Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep

I know I've mentioned here before the book I have by Elizabeth Berg that contains 30-some pages of writing prompts, and that being the compulsive person that I am, I had assigned myself the task of completing each of them, no matter how ridiculous I found the topic--for example, the one that suggested that if I am a woman, I should write about what it's like to have a small penis...

I've been faithful to my assignment for the better part of a year now. I've filled an entire spiral-bound notebook and half of another with handwriting that my husband claims looks like "Old English." I don't know what that is, exactly, but I think it means my writing is difficult to read. That has made me fearless about leaving my notebook on the table; no one will be able to read what I've scrawled there, so I can write openly. Which, by the way, is the title of the book--Escaping Into The Open.

At first glance, I thought today's prompt was another silly one: You are a 14-year-old leaving a will. What do you leave to whom? Just wanting to get it over with so I could move onto other things like Netflix and facebook, I pictured myself when I was 14. In the spirit of silliness with which I had read the prompt, I began with the words of the children's prayer...

Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I die before I wake...

I thought of what I had to bequeath at 14, and decided to leave all of my clothes to my sister, Karen, and my jewelry and hair accessories to Bev. I gave them permission to share with each other. That seemed fair to me. I had lots of clothes, but few things they would actually want. The only jewelry I remember owning at that age was a ring that had been made from either a nut or bolt--the thing that fits around a screw to keep it secure--and dozens of pairs of flowery little earrings that I had purchased with my allowance at a dollar a pair.

I entrusted my precious Madame Alexander doll to Melissa because Bev and Karen had set out to destroy her--the doll, not Melissa--years earlier by dropping her from the top bunk and hammering her face with a red wooden pencil. That left only Mark--Jason wouldn't become one of us for another five years. Although I don't remember any specifically, I'm sure I must have had some stuffed animals I could leave my little brother.

But wait--something for Mom and Dad!

Mom could have all the stuff I'd written, because she always made me feel like she was proud of me. But she was to let Dad read it whenever he wanted to. Dad, of course, got all my books, because he was the one who read to us the most when we were little.

I ended the assignment by saying that I really hoped I wouldn't die in my sleep, but that I would live for a long time to come so that I would have better stuff to leave them.

Well, I have indeed lived for a long time to come. But I have the same things now that I had then--different clothes, of course, and more jewelry. But I still have the handmade ring. I have stuffed animals now, but they're from my mom's collection of teddy bears. And I still have that Madam Alexander Cissy doll with the cracked leg and the red-spotted face. Somewhere there is even a box of stories and paragraphs and essays that I wrote in school.

Among my most cherished belongings are six volumes of an eight-volume set of books that belonged to my father when he was a child. The series is called "Book Trails," and they have wonderful embossed red covers and crisp, illustrated pages.

We called them the "poem books," because that's what Dad loved to read the most.

It's not fun thinking about wills at any age, but sometimes it's good to take stock of what we have, and realize why certain things--especially old things--have come to mean so much to us.