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All my memories of running out to grab the newspaper when I was a kid are surrounded by a chilly fog, with the neighborhood glazed in a white haze. My dad was in his robe. I was only a child, but it was the simple things I really enjoyed, like walking alongside Dad, no shoes on, through the fall leaves and acorns. 

Pajamas warm, feet cold, air misty, I’d reach into our newspaper box and collect the newspaper. Then Dad would take it into the house and read it over coffee in his robe. I hadn’t been excited to read articles; I was excited to hold the paper. It felt vintage. It felt antique and. . . interesting. I wanted to keep it. 

When I got a little older, I stapled together a bunch of my dad’s legal-sized paper and made a fold right in the center. I had my own newspaper. 

Last week, I learned the older ways of our newspaper, how it used to work with the cutouts, the glue, the process of getting everything perfectly lined up on a page before it printed. 

In my little newspaper, I hadn’t realized it at the time, but I had laid it out the old-fashioned way. I typed up my articles on my dad’s computer, printed them, cut them out, and glued them onto the pages. The articles I’d written, they were silly. They were about my dog Daisy, my new lipstick idea, and more little kiddy headlines. But when I showed it to my grandpa that Sunday at lunch, he loved it. 

And he read those articles I’d written. 

I went through a lot of phases in my life of what I wanted to be when I grew up, and “journalist” is what I always came back to. It was the idea of that newspaper aesthetic, the ink-stained hands, the investigating, the writing, the fact that a reporter has the inside scoop that everyone wants to know. It was the way journalists dressed in the movies––the long, tan coat, turtlenecks, a hot latte in hand. 

I wanted it. 

So I strived for it, and before I knew it, I was slab-dab in the industry, just as I’d hoped to be.

I walk away every Wednesday with ink on my hands. I did the investigating. I wear those turtlenecks. I drink a lot of lattes. And I got that beautiful, long, tan coat I’d dreamed of having since childhood. I got to step into my role proudly every day, and after all those foggy fall mornings reaching up to grab the newspaper for my dad, I was finally able to deliver my very own to him each week. Starting when I was 19 years old and freelancing for the Tryon Daily Bulletin. 

After all, history always repeats itself.