Last Friday I happened to catch Wheel of Fortune.  I don’t watch it often, but when I do, it’s always fun to try and solve the puzzles before the contestants. That night, the final puzzle, which the contestant and I both answered correctly, was “Keeping a Journal.”

While that was interesting, what caught my attention was the conversation Pat Sajak and Vanna White had at the end about her keeping journals—special, individual journals for each of her children. She didn’t write in them every day, she said, but wrote in them often, recording pieces of each child’s life in his/her individual journal. Then, when the child turned 21, she presented the journals as a gift.

Unfortunately, Vanna didn’t share any other details. I hated that! I wanted to know more. Like…

Questions

• How many children does she have? In other words, how many journals did she keep? (Answer: Two. One boy and one girl. I found this online.)
• Where did she get the idea to keep a journal for each child?
• Did she begin when she was pregnant, prior to the child’s birth?
• Did she use store-bought journals, or create her own, recording her thoughts on individual pages and then binding them together?
• Did she handwrite all the entries, or did she use a computer?
• Did she include photos or other mementos?
• Was there more than one journal per child?
• Did one child have more journals than the other?
• How many of Vanna’s entries/stories did the children remember?
• Did they know what their mom was doing? Or was receipt of the journals, a complete surprise?
• If the kids didn’t know about the journals, did she give her son’s his in private so as not to ruin the surprise for her younger daughter, who wouldn’t receive hers for another three years?
• Assuming they didn’t know about the journals, what was their reaction to receiving them?
• How did reading the journals—a snapshot of their 21 years—affect them?

In the End

It’s doubtful I’ll ever learn the answers to any of my questions. Not that it matters. The important point of this story is the gifts themselves, and the commitment it took to complete them.

Borrowing from the old Mastercard commercial: The journals Vanna gifted to her children were priceless.