An old tape measure with someone’s pencil notes on the back is a diary nobody meant to write.

Working tools pick up a record of the work. A number scratched on the back of a tape measure was never meant to say anything about a life, and yet it tells you what someone was building, how careful they were, what they could not afford to forget. The honest traces of a person are usually the ones left by accident.

Find something in your house that was used by someone older than you: a toolbox, a cookbook, a tackle box. Look for the marks. Ask whoever is still around what those marks were for, and write the answer down somewhere it will keep.