February 13, 2011

ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. -- The thought that crossed my mind this morning was so incongruous I thought someone must be behind me suggesting it. I was struggling to slide a box under the bed. This was a big plastic box designed for blankets but now full of my diaries. I know I felt "out of sight, out of mind," but that thought of getting rid of them was suddenly paramount. Burn them? I couldn't fathom that idea. I finished the task and went about my business but the thought hung on.

I've been called a life long diarist and I even teach classes on Journaling - basically on getting started. I've worked in Historical Societies, Adult Education Classes at our Community College and in Libraries. But now, I was thinking about what to do about my own collection of Journals and I continue to wonder while, at the same time, I'm shocked at what I might decide.

My diaries served a purpose in my life and the people I teach have a need to write as well for their purposes, I suppose. They need to get started and I am able to help - but that's all. Their own thoughts followed learning how. When I started, it was just what 11 year olds do. That's when I received a diary for Christmas with a little brass lock and key and the notion of privacy. No one would ever read my diary. I was free to say what I wanted to and it would be unheard of for someone to invade my privacy. Wrong! I came into the house one day and my mother and two older sisters were laughing and I saw my diary open on the table in front of them. I yelped - literally yelped. Well, now I can see the humor but not then. They were laughing at what I wrote because in my 5th grade scrawl, I made my "a" look like an "o." I had written "Errol Flynn roped [sic] two girls on his yacht." This was 1942. They apologized and then told me what it meant. "He sat them on his knee and they didn't like it." It was years before I knew the true story.

I took up diarying again in high school but learned to record my thoughts and not the news of the day. My thoughts took the form of imagining I were talking to a therapist wondering why things weren't going my way; or, talking to God and asking for Divine Guidance in passing tests and making the cheerleader squad. As always, I counted on privacy. Then, through the years of getting married and having seven children, my diary became a respite from the occupations of the day and its closing hour near bedtime.

In his poem,The Children's Hour, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow said it this way:

Between the dark and the daylight,
When the night is beginning to lower,
Comes a pause in the day's occupations
That is known as the Children's Hour.

My name for the evening pause was Mom's Journal Time and it wasn't The Dairy of a Mad Housewife, it was just "time out." I had no need to record what I did at the time and how I got through it. Every day was the same more or less. If I want to see the times, I can pull up a timeline on the Internet and see the events of every day. Things I wanted to remember always I might jot on the back of an envelope and slide it into the pages of the journal. I'll save those scraps and give them to my grown children so they can or cannot show them to their children. (I'm trying to assuage my guilty thought about what I propose doing. Burn diaries? Perish the thought!) I'm trying to find the principal gain to anyone reading my pages. I can only find that anyone leading a similar time would know that I had done it, I had lived through it and so can they.

I noted the Solar Eclipse, March 7, 1970 and worried the children might dare to stare directly into the sun. That would not be relevant now in this age of information. It might be possible today that lines at the pump at gas stations will become a reality to them as it was to me. In 1973 we might wait three hours and be allocated $5.00 worth of gas. We were in a car with anywhere from three to seven children - but we did it. The saving grace was that seatbelts and car seats were not mandatory so we had set ourselves comfortably. I don't need journal entries to replay: "Remember the Time we waited ....." Nor do my children. Did our home have typical teenage backtalk? Probably. But it didn't survive. And did our home have typical mother's tears? Probably. But I don't recall. Did our home have love and fun? Of course; that we will always remember. As much as I loved my "time out" to commune with my thoughts each day, I don't need a review of my past to learn all about it. I was there so I already I know. And, my grown children are also tangible evidence since my memories are reflections of my life through their eyes.

   

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