Lucy’s Letters to the Future
A story about change, hope and keeping memories.
On her eleventh birthday, Lucy’s aunt gave her a small tin box and a thick notepad. “It is a time capsule,” she said. “Write to your future self, and we will bury it in the garden. You can dig it up in ten years.” Lucy was thrilled.
She thought hard about what to say. Then she began. “Dear Lucy,” she wrote. “I hope you are happy. Right now, I am in Grade Five. My best friend is Mina. I am scared of spiders and swimming in the deep end. I like drawing dragons.”
She kept writing. She wrote about her family, her cat Pepper, and the song she played every morning. She listed her favourite foods, and her biggest worries. She wrote down three questions. “Do you still draw? Do you have a dog? Are you brave yet?”
She put her letter in the tin, with a drawing of a dragon, a photograph of her family, and a shiny blue marble. Her aunt closed the lid, and helped her dig a hole under the old lemon tree. They buried it together, and patted the soil flat.
Years passed. Lucy grew up. She moved to a new school, then another. She lost touch with Mina, and found other friends. She stopped drawing dragons for a while, and took up photography. She forgot about the tin.
On the day she turned twenty-one, her aunt came to visit with a trowel. “Do you remember?” she asked. Lucy’s eyes widened. They went into the garden, dug beneath the lemon tree, and lifted out the rusty box. Her hands trembled as she opened it.
The letter was on top, smelling of earth. She read it slowly. She laughed at her old handwriting, and her worries. She was no longer afraid of spiders. She had learned to swim, and had even swum in the sea. “Yes,” she whispered, “I am a little braver.”
She answered her own questions on a fresh sheet of paper. “I draw less, but I still draw. I do not have a dog yet, but I have two cats.” She looked at the blue marble in her hand, and smiled. It was just as shiny as she remembered.
That evening, she wrote a new letter, and a fresh time capsule went into the ground. She wrote to the Lucy of thirty-one, and she gave her a few questions of her own.
✨ Key Takeaways
- Writing down our hopes and worries helps us see how much we change.
- Looking back can show us how far we have come.
- Keeping a few memories safe is a gift to our future selves.
💬 Questions for Discussion & Reflection
- What did Lucy put in her time capsule?
- What did she discover when she opened it?
- What would you put in a time capsule for yourself?
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