Lessons On... Legacy

This past Sunday, I ventured out to a memory minefield. Visiting the town where my grandparents used to live in order to attend the memorial for my late grandmother, Leone, I was aghast with both nostalgia and grief. 

Simply pulling up to the church was a strange and emotional moment, seeing as I hadn’t been to that building (or that town) in years. Little things, like passing by the grocery store we used to get lunch supplies from, or the feeling of bumping along the rough gravel road on the way to the old schoolhouse they lived in. They all felt like peach pits stacking in my throat. 

Then, of course, there was the service. Faces I had only seen a year prior for Leone’s (or rather, as we called her, LeeLee’s) 100th birthday party, now all adorned with the tension of fragile composure.

Everything looked… smaller. Obviously, I had grown quite a bit since I was last in those old worn wooden pews, once restlessly playing with the hymn book and waiting for the food we’d get to have afterwards. But beyond that, it still felt surreal. As if nothing had changed, except me. 

I spoke briefly on my relationship with LeeLee, and how she had inspired me like no one else to be a writer. She herself being a children’s writer for most of her life, I’ve always had admiration for not only her skill, but her kindness. Truly, the sweetest and most determined person I think I’ll ever meet in my life, and I’m so lucky to have had her as a grandmother. I was honored to speak about her, and it opened my eyes to a lot. 

As a child, I was probably the most beat down by others in my life that I’ll (hopefully) ever be again. And yet, the beautiful worlds I could create for myself, the stories I would escape into for hours on end, the silly poems I’d scribble down during free moments in class… These aspects of my life at this time are what saved me from total collapse. I had power in my imagination. 

Yet as I’ve gotten older, the outside world’s opinions and criticisms have become much more difficult to ignore. I hesitate with almost everything I do, creative or otherwise, choked by the paranoia of doing it “wrong” and being ridiculed for it. I don’t spend hours working at my craft like I used to, and it's all because I’ve lost sight of the real purpose of art as I see it: to communicate. There’s no “wrong” way, except never trying at all. 

I think now of LeeLee in these moments of doubt. 

What would she say to me? What wisdom would she share? I like to imagine she’d say something along the lines of “Who cares if it's bad, because right now, it doesn’t even exist! Isn’t that worse?”.

I don’t have her with me physically anymore to let me know, but in ways that count, she’s still right here alongside me. So… yes, LeeLee, I did write today! I hope you’re proud.