(Note from April Joy to Michael)

To My Nephew and his Beautiful Daughters (my last surviving kin),

I'm too old to get maudlin now so I'm not about to start some dreary crap about my long life and how I've made the clubhouse turn & am racing to the finish line.  You'll have plenty of time to read my attempts at prose and poor tries at wordmanship.  As you'll soon see.  But more about that later.

There's a will somewhere.  That old hippie, Joel, has it.  Actually hippie isn't quite right for "hippie" was after his "time".  He was more a beatnik, if you know the term; a coffee house weirdo long before the first hippies found sex, drugs, and rock & roll.  By then he had already cleaned up, was in three piece suits and had somehow become a lawyer.  By the time hippie days came, it was too late for him, but not for me.  I fell into those times as naturally as can be, though I wasn't no spring chicken.  But I could damn sure hold my own with those little dopehead hippie girls.  Gawd damn.  Those were good days, but then, I've had plenty of those.

This isn't supposed to be a roll down memory lane.  I just wanted to tell you what I left you and why.  And maybe what to do with it.

Of course, I left you all my crap - all the usual worldly possessions stuff. But there's a couple of special things, too.  I just wanted to tell you about them.

In my old wardrobe there's a small walnut writing box.  Inside is a small brass key.  That key will open the old cedar trunk at the foot of my bed.

Inside are some treasures that no knows about.  Well, no one with any sense would call them treasures but me.  You'll understand.  They are treasures to me and I know at least one of them will be a treasure to you.  I'll let that one be a surprise.

You'll find a foot high stack of old notebooks that are the journal/diary that I began writing when I was 16 years old and in love with that no good bastard Harold Wade.  They go through WWII, the Fabulous 50s, my hippie days in the 60s, thru the boring 70s and worse 80s, and on to the turn of the century.  All glorious days I didn't expect.

I'll warn you now.  I told it like it was - sometimes in detail.  I flipped thru some of the pages a few years ago and read a little.  I read about Ralphie Torn and I sneaking into a Baptist church one night.  The blue ink was so old on those pages it had turned brown.  But the memory of Ralphie and me in the ice cold water of the baptismal is still in living color.  Whew! But I don't need to be thinking about that.  I started to tear those pages out and many others besides those, but then I said to hell with that.  I've shown my ass plenty of times and in plenty of ways.  No need to stop now.

So it's all in there for you.  In a way it's my legacy.  Oh, there's plenty of antiques and stuff with the old house to say nothing of all the things I collected thru the years.  But that is just stuff.  All those old book have my life in them.  And my memories.  They're family memories, too.  I want to leave them with you and I hope you can find a way to share them with your girls.  You may want to rewrite things here and there.  Maybe the real adventures ran a little raw in places.  Lord, Lord, did I have some times...  I want your girls to know me like I was when I was young and full of ginger - when I was the prettiest girl in town, not this old hag they see now when they come to visit.  I want them to know the glory and to know that once I was just like them - young and beautiful with all of life's adventures ahead of them.

Well, crap!  I guess I got maudlin after all.

Share my words and life with your girls.

Love,

April Joy

P.S. I almost forgot your real treasure.  In the trunk is a beautiful ebony box.  It is locked and I lost the damned key years ago.  Break it open.  The treasure is not the box.  It is what is inside.