go.Jimmy.go

I’ve always been fascinated by time capsules. There’s something wonderfully optimistic about them. You take a box, fill it with photographs, newspaper clippings, toys, letters, or whatever else represents your little corner of the world, seal it up and hide it away with the hope that someday—years or maybe generations later—someone will find it.

But sometimes you don’t need to make a time capsule. Sometimes you discover that you already made one, and you didn’t even know it.

Years ago, my brother was doing some remodeling in the house where we grew up. It’s a small, turn-of-the-century colonial that originally belonged to my grandparents and eventually became our family home.

Over the years, my brother has transformed much of it. Walls have come down. Floors have been replaced. New fixtures have gone in. Windows have appeared where none existed before.

But there was one part of the house that had remained largely untouched: the makeshift first-floor bathroom my father had built when we were kids.

There was a very practical reason for that. It was the only bathroom in the house. Tearing it apart meant spending the next several weeks discovering just how important indoor plumbing really is.

Eventually, though, the time came. My brother began demolition, pulling away layers of old paneling and particle board that had been hiding behind those walls for decades.

Then he called me.

“You need to come over and see this,” he told me.

So I did.

Behind one of those old panels was writing. Some of it had been written by adults. And some of it had been written by a little boy who would eventually grow up to write books and the very article you’re reading right now.

Me.

I grabbed a flashlight and shined it across the exposed wood. For a moment, I felt like an archaeologist who had just cracked open an ancient tomb.

What had been hiding behind that wall all these years? A secret message? A warning to future generations? A treasure map showing the location of my long-lost Spider-Man action figures?

Unfortunately, no. Although I’m still holding out hope on that last one.

Instead, written in pencil were four simple words:

“Jimmy 7 years old”

That was it.

My name.

My age.

And somehow those four words stopped me cold.

Below them was the name of my sister, Krissy, who was six at the time.

I stood there staring at the writing. Then I reached out and touched it.

I actually ran my fingers across those old pencil-marked words, almost needing to convince myself they were real. And suddenly, I remembered writing them. I remembered how hard it was writing that capital “J” because I wasn’t very good at handwriting.

I could see that little platinum-blond seven-year-old boy standing there while Dad worked on the bathroom. I remembered crafting my name and age before the wall disappeared behind the paneling. I even remembered pressing the pencil hard against the wood because I wanted to make sure the letters showed up.

At seven years old, I had absolutely no idea that I was creating a message for someone almost half a century in the future.

Me.

And then the discovery became even better.

On an adjacent section of wall, my father had written something of his own.

“June 9, 1977.“

The exact date the paneling went up.

Suddenly this wasn’t simply something from my childhood. It was a moment frozen in time.

There were other names written there, too. My father had written his own—Louis—and my mother’s—Joanne.

Then, for reasons known only to Dad, he added another date:

April 2, 1966.

Their wedding day.

Their marriage ultimately wouldn’t last. Life rarely follows the script we imagine for ourselves when we’re young. Families change. People leave. Houses change hands. Parents grow older. Eventually, some of the people whose names were written on those walls are no longer here to tell us what they were thinking when they wrote them.

That’s what made seeing Dad’s handwriting again so powerful. I wished he could have been standing there with us. I would have loved to ask whether he remembered that night. Whether he remembered letting us write on the wall. Whether there was some story behind including his wedding anniversary. Knowing Dad, I’m sure the discovery would have led to an afternoon of stories. Instead, the wall had to tell them for him.

I’ve thought about that moment quite a bit over the years, but it feels especially meaningful to me now. Maybe it’s because I’ve become increasingly fascinated by memory and dreams—the strange things our minds preserve and the equally strange things they bury.

That fascination found its way into my newest novel, The Seventh Echo.

Without giving too much away, the story follows Dan Mercer, a 57-year-old man forced to confront pieces of his childhood that he thought were long gone. One of the most important figures in the story is Danny—the seven-year-old version of himself.

Seven.

The same age I was when I wrote those words on that wall.

I didn’t consciously make that connection when I began writing the novel. At least, I don’t think I did.

But writers are funny creatures. We spend our lives collecting moments without realizing we’re collecting them. A house. A smell. A conversation. Sometimes it’s a childhood fear, like a huge, creepy tree looming in the backyard. It could even be something my father said, or something he scribbled on a wall.

Years later, those things have a way of finding their way back to us. Sometimes they simply become recalled memories. Sometimes they become novels. And sometimes they wait quietly behind a piece of paneling for someone to tear down the wall.

The little boy who wrote “Jimmy 7 years old” couldn’t possibly have imagined the man who would someday stand there reading it. He didn’t know he’d become a writer. He didn’t know he’d publish books.

And he certainly didn’t know that nearly fifty years later he’d write a suspense novel in which a seven-year-old boy becomes a haunting connection to a man’s forgotten past.

In 1977, Jimmy was just a kid with a pencil.

I’ve often thought about making a time capsule and leaving something behind for the future.

Turns out I already did.

I just had to grow old enough to find it.