2021: Accessing Another Chance

“Here. This is for you,” my aunt said, her tiny salt-and-pepper curls framing her silver-rimmed glasses. As soon as she had placed the box in my hands, my aunt turned to walk down the driveway. Strange that she would give me a gift as she was saying goodbye. “I want you to open it by yourself,” she said, pulling on the car door. She paused to smile at me. “You’ll know why.” 

 The box was barely big enough to hold two decks of playing cards. I could tell there wasn’t any jewelry inside it. The rectangle shape was wrong, the thickness didn’t feel right. Forever the kid at Christmas, I shook it – no sound. The only thing I heard was my aunt driving away. What could it be? Back inside, I pulled the light blue bow. It came apart easily in my fingers. The package was flawlessly wrapped, with crisp folds and perfectly placed tape – a reminder of my aunt’s methodical attention to detail. As I removed the paper and eventually the lid of the box, I could smell that faint cloud of nostalgia – as if a piece of an old library book had been placed inside. Turns out, I wasn’t far off. 

A small red hardback book was nestled inside the box. On the book was some gold lettering, unclear and mottled like an out-of-focus picture from days gone by. I brushed my hand across the cover. As I pulled it closer, the title became clear: Another Chance. 

I opened the first page to see if I could discover who had written it. From the faded lines and careful penmanship, I realized what I held in my hands.  

I was holding my grandmother’s diary.  

She had started writing it when she couldn’t head off to university because of what was happening in the world. 

The first entry was dated Friday, September 28, 1945.  

As I flipped through the pages, a new image of my grandmother began to take shape in my mind’s eye – like seeing the San Francisco skyline after the fog fades away. Inside the pages I met a bright young woman, trying to find her place in the world during a difficult time in history. She saw the global turmoil as a chance to begin again.  

Going away to college was a dream deferred, due to the war. Her entries reminded me of the frustrated graduates from May of 2020, unable to go through a traditional ceremony because of social distancing restrictions. What does it mean if you can’t go to school like you’d always planned, my grandmother had wondered.  

She had to take a job keeping the books at a nearby lumberyard. She enrolled in classes at a local university extension, seeing somehow in the midst of disappointment a chance to reset. Perhaps even to head in a new direction.  

She felt a lot like what you and I are feeling right now, I guess. 

The world wasn’t what she had asked for, but it was the world nevertheless.   

As I held those yellowed pages in my hands, reading her words, hearing her voice from a century long past, I knew my grandmother in a new way. The writer of this diary wasn’t the woman who had read to me as a child or who had baked my favorite cookies because I got a good grade. She was an intrepid soul who wouldn’t let global conditions keep her from becoming who she was meant to be. Can you relate?  

What’s your diary entry, today?  

Are you ready for another chance?  

Some call this time, this COVID-colored world, the Great Pause. You and I are being handed opportunities to re-examine the boundaries that surround the things that really matter. And, yes, your work and your career really matter. We have a chance to redefine success, to reshape the future – even if that journey starts inside your home office. The question is: what are you going to do with your chance? Here’s what my grandmother shared in her first entry: 

I know I miss everyone. So I guess the real reason is that I’m just scared. I’m afraid I won’t make good of it all. What after college ... will it be Frank? [Spoiler alert: it wasn’t. Sorry, Frank.] Will it be someone else? What of the courses that I’m studying for? Am I headed off for a career right now? I’m going to write a letter to the people back at home. Oh, how I wish I were there.  

Are you feeling a little homesick right now? For some, that word has more than one meaning. Perhaps you’re wishing for the way things were, which is the traditional definition of homesickness: longing for a place that’s different than the one you’re in now. Or maybe, for you, you’re sick of home. Either way, you’re spending time longing for something that was normal before but isn’t here now. Because the future looks very uncertain. Believe me, I know the feeling. I hear you. 

What is it that you’re missing most? Your rituals? Routines? Boundaries? Quiet children and animals that won’t interrupt your Zoom calls?  

An excerpt from "Working from Home" (Wiley) Read more here: https://bit.ly/wfh-karenmangia