, more excited than Lilly could ever have imagined someone being about taking a look around an old house. But that was the charm of her younger sister, everything was exciting to her. Nora flitted out looking this way and that trying to decide where to start.

“I have a suggestion, how about we check out this closet at the end of the hall.” Unbeknownst to Nora, Lilly had done plenty of exploring of their grandmother’s large historic home. She often had trouble sleeping and spent many nights roaming the halls and quietly inspecting the hidden corners. She knew very well at the end of the hall there was an entrance to the attic. The faster this went, the sooner she could escape in her book again. 



Nora bounced to the end of the hall. Lilly meandered slowly, she was making a concerted effort to hide her deceiver’s delight at shepherding her sister. Nora’s body seemed to move like a ping pong ball as she started inspecting the closet bottom to top and side to side. 


“Extra soap, towels, boring! Oooooo what’s this?! No, stay focused you are looking for secret treasures,” Nora looked up, wonder spreading across her face. “Lilly! Look a trapped door!”

Lilly's face began to twist as she tried to not smile, this is exactly what she hoped for. “Well would you look at that,” Lilly badly feigned surprise, “why don’t you climb the shelves and open it up?” Nora started up the shelves,

“We shouldn’t be doing this, should we? No, grandma said we were welcome to the whole house, it’s okay, breath!,” Nora narrated as she climbed. 



“Nora, I think you are over dramatizing things again.”



“Oh shush, I am the main character of my life!” Nora shot back, placing her bare feet to avoid the items placed on the closet shelves.



“Well, you certainly think you are.” Lilly mumbled to herself. Zoning out she focused on the details of the hallway set of drawers. She felt herself moving towards them as if there was a magnet inside. She pulled open the top right drawer. The smell of incense and old cedar wood filled her nose. There were stacks of various incense (a favorite smell of her grandmother’s that she personally could do without), a lighter, a set of cards, a screw driver, and a little black notebook. She turned it over in her hands, a rush of electricity giving her chills.

Thud.

Lilly looked up to see her dust covered sister shaking her hair out while panting.

“So what did you find up there?,” Lilly asked, bemused.


“Absolutely nothing. There were a couple boxes labeled ‘Taxes” and they just had a bunch of boring papers in them. I did however, have a very nice talk with a little furry jumping spider that I named Cecil.”

“Sounds riveting. Well, I did find this very mysterious black notebook.” Lilly said indifferently. Nora squealed, grabbed the notebook from Lilly’s hand, and darted into the guest room.

“Come on Lilly! What are you waiting for?” By the time Lilly made it to the room Nora was already reading the notebook her eyes wide darting back and forth. “Check this out, this notebook is so weird. I think it’s in grandma’s handwriting but it doesn’t make any sense!”

“Okay slow down. Let’s take a look”

The notebook read:

“I am so happy to have 20,000 dollars in my bank account. I am so happy and excited! I love to give to my community and to be able to pay for any and all school activities for my children and grandchildren. I am so grateful to buy with generosity birthday and Christmas gifts for my whole family. I am so grateful to have a reliable car and to always be able to pay for gas easily. I have so much fun grocery shopping and buying all the healthy food I can imagine. My fridge is always full. My bank account is always full. I have the best life. I am happy, healthy, wealthy.” 



The pages were filled with descriptions of a mysterious sum of money and everything that could be done with it.

Lilly tilted her head. “That is confusing, this is definitely grandma’s handwriting.” Lilly turned over the black notebook, “Look at the print date, this book is at least 40 years old and looking at these pages and the faded ink, this was written a long time ago. But it seems like a gratitude book for everything in grandma’s life right now. Mom always talks about how much they struggled financially and how it took grandma a long time to get stable. It doesn’t add up.”

Nora gasped, “Do you think grandma has some kind of secret?” As if on cue, the door ominously started to creek open.

“Girls?” The familiarity of their grandma’s voice echoed in their ears, but this time it didn’t bring them the comfort and excitement it normally did. The girls frantically looked up and froze.

“Girls, do you have any idea what you have done?” Their grandmother’s voice was so rarely stern that this caused a feeling of panic and shock in both of them.

“I… I…. I…” Nora repeated.

“Got ya!” Their grandmother laughed deeply, doubling over “ I was listening to you outside the door, I couldn’t help myself, I’m so sorry.” Their grandma explained through gasps of laughter, “Come here you two! I’m so happy to see you!” She opened her arms wide.

Both girls let out a sigh of relief and started to giggle they ran over to their grandmother and she wrapped them in her arms. She smelled of essential oils and good food, her greying hair wrapped in a bun on the top of her head. She squeezed them hard, her cane dug into their backs just a little. She didn’t “need” it, she used it for her powerful aged woman aesthetic, that’s her claim at least.



“You aren’t in trouble, I haven’t told you this rule before, but I do ask you not read my notebooks again. They are private, and this very thing can happen. Something can seem as if it is something that is isn’t.”

“But grandma, what was that notebook all about, it’s almost like it predicted the future?” Nora said inquisitively.



“Truly, grandma it does not align with reality based on the supposed age of the notebook.” Lilly added.



“I’m glad you asked girls, that notebook is very special to me. I wrote down everything I wanted to happen. When I felt like I just couldn’t go another day working on my goals I wrote in that book. I wrote down every detail of everything that I could possibly want for myself and my children, and of course my possible grandchildren,” she softly patted their backs, “That gave me the strength to keep going. Remember how I always tell you that the written word has power?”

“Grandma! Is this magic? I told Lilly magic was real!” Nora said pulling her grandmother to sit down with her on the bed.

Lilly leaned on the column of the bed “No there is a scientific explanation, writing something down makes your brain focus on it more, it isn’t magic.” Lilly said, subtly rolling her eyes. 


“I think it’s magic!” Said Nora.

“Regardless of what it is, it seems like it worked. How about some dinner, and then we run into town and get you each your very own little black notebook?”