The Words I Keep In My Nightstand Drawer

Some people collect comic books, or vinyl records, or refrigerator magnets. I collect words. 

In the fall of 1998, my first semester in college, my best friend urged me to start a quote book. We shared an infatuation with the first two Counting Crows albums, dripping tortured lyrics that, in the throes of early adult angst, spoke to our souls. Adam Duritz sings words you can't help but pay homage to by writing them down for yourself. Suddenly I saw the world was full of words I needed to keep.

So I dug out an old hardcover journal I had been gifted in high school. With the inspirational Footprints poem on the cover, it wasn't really my style, but it had 168 lined pages ready to absorb meaningful, beautiful words, and I obliged. I wanted a list of expressive and evocative quotations that said I wasn't alone, and snapshots of the memories I might someday forget.

The very first quote I wrote down was, "Your past is where you came from, not who you are." It told me, in stark black honesty, that I could be a person who mattered despite my tumultuous childhood -- I could start over, a future as wide open as these pages, and craft my story how I wanted it. That quote proved to be the launching point of one of the most meaningful projects I've ever undertaken.

"Our thoughts are bigger on the inside."

Over the next 15 years I filled those pages with famous and obscure quotes, bits of poetry, song lyrics, and snippets of random conversation. I also recorded brilliant and funny things that came from my own mouth -- because, as I once said (and wrote down), "I live for self-quotes." Friends, coworkers, authors, and more ex-boyfriends than I want to admit -- they're all in there. Pieces of everyone from Shakespeare to Oprah to my family lay between those covers. 

What started as a way to memorialize my favorite words became a map on which you can trace the trajectory of my adult life, from college to career to marriage and children. I've forgotten some of the source material, but paging through the book brings back with striking clarity the memories surrounding each quote. 

I can tell you the lyric "I can make it if you can" is from a 7 Mary 3 song set on repeat while I was in foster care and during my lonely first year of college. "Et tu, Joe Pesci?" is from a game of Mad Libs my best friend and I played in her East Texas dorm room. "Don't limit your what-ifs" was said by a school superintendent as I interviewed him during my first job as a newspaper reporter. I know my mom comforted me with "Some things aren't yours to make better" about a volcanic breakup in my early 20s. And "he's my man-panion" was one of the comments my husband made about his lifelong best friend on the first night I met them.  

There is loss and love and hilarity in those pages. Books this momentous can't be bought, they have to be written.

I finished the last page of my quote book on the very first day of 2014, and immediately searched for more blank paper. While rifling through boxes of old books, I unearthed a journal I had forgotten my mother gave me in 2001, complete with an inscription in her scratchy handwriting. Referencing the Serenity Prayer printed on the outside, and my mother wrote: "Pay heed to the message on the cover. Love, Momma" That quote from her, found almost seven years after she died, is a gift in itself. And her locution is a window into where I learned my love of words. 

Most in my inner circle know about my quote books, and how significant they are to me. But when I referenced it on social media, I was surprised to hear how much being quoted meant to them. So many wanted to know what they said that I thought was important enough to keep in my nightstand drawer. "No greater compliment than to hear you say, 'Ooh, I gotta put that in my quote book,'" my college room mate admitted. "Who knew that simply remembering somebody said would be such a precious gift to them!?" commented my best friend's husband. (He's in there too.) 

Between parenting and working, these days I have less time to listen to new music, read books without pictures, and enjoy meaningful conversation with other adults. I still keep my quote book but the entries come slower now. During the last seven years I've filled more than 50 pages, plus I've started separate books chronicling notable things each of my children has said. I hope their quote books will be a ribbon that weaves through their childhood.

There are plenty of books, curated by credentialed experts, dedicated to famous quotations. I own several. But this collection of words this meaningful and personal, spanning more than 20 years of my own memories, is among my most precious possessions.    

Here is a briefish sampling of the words I've collected. 

