Wasting Paper

The woman who saw a writer before I did.

Early 1990s, Grandma’s house in SE Portland.

Before I knew I wanted to be a writer,
I was already writing.

And it was never neat.

It was also not perfect,
and it was not to impress anyone.

I was just a kid with a pencil,
scribbling worlds onto paper
before I even understood what I was doing.

Colorful invisible cats.
Five-headed elemental dragons.
Good monsters. Bad monsters.
And… some in between.

Odd nighttime creatures
that glowed in the dark.

Human kingdoms that ruled
with compassion and love.

Western knights and Chinese warriors
riding on horseback into battle,
defending each other
and what they loved.

I did not know it then,
but I think I was already trying
to build a world where
someone protected the innocent.

Places that did not exist until my hand tried to make them real.

One of the memories that
keeps coming back to me
is riding in my grandma’s
white Chinook RV
in the late 1990s.

I can still picture myself sitting there.

Shotgun, with the window
rolled halfway down.

And… a whole bag of pencils
and a big notebook.

Not one pencil,
but a whole bag full.

It was like I was preparing for war.

I would sit there and scribble
as Grandma drove through
the American landscape.

We were headed to Billings, Montana
to visit my aunt Sally,
passing Yellowstone National Park.

And I would…

Scribble. Scribble. Erase. Scribble.

Then I would look up
and admire the great forests of America.

The snow-filled peaks.
The beauty they carried.

And those cool animals with antlers
we would drive by.

Grandma’s smile near the windshield…
The road ahead of us…
The wind moving past the RV…

And… my notebook—open in front of me.

Cursive all over the page.

Irregular. Messy. Messy loops.
Crooked letters.

Sentences born to crash
into each other.

But I did not care.

I was an alchemist. I was a magician.
I was a prince bringing light to the dark.

I was a builder with a crazy hammer,
assembling crazy worlds.

Worlds with real monsters.
Powerful magic.
Unique heroes.

And… adults who loved their children.

Places that were probably way too big
for the page I was trying to fit them on.

Every so often…
Grandma would turn and ask.

What else are you building?
What did you add?
Who is in the story now?
Where are they going?
What happens next?
Is anything hidden?

And… does it have an ending?

And I would tell her. Probably too fast.
And most likely jumping from one idea to another.

A monster here. A kingdom there.
Some magical thing I could not fully explain yet.

Stories that probably made no sense
to anyone else.

But they made sense to her and me.

And she would give me
the brightest smile and tell me,

“You are such a great writer.”

I remember passing
those big sprinklers on the road.

The kind that stretched across fields
and sprayed water in long silver lines.

To most people,
they were just sprinklers.

But to my child’s eyes,
they were massive water dragons.

I would look out the window
and tell Grandma those sprinklers
were my dragons
blowing water across the land.

And the mountains behind them?

Those were their dens.
That was where they slept.
That was where they hid.

And… that was where
the adult dragons
would return to
their dragon kids,
who were scared of the dark.

That was where
the story lived before
I even wrote it down.

And Grandma…
did not laugh at me
like I was being ridiculous.

She did not tell me to be quiet.

She did not tell me
I was too old for that.

She would lean in closer
whenever the RV stopped,
so she could hear me better.

She would ask me,

“What sound do the dragons make?”

And I would make an
adult-sounding roar.
And she would ask
me about them again.

She would ask questions
that only I could answer.

She would give me more ideas,
but I got to choose.

She made my stories
feel like they mattered.

I do not know if she understood
how much that meant to me.

Maybe she did.

And perhaps…
grandmas know things
before children do.

As we approached
a much-needed rest stop,

I remember Grandma walking with me
to the bathroom.

It was a clear day,
somewhere high up
in the mountains of Montana.

After we were done,
someone walked in.

And something felt off.

I remember Grandma reaching
for her Swiss Army knife.

She held it in her hand
and guided me with the other
as we made our way out to the light.

I asked her later in the RV
why she did that.

And she told me:

“Sometimes there are bad people…
Sometimes things can happen.”

Then we kept driving.

Past more giant sprinklers. More fields.
More dragons blowing water across the land.

And… I find myself thinking
about that a lot now.

How I was sitting there
writing stories about
monsters, magic, heroes,
and adults who loved their children.

And beside me
was one of those adults.

The kind who listened
to a child’s imagination.

The kind who smiled
at messy cursive.

The kind who watched the room
when something felt wrong.

The kind who knew
that children needed stories.

But they also needed someone
to walk them safely back to the light.

I think it happened
when I was getting tired.

The road had been going
for a long time.

My pencil was probably
still in my hand.

My notebook was probably
still open.

But my eyes were
probably getting heavy.

I remember… I was still…
trying to explain something.

Another monster. Another kingdom.
Another piece of the story
that only half existed yet.

And Grandma could
see me fading.

And… maybe that is why
I remember it.

Because she did not tell me
to put it away.

She did not tell me
I was done.

