A Letter to my Grandchild

A Story by Peter Schal

I wrote this in my creative writing class. Hope you enjoy it.

As I write this, my grandchild, you are but still a mere youngster, frolicking around amongst hare and dog and field, enjoying your childhood like so many imaginative children your age. Me, I write this by candlelight, about a thousand miles away in a dainty cabin near the coastline of a diminishing fishing village, known around those parts as Harper’s Row. I steer a clear distance away from those harbours nowadays, because less than a decade ago I received a frightful warning by a salt-stained seadog on a wavering dock, two days before I set sail on the ill-fated merchant voyager-ship The Maiden of the High Seas. Hearken; I mustn’t get into much detail about my voyage on that hell-bound sea-treader, for the memories of those horrifying ten months never cease to leave my side. You must know, I was an ambitious scholar then, a fresh batch out of the most prestigious schools, and I had a taste for adventure and a lust for anything new and exciting. If it brought about any amount of change to my environment in the tiniest of matters, I was bound to ride along that certain wave of change until I came to rest on a beach where my curiosities with the thing withered and died. Unfortunately, I rode along that wave for far too long, and ended up fighting for my life on a beach that was void of civility and overrun with acts of the most torturous nature. Fear not, my grandchild, for those happenings were an age ago it seems, and far, far out of your grasping fingertips. Fear only the present times, and witness the uncivil happenings around you with an air of sympathy and uselessness. My goals back then were to explore every orifice that had not been discovered by previous hands, and explore them I did. I advise you to do the same, but please, please, for the life of you, do not make the same dastardly mistake I had made. It will cost you dearly, and please heed all warnings. Do not become like your grandfather, whose nightmares make him a lumbering insomniac, pacing barren beaches in the dead of night, watching intently as the surf rolls in and wondering what lies beneath such a captivating hydrosphere. I am afraid that that is one curiosity that I cannot rid myself of, no matter how hard I try. I must depart. The hour grows late, and the wax on the candle is just about used up. The landlord wants his nightly pay, and his nightly pay he shall receive, if it means another night without a morsel of bread. Remember that I love you, my grandchild, even if we have never met before and I only see you in the words and letters your mother sends me each year around Yuletide. Most of all, remember to ride the wave of change, and ride it smoothly, but heed the warnings of the strangers; heed them, and you shall find no trouble. Heed them not, however, and your life hangs limply from a thinning thread.