THE LITTLE FORTUNE COOKIE BOOK

Saturday morning, I climbed on to my usual chair at the counter in Heirloom and opened the Fortune Cookie journal to the very last page. Then I proceeded to write my very last tiny story based off of a fortune. By the time I had filled the page, I had emptied my plate and I sat there looking from the empty plate to full page and back. Empty plate. Full page. Full book. I put the date at the top of the page so I would have a record of when I finished. I did not think to put a starting date at the beginning. I had to go searching through my old photos to find the start date. September 29th, 2015. For nine years, I have been taking a Saturday here and there and writing a story based on a prompt from a fortune cookie.

Nine years.

I closed the little journal and walked out to my car and immediately started sobbing. Heck, I just started crying while typing this. When Michael asked me how I felt about it, I told him that I couldn’t talk about it. Now, I’m not even sure I can write about it. First of all….NINE FUCKING YEARS! I can’t believe that I have been doing this for that long. Sure the practice was inconsistent. I only wrote in the journal on the Saturday mornings I was alone and taking care of the grocery shopping. There were long stretches of summer months when this didn’t happen or weekends when I was out of town. There were limits to my writing ritual. I almost treated the ritual like I do a really good chocolate bar, eating one square at time savoring the rich chocolate for days. It’s almost as if I anticipated the ending before even beginning.

I completed a journal of incomplete stories.

Well…of course I did. That’s my modus operandi. My Google Docs folder is filled with stories yet to be finished. I am nothing but stories yet to be finished and to finish anything at all feels momentous. I thought I was on the verge of turning into Chris with a stock pile of journals each containing a sentence or list here or there, never filling one up. When Michael placed that little journal into my Christmas stocking all those years ago, he had no idea it would grow into a thing or a thing I might even finish. He started looking for a replacement journal and then started to panic because he knew I was reaching the end of this journal and he had yet to find a worthy replacement. I had four pages left in the Fortune Cookie journal and in haste, he bought a blank notebook and then carefully wrote down various well known quotes on every other page. This notebook is bigger with wide spacing, room for a story to grow. It is probably the most thoughtful gift he has ever given me.

On Saturday morning, I will climb up into the chair in what I now consider to be my spot at the counter at Heirloom. I will open a brand new journal and I will weave together a new story.