Katherine was only eight when she overheard me talking with a friend of mine about notes. I was brainstorming some ideas for an article that later became the basis for one of the chapters in this book. That night as I crawled into bed exhausted, I found a small square of paper on my pillow underneath the spread:

Mom, I luv you slep well don't let the bed bugs bight. Love, Katherine.

I slept well indeed, with a feeling of peace and contentment. I felt wrapped in a protective cocoon, as though an angel held me in her wings. Next morning, I opened my drawer—a note from Katherine was in with my stockings, an oval note on blue paper that read,

#1 Author the Best in the World

I checked with the rest of the family; they were all abuzz. An elf had been through as we slept and sprinkled pixie dust on us all.

"Did you get one too?" "I found this in my hairbrush." "This was in my laundry basket."

She had written ten little notes, two for each of us, not more than a sentence apiece:

Dad, you look nice in your new clothes. Peter, thanks for reading to me.

and hidden them, one to find at night, one to uncover in the morning.

Have a good day Make someone smile

The whole family felt close that day. The magic powder Katherine sprinkled was like a giant can of MSG tenderizing us all, making us more gentle toward each other and kinder all day to the people we met along our separate ways. An eight-year-old had done that for us, had made our world for a little while a brighter place to be, and because of it, the people we came in contact with were made a little bit brighter too.

Katherine is eleven now, and she is still hiding notes. Yesterday I turned over a page in a manuscript section I was editing to find—

Mom, Good luck on your book you spunky Lady Love Katherine

In a single stroke, my work environment changed. I grinned to myself. See? This stuff works.

I read a day-brightener in a Spokane paper. The reporter was at the bus stop. It was rainy and cold. Everyone was glum or at best preoccupied. Another dreary day. Trudge along. Turn your collar to the cold and damp. A woman came along with a baby bundled up in her arms and stood there in the rain for a moment, as grim as her fellow passengers. Then unexpectedly, the baby let out a little happy sound—"a vowel sound," the reporter called it. People looked up and smiled, smiled at the mom, smiled at each other, and smiled inside. The sound triggered a response that for a moment lifted the gloom.

Katherine's notes are like that; they make me smile. Something shifts, feels different, just as being in the room with high-energy person can charge you up because it charges up the room, changes some say the molecular structure in the air around you.

After a fight between them, Emily wrote Katherine a letter. Emily didn't want me to read it, and Katherine respected that. ("She didn't even want me to read it, and it's written to me.") Katherine sat on the front stoop and read it to herself. I could tell she was touched.

She wrote a note back to Emily:

Thanks for the letter. It made me look at myself in a different way. It also made me want to hug you! Love, Katherine

(The "dot" on the end of the exclamation point was a little heart.)

Now You
Putting your heart on paper can change the molecular structure of the world you live in. If an eight-year-old can do it, so can you.

Copyright © Henriette Anne Klauser, 1995. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Printed in the United States of America.