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How I wonder...
Dec. 26th, 2004 02:56 pmA couple of weeks ago, my dad found my mom's journals, the carefully (obsessively) detailed notes she kept on my sister and I from the time we were each born until November 1991. For me, that's ten years of feedings, excretings (seriously, there was a table), injuries, first words, first books, birthday parties, irrational fears, first days of school, vacations across the globe...ten years that my mom obsessively chronicled and then abandoned in a desk drawer. Ten years of writing that my dad didn't know she was doing because he found them when he was looking for envelopes.
My sister didn't know she'd kept journals either. But I did.
I knew, at least, that she'd been writing all her life, and that she wrote in secret journals that she deliberately hid from my dad. (Not terribly well, but he usually didn't go prying around in her desk the way he rummaged around in my room.) I've forgotten how I knew; I might've found them myself, once, and asked her about it. Maybe she told me.
I don't know why she kept them a secret. It even looks like at one point, my dad actually wrote something in there himself (it looked like his handwriting, anyway.) Maybe she wanted to keep something of those days to herself, or for us to see someday. I also don't know why she stopped writing in them. Mine stopped on November 26, 1991. Steph's stopped two days earlier. Maybe she was worried he'd find them, and after keeping them from him for so long, was worried he'd be angry. I can't really imagine what he must have said or done when he found them.
I can't really imagine keeping something like that hidden for so long from someone who's supposed to be your partner in life. I don't lock any of my entries in here against Ronnie, and if he wanted to read my paper journals (my sappy, teen-angst paper journals) I wouldn't mind. (Much.) There's hardly anything about my dad in any of the entries; Mom noted when "Dad babysat" when she had to be somewhere else, or when he got a new car, or when he did something especially significant from my perspective. There's nothing about when we got in big arguments (although that didn't happen that often until after I was ten). It's very strange.
*****
On a lighter note, some things from the journals:
The title of this entry is my first words. (Technically, I seem to have only managed "how I won", from Twinkle Twinkle Little Star). Seems appropriate somehow.
Also, I seem to have been a pretty good kid. I was only "disciplined" a couple of times; once when I lied about napping and once when I hit Steph. (I only seem to have hit Steph the one time. She, on the other hand...well, I'll let my appearance on the local PBS affiliate speak for itself: "Sometimes she pushes me.")
Fortunately, I seem to have gotten over my fear of thunderstorms. And that separation anxiety thing. (Whew!)
My sister didn't know she'd kept journals either. But I did.
I knew, at least, that she'd been writing all her life, and that she wrote in secret journals that she deliberately hid from my dad. (Not terribly well, but he usually didn't go prying around in her desk the way he rummaged around in my room.) I've forgotten how I knew; I might've found them myself, once, and asked her about it. Maybe she told me.
I don't know why she kept them a secret. It even looks like at one point, my dad actually wrote something in there himself (it looked like his handwriting, anyway.) Maybe she wanted to keep something of those days to herself, or for us to see someday. I also don't know why she stopped writing in them. Mine stopped on November 26, 1991. Steph's stopped two days earlier. Maybe she was worried he'd find them, and after keeping them from him for so long, was worried he'd be angry. I can't really imagine what he must have said or done when he found them.
I can't really imagine keeping something like that hidden for so long from someone who's supposed to be your partner in life. I don't lock any of my entries in here against Ronnie, and if he wanted to read my paper journals (my sappy, teen-angst paper journals) I wouldn't mind. (Much.) There's hardly anything about my dad in any of the entries; Mom noted when "Dad babysat" when she had to be somewhere else, or when he got a new car, or when he did something especially significant from my perspective. There's nothing about when we got in big arguments (although that didn't happen that often until after I was ten). It's very strange.
*****
On a lighter note, some things from the journals:
The title of this entry is my first words. (Technically, I seem to have only managed "how I won", from Twinkle Twinkle Little Star). Seems appropriate somehow.
Also, I seem to have been a pretty good kid. I was only "disciplined" a couple of times; once when I lied about napping and once when I hit Steph. (I only seem to have hit Steph the one time. She, on the other hand...well, I'll let my appearance on the local PBS affiliate speak for itself: "Sometimes she pushes me.")
Fortunately, I seem to have gotten over my fear of thunderstorms. And that separation anxiety thing. (Whew!)
