I was cleaning out my grandmother's attic after she moved to the nursing home. A box labeled 'Miscellaneous' yielded a cassette tape with no label, no case, just a dusty black rectangle.
I found my old boombox in the closet, still with the whistle on a lanyard twisted around the handle—the one I used as a lifeguard one summer. I blew off the dust and pressed play.
It was my voice, seventeen years old, recorded on a cheap microphone. I was talking to my future self. 'You'll know when you're ready,' I said. 'But don't forget the card games with Grandma. She always wins because she cheats and we let her.'
I'd forgotten that summer. The lifeguard job. The nights playing rummy in her kitchen, her cigarette smoke curling around the cards. I'd become a pharmacist, stable and quiet, the middle child who kept everyone steady.
On that tape, I was planning to be a musician. I talked about moving to a city with a scene, about writing songs that mattered. Then the tape ran out. I never recorded another side.
I sat there with the whistle still looped on the handle. I hadn't blown it in twenty years. But I still carry it—the part of me that wanted to make noise, to call out. I'm not a musician. But I am someone who listens, who fills prescriptions for people who need steady hands.
That seventeen-year-old was right. I did know when I was ready. I just became someone else instead. And that's okay. I'm still here, still learning how to win the game even when I'm not cheating.