Red Notebook

Red Notebook

July 1, 2021

The red, travel-weary notebook with its flaking leather is my companion, the keeper of my scribbled observations, stuffed with random magazine articles, postcards, and bits of paper, all held together with a broccoli band. I’m a writer. Have been since my mother, also a writer positioned a chubby pencil into my chubbier kindergartener fingers.

I crack the notebook open to my last entry, dated January 1, 2020, and read:

“I’m in a window seat on a United Flight from Maui to LA, watching the elderly man in the aisle seat in front of me. He’s wearing a banana yellow hoodie, mask, and snorkel. Looks like a minion from Despicable Me.”

If I saw that man today, I’d suspect he was suited up against the virus in a maniacal sort of way, but back then I’d not heard of Covid 19, and he was just a crazy dude minding his own business.

Today is my first post-pandemic trip off the island. It’s been exactly eighteen months since my last flight. Feels so much longer. I tell myself it’ll be fine, but I can’t fool my nervous stomach. As I chew tums, I tell myself we’ve made it to the other side. I turn to a fresh page in my notebook. Blank lines give me hope. I find my pencil. The feel of graphite on paper, like walking country roads, excites me.

And I write.