Family Fortunes: My dad ruined my autograph book but I treasure his message now

In the late 1940s, when I was about 14 years of age, it was the height of fashion among us schoolgirls to own an autograph book. These books were usually about 8in by 5in, with a hard cardboard cover and pages of different colours: pink, blue, green, cream and beige.

They were not for collecting the signatures of celebrities. Celebrities were really quite unknown to schoolgirls in small-town Ireland. Instead we got all our friends to write in our book. Sometimes they would write favourite verses of poetry, or what we considered very witty remarks.

My father was the most important person in my life at that time, so of course I asked him to write in my book. He wrote, “Daughter, if you do a bad thing with pleasure, the pleasure passes and the badness remains: if you wearily do a good thing, the weariness passes and the goodness remains.”

Can you imagine just how mortified I was? He had ruined the whole book. How could I possibly show it to my friends? I would surely be laughed at and made fun of and, even worse, my beloved daddy might also be laughed at. I put the book away quietly.

However ,over the intervening 67 years I have come to treasure this advice and to realise how wise my father was. Perhaps he knew, back then, that it would be many years before I appreciated those words of wisdom.

My autograph book has long since disintegrated and disappeared, but somehow I had enough sense to rescue that blue page with my father’s handwriting. It is very faded and tatty now, but it is one of my most treasured possessions. The wisdom still shines out and are as apt now as all those years ago. We would love to receive your family memories, anecdotes, traditions, mishaps and triumphs.

• Email 350 words and a relevant photograph if you have one to familyfortunes@irishtimes.com. A fee will be paid