My Mother-in-Law Left a Blue Notebook in Our Hallway Closet—After My Son Was Born, I Finally Learned What She Had Been Recording Inside It

“Old lock.”

“Can I use it for my robotics project?”

I almost said no.

Then:

“Sure.”

He mounted it onto a plywood model for school.

Some absurd mechanical door system.

The lock that once represented keeping Eleanor out became a component in a twelve-year-old’s science project.