The-Lucky-List-Rachael-Lippincott

“It sure is,” I say, plunking down on my bed and wrapping my mom’s cardigan around myself.
He slides down next to me, putting the box in between us. I nod to it, raising my eyebrows. “What’s
that?”
He motions for me to open it, and I crack the lid to see a pile of odds and ends. Sort of like a junk
drawer.
But when I look closer, I realize what it all means. A baseball he caught for my mom at a Phillies
game, the necklace he bought for their first anniversary, an ultrasound of me as an amorphous blob.
And for the first time in three years, he talks about her, telling me stories as he tours me around the
box, the both of us smiling and laughing, tears stinging at our eyes.
ings I don’t even know about, like a receipt from the French restaurant all the way in the city
where my dad proposed to her and a piece of notebook paper with a ton of tick marks that they’d used
to count the weeks she was pregnant.
It’s such a random and wonderful assortment of stu. Stu that holds so many memories of her
that I didn’t have before, just like the list did. Memories of my mom and pieces of her that aren’t gone,
even beyond the list. That I still have yet to find.
And he kept them.
“It’s nice to talk about her,” I say quietly as I look down at the baseball.
“I’m sorry,” my dad says, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’m sorry for how much I’ve failed you these
past few years. Not talking about her. Keeping all this in a box. I mean, we’ve never been… great… at
the whole talking thing. at was always you and your mom’s thing. It was hard for me, but… it still
wasn’t right.”
“From now on, we’ll do a better job of that,” I say, smiling up at him.
He pulls out an envelope from the box, and I watch as he wipes at his eyes with the back of his
hand, smiling as he takes a piece of paper from inside. “Your mom knew I was going to be in over my
head,” he says, chuckling as he unfolds it. “So she made this little cheat sheet for me.”
He holds it out to me, and I see it’s covered in my mom’s handwriting, his very own list, filled with
advice and reminders. All of them about me.
*What to do if she gets sick: Get the chicken noodle soup from Hank’s,
black tea (tbsp of honey, 2 sugars), ask Nina for her biscuit recipe. You
can figure it out.
*What to do if she gets her heart broken: Ice cream, Joe. Ice cream is
always the answer.
And at the very bottom, a little note.
*What to do if she comes to you with something I didn’t mention: Tell
her you love her. No matter what. And that I love her too. Always.
My tears begin to fall on the paper, fat and heavy, my dad reaching out to grab it before wrapping