On the college experience: 

"I slipped and fell on his lips. Oops." - a college room mate

"All this breaking and entering makes me hungry." - my best friend, after we slipped into a campus building after hours

"I am boyfriend-less." -me (my first summer home from college)
"There are much worse things to be without." - my 11th grade AP English teacher, whom I was visiting

"Take the cash and let the credit go, or heed the rumble of a distant drum." -Prof. Price, my business calculus teacher, sharing his recommendations for lottery winnings

On words:

"I hate quotations." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The road to hell is paved with adverbs." -Stephen King

"Poetry gets you nowhere faster than anything."

"I have a passionate love affair with words." -me

"Verbing weirds language." -Calvin & Hobbes

"Although history is written by the winners, poetry is written by the losers." -my best friend's husband

On working:

"It's due the Monday before Wednesday." - my college newspaper editor, on deadlines

"We die on velvet chairs here." -coworker's explanation of where to shelter in an emergency at Severance Hall

"We do passive-aggressive in a classy way." - coworker's observation on office culture

"I've officially reached counterproductive o'clock."

On life:

"You're my favorite mistake." -Sheryl Crow

"It's like trying to describe a train wreck to someone who's never seen a train." -fellow student at my college newspaper

"There are some things that are going well, there are some things that are going better, and there are some things that just take time." -my college room mate

"You must live through the time when everything hurts." - Stephen Spender

"Knowing is half the battle. If I can figure out the other half, we might win." -me

"There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning." -Louis L'Amour

"Months come disguised as days and swindle us sweetly of years." -Alan Harris

"If you're gonna run with the big dogs, you can't pee like a puppy." -a friend's dad, in response to his first hangover

"You can get a divorce, but you can't break a pinkie swear." -me

"Me being me can be hard on us both." -Trent Willmon

"A quick no is the second-best answer." -Dr. Art Arauzo

"There's no sulking around tater-tots."

"I can't complain but sometimes I still do." -Joe Walsh

"Let go or be dragged."

"Happiness is a form of courage." 

"No matter which way it goes, eventually it will get better. And whatever the answer is, in time, that will be the new normal." -a friend, on the eve of my last fertility treatment

"They tried to bury us. They didn't know we were seeds." -Dinos Christianopoulos

"Life is briefish. Love now." 

"Every storm runs out of rain." -Maya Angelou

"What are we going to do with all this future?"

On loss:

"What we learned here is love tastes bitter when it's gone." -Matchbox 20

"Memory is the power to collect roses in the winter." 

"Love is so short, forgetting is so long." -Pablo Neruda

"We never bury the dead, son. Not really. We carry them with us. That's the price we pay for living." -TV show Sleepy Hollow

"Life is joy; death is peace. Only the transition is difficult." 

"Just know that he is waiting for you in that bright morning." -my best friend, on the death of my beloved dog

"Death is not extinguishing the light. It is putting out the lamp because dawn has come." -Kahlil Gibran

"There is no end to grief. That's how we know there is no end to love." -Bono

"The half-life of love is forever." -Junot Diaz

On parenthood:

"Sometimes it takes a village to make a family." -me, on fertility treatments

"Your mom can't stop smiling." -a friend, when I announced my first pregnancy

"Someday he won't need me anymore, and my arms will be so empty." -me

"It's been her name for six years. We just had to wait for her to come and claim it." -me, on how we named our daughter

"Everything is the hardest part." -me 

"Some kids require more fight, for them and with them." -my daughter's godmother

"Give me the sleep and no one gets hurt." -me

"She had the exhausting luxury of being home with her children."

"To have your hands full is a ludicrous blessing."

Funnies:

"I just shot him in the head. Dying was between him and god." -told to another reporter at my first job

"That's a big this." -my son at age 2

"Life is short. Buy the lipstick."

"Without ice cream, there would be darkness and chaos."

"Put down the bananas. They are superfluous to the situation." -TV series Call the Midwife

"17 is a prime number, which means you can't f*** with it."

"I love you 100 years tall." -my daughter at age 4

On the end:

"Darling, it's later than you think. Always."