A Memory of Beginning
Every writer has a first attempt — a fragile seed planted in a notebook, a beginning that never quite grew. Mine was abandoned quickly, yet the memory remained, waiting in the dark until I returned.
When I was a child, I decided I would write a book. I had no story, no plan, only the certainty that I could fill page after page with something that mattered. I found a lined notebook, opened it carefully, and began.
The first page was easy. The second took longer. By the third, I had slowed to a crawl, the ideas thinning as the space of the blank paper widened. I don’t remember what I wrote — perhaps about a house that looked like my own, and the people who lived in that house. What I do remember is the effort, the hope, the sense that this was important.
The notebook was eventually abandoned. The memory of beginning stayed. Even then, something in me knew that words mattered, that writing could shape a life.
Now, seven decades later, I see that first attempt not as failure but a fragile seed waiting in the dark until I returned, years later, to nurture it with the care it deserves.