She did not make my tiredness
feel like a problem.

She just looked at me
with that same smile
and told me,

“Never stop writing.”

This would not be the last time
she said this to me.

But it was the first.

I do not think I understood
how much those words
would matter.

Not then…

Not sitting there shotgun in the RV,
somewhere in the mountains,
half awake, half dreaming,
with my notebook still open.

But I think she knew
I needed to hear it.

That trip would hold
other memories too.

Harder ones.
Heavier ones.

It was the same and only trip
where my stepfather was there.

The same trip
where Grandma started to see
how I was treated
when I was tired.

But that is
a different chapter.

This memory is about
what she gave me
before the hurt
took over the room.

She gave me a sentence
I could carry.

Never stop writing.

That is why it hurt so much…
when I got home
and writing did not
feel the same.

At home, my mother saw
the same paper differently.

The same paper.
Why are you writing
only in such small spaces?

The same cursive.
Why is your handwriting
so hard to read?

The same scribbles.
Why don’t you practice writing
like my friend’s kids?

The same kid.
Why can’t you just do
what other kids your age do?

The same dragons.
Why must these monsters
live on paper?

“... Writing like this does
not ever make any money …”

I heard those words
when I was still young enough
to believe adults
knew the truth about me.

And maybe that
is why they stayed.

Not… because they were true.
But because I did not know yet
that adults could be wrong.

The strange part is,
writing was already
one of the places
where I felt stronger.

I was never really
good at math.

Math was usually
where I lived
in the C to B range.

I could survive it,
but I did not feel
powerful there.

English was different.

Although I spoke a different tongue.
It flowed. And I enjoyed it very much.
English was where I could get B’s, A’s, and even A+’s.

That was the place
where my mind seemed
to know what to do.

I could read.
I remembered words.
I knew the emotions
that they carried.
I could understand stories.

And…I could put
thoughts into words,
and weave them into
a story that made sense,
even if my handwriting
looked messy while I was doing it.

Because I didn’t write to be seen.
I wrote to be heard.

I was not just being told
my handwriting was ugly.

I was being told my
imagination was inconvenient,
and that the worlds inside
me cost too much paper.

That the stories in my head
were not worth the space.

And the confusing part was
creativity was not always treated
that way in my house.

When my little brother
wrote something and got recognition.
It was different.

He was rewarded.
He was praised.
He was told he was special.
He was smart.
He was creative.
And… that he was
a great writer.

And I do not blame him
for that.

He was a child too.
He deserved encouragement.
And he was indeed
a great writer.
I often told him so myself.

But I was a child too.

And somewhere in that house,
it felt like I had to shrink
so someone else could grow.

That is the part that hurt.

Because it showed me
that praise existed.

It showed me
that writing could
be celebrated.

It showed me
that someone in that house
knew how to encourage
a child with words.

They just chose not to use
those words for me.

So for a long time,
I think I learned
to hide parts of myself.

Not completely…

Because those magical stories
never really left.

The monsters stayed.
The magic stayed.
The worlds stayed.

They just went
and hid in the dark.

And… maybe that is what
children do when they are
not allowed to be themselves.

They do not always stop
becoming who they are.
Sometimes they just bury it
deep enough to survive.

But my grandma saw it.

She saw it in that
white Chinook RV
in Montana.

She saw it in
that notebook.
She saw it in the
bag of pencils.

She saw it in
the messy cursive
that other people
would later criticize.

And… she did not
call it a waste.

She called it writing.

So…
Maybe all those pages
were not wasted.
Maybe none of it
was wasted.

Maybe every monster I drew,
every story I scribbled,
every ugly cursive sentence,
every strange little world
was trying to tell me something.

The boy is still here.
His dreams are still here.
His voice can still be heard.

And one day…
he will return
and turn on the lights.

I do not think I have a picture
of myself in the front
of that Chinook RV
with my notebook
and bag of pencils.

But I do have a picture
of my grandma teaching me
how to read and write.

And that is enough.

Maybe that was always the beginning.

Before the RV. Before the dragons.
Before the mountains became dens.
Before anyone told me I was wasting paper.

She was already there.

She was already helping me find the words.

Now I write for my children.

And sometimes I watch
them learning how to write
their own names.

The letters are not perfect
and the lines often bend.

The spacing is strange.

Sometimes the letters
are too big.
Sometimes they
run into each other.

But I do not see waste.
I see a beginning.

I see a child trying to leave proof
of himself on a page.

And maybe that is why
I understand Grandma better now.

She was not looking
for perfect handwriting.

She was looking
at the child behind it.

She was looking at the voice
trying to come through.

Back then, it was just something
she told me in the RV.

Three simple words.

A simple sentence
from my grandma
to a kid with a notebook.

But now it feels like
one of her last gifts,
even though she gave it to me…
long before I knew I would need it.

Even after she was gone,
she still found a way
to give those words back to me.

“Never Stop Writing.”

And I didn’t.