Don’t Forget to Write

by Sara Goodman Confino

And as much as I enjoyed school, it was the freedom I loved. I had found that here, and much more of it.

The world loves to destroy what it doesn’t understand. Some things can be hidden

to be protected. Some can’t.”

My father was gone by then, and I had his money, but I wanted to earn my own. And now I have forty years of experience.”

She was a leopard, camouflaged against her surroundings, but still living her life exactly as she saw fit.

And I hoped, when I looked back on my life a half century from now, I would be doing the same.

And the fact that I never married—well, he doesn’t want my life for you.”

Reading was fine, but a woman’s place was in the home as a wife and mother—even if she burned the roast.

A year. A year in that house. I couldn’t do it. Now that I had been free, I couldn’t go back into a cage and sing and pretend I was happy.

If I could have crawled into her skin and become her, I would have. She was fierce and ferocious and feminine all at the same time.

She’s got her nose in a book the whole time she’s cooking because it’s the only escape she has.”

“That desire for freedom. A gilded cage is still a cage. Most people don’t see the bars that hold them. You and I do.”

“This isn’t the end of anything except our summer. You hear me? You’re going to be a writer, and you don’t let your father or anyone else make you think you can’t do that.”

“And you do know the ending of your book.” I looked at her questioningly. “She drives off into the sunset to live exactly how she wants.”

Ada had said she was happy in her choice. I didn’t understand how, and she would never understand how I could be happy with a different one. Which made me sad, knowing even if she accepted me for who I was, there would always be a judgmental rift born of a lack of comprehension.

nodded. She would be with me for the rest of my life, even if she wasn’t haunting me. I knew that much.

But what I do know is that we live on through the memories we leave. And that is Ada’s legacy. She will live on through all of us in this room. As long as we remember her and tell our children and our children’s children of the woman who created our families, Ada will never truly die.”

“She was vain and mischievous and selfless and kind all in one. And if I live to be a hundred years old, I doubt I’ll meet anyone like her. But

And more than that, live your life the way that you want to. Not the way society or anyone else tells you to.

Because you only get this one chance.

She did exactly what she wanted. She should have been miserable. A meddling spinster with a bad attitude. But she wasn’t. She was happy and free and lived and loved exactly how she was meant to. And I don’t think there’s much more that anyone can wish for.

I just didn’t have it in me to be angry anymore, even at Daddy. He was a product of his time. And not everyone could be like Ada and reject the norms that they were raised in. Not everyone wanted to. I saw that now.

She had surprised me in Avalon with her admission that she read because cooking was boring, not because her life was.

There was no way I was doing the cooking in any scenario. “I am too.”

My darling Marilyn, Live the life you want. Love whom you want. And don’t forget to write. XOX, Ada

Thank you to my Bookstagram fam, for being my street team. I owe you all so much.

And finally, thank you to my readers, for making my dream a reality.