The little one

My grandfather always kept a little brown leather journal in his chest pocket. It was his constant companion, the one I would see in the evenings and the one that, at dinner time, peeked out of his shirt, playing hide and seek with me. I always wondered what secrets it held, what adventures it chronicled, and what cheeky details of adult conversations it concealed. But he did not write that; all he wrote were lists. He did not write about anyone or anything that had happened. There were no fantastic stories to tell me about. He wrote the things he had to do and stuff to remember. Lists. Never had I seen someone keeping lists so close to his heart every day of his life for as long as I knew him.

As a child, I often dreamed about the fantastic stories Grandpa could have written in his little book because I thought his life was easy and uncomplicated. His days started very early, with a cup of tea and some one-day-old bread with butter. He would then wear his blue overall, kiss my grandmother on the cheek, and leave the house. He walked a few meters to his workshop, usually still at night, in a path illuminated by stars and, on lucky days, a very old lampost that generally forgot to do its job. He opened the big, heavy wooden doors as if he were about to enter a new world and looked at that old, ample space full of materials, tools, and works in progress. He switched on the lights, petted the sleepy dogs, started the furnace fire, and sat by its side, watching the flames grow, and the first ray of light enter the workshop. He spent most of his life surrounded by his dogs, forging iron, holding a cigarette on his fingers, carrying a pencil over his ear, and keeping a little leather book in his pocket. I loved spending time in that workshop, with those dogs, with that smell of hot iron, watching him curve the metal to create the most beautiful garden fences, chariot wheels, and majestic gates—in a way, doors to different worlds from the one he lived in. 

My grandfather passed away many years ago. I was twelve, and he had lived a relatively long life. By then, I had started writing my journals, but he never saw them. I did not begin to write because I had great stories to tell but because he could not write himself anymore. He was weakened by the illness that took him away from us, and the little strength he had was not even enough to pick up the pen and write.

"I have nothing else to put in my list," he told me on a rainy afternoon I visited him in hospital.

"I've written all the things I needed," he said.

I thought I understood what he meant because you cannot do much while lying in a hospital bed. You just wait for people to visit, for doctors and nurses to check things, for days to pass... But that's not what he meant, and I only understood it years later. In my first journal, I wrote about all the boring things that made my days busy and all the amazing things I thought Grandpa could be doing. While I was at school, he could be forging the structure of a magical chariot, the gates of a secret garden, and the fences that would stop all the bad things from crawling into our homes. He was my superhero, a much less muscled owner of a mighty hammer than Thor, a son of humble people instead of Gods, and someone who showed me happiness is not such a secret if well built and maintained as his iron creations were.

When my grandfather left us, Grandma came to live with us. There we were, three generations of women under the same roof, missing the men of our lives: my grandfather and my father. We all had reasons to miss those men, but we never spoke about them. I wrote in my journal, as Grandpa listed things in his. My mother cried sometimes. My Grandma looked at the skies full of stars, holding the little book that had once belonged to her husband. The little one had moved from his overall to her cardigan and kept teasing me at dinner time until one day it peeked no more. I never saw Grandma opening the journal. She just held it against her chest and smiled as if the little one whispered her things to make her laugh. I thought that after spending so much time close to Grandpa's heart, that little book was able to make that woman feel a bit of her lost husband close to her as if his heart was still beating close to her chest. 

A couple of years passed. I got used to live in that house full of women, with little conversation about the men we missed or company of the little journal anymore when illness came to visit our home once again. This time, it took the woman with the prettiest smile of all, and my mother felt a bit abandoned once more. After the funeral, when we returned to our house, my mother gave me a blue satin bag.

"Grandma asked me to give it to you."

I opened the drawstrings and saw family photographs, a few old coins, and Grandpa's journal. I ran to my bedroom and closed the door behind me. I sat on my bed and held that little book in my hands, the one I though we'd lost because Grandma had kept it for herself. I removed the leather cord that kept it closed, and my hands touched the yellow pages for the first time ever. That's when I felt like someone was looking at me despite the fact that I was all alone in that room. I turned the first page, and I heard a whisper:

"I will."

I heard it. I felt it. But no one was around, and I could listen to my mother cooking in the kitchen. There was no one else with me, and still, I could feel...it.

"I will," I heard again, but it did not frighten me because I recognized that voice... which was even worse because he was long gone...

I started to read the first page, the first list.

• Listen to Mother.
• Do my chores.
• Play with my brothers.

"I will," It whispered.

• Do the work.
• Kiss my wife.
• Play with my kids.

"I will," I heard once more.

• Laugh.
• Love.

"I will," I said as the whisper repeated those two words.

I turned more pages, and then, I found the last list, which had only one word:

• Live.

Right there, sitting in my bed, and just then, at fourteen years old, after my Grandma's funeral, I understood why my grandfather did not write much. There were no words necessary. Those were not stories. Those were his goals, dreams, and the things he cared the most about. I read the last one and said it out loud.

"I will live." 

There were no more whispers, and I felt so sad that I pressed that little journal against my chest, and since then, it's never been away from me, from my heart.