The Diary
The only physical thing I have left from my childhood, other than photographs, is a pink ponytail diary with the lock broken off. Everything else was left in my closet and burned to the ground with the rest of our house when it was taken by the town through eminent domain. I was ten years old with neat unbroken handwriting when the entries, mostly written in pencil, began. I remember being afraid to commit my thoughts to pen. A pencil with an eraser felt much safer.
Once, many years later, when I was teaching a children’s creative writing class at the Blue Mountain School (a parent-run cooperative in Floyd), I brought in my diary and read passages out loud to the students. I must have been trying to emphasize the importance of keeping a journal because creative it was not. There were no signs of a published writer in the entries. In fact, it was so bad that the children laughed uncontrollably, but I was thrilled to have an early record of my own written word, however untalented it might be.
The diary started in January, which tells me it was probably a Christmas present. I did a lot of ice skating, along with taking care of “the babies” (my brothers Johnny and Joey), going to Mercurio’s Village store, church, drill team practice, and school, the childhood record reveals. There were several accounts of fights and make-ups with my best friend Laura and many melodramatic entries about my boyfriend at the time, Richard. Bad words were crossed out and secret codes were not revealed. A couple of pages had been torn out.
On January 20, 1960, I wrote a historic account of when we got flooded. This was not the time that the Coast Guard (who happened to be our neighbors) had to row us out in rescue boats, but it was the time when we went to the Memorial School where soup was served, cots were set up, and my family was interviewed for a story in the Patriot Ledger newspaper. A photographer took our picture, a family of nine then (before Bobby and Tricia), in hats, scarves, and mittens. We girls wore kerchiefs tied around our heads which fit with the refugee look the paper was going for. Jimmy, the big brother, was tying Danny’s scarf, a pose I suspect that the photographer suggested. “In front James, 14, adjusts the scarf of Daniel, 9, as Cheryl (Sherry), between the two, looks on,” the caption read.
“Dear Diary Today is Friday,” I wrote. “We got flooded and had to get vacuumed.” (I guess the word “evacuated” hadn’t shown up on a school spelling or vocabulary list yet.) Then there were several lines about how cold my feet were, how Jimmy and my mother went back to the house in hip boots for blankets, and how my father followed to check on them while the rest of us waited in the car.
I recently picked up this diary again to see if there were any entries about my brothers, Jim and Dan, who died in 2001. I found them on page 3: “My brother and stupid sister went bowling. Me and Danny will go next week.” Now I was hooked, as I flipped through the pages to see if we went the next week. Three months later in an entry from March I wrote about going bowling with my mother and father. Danny wasn’t there, or wasn’t mentioned. Did he not want to go? Was he bad that day?
There were a few entries that mentioned Jim, like this one: “A real handsome boy came down to play with Jimmy.” Or this one, “I had to go and lose my temper at Jimmy in the car. He called Richard a nut. I threw my pocketbook at him and yelled, ‘I hate to say what you are!’”
My sister Kathy was mentioned more often. She was called “stupid” or “big wheel” during this period, because she was a teenager and I was not. But when she let me go with her and her girlfriends to the Loring Theater in Hingham, where they usually had a Jerry Lewis or Elvis Presley movie showing, she was cool. “Me and Sherry played house all day. Boy was it fun. We changed everything around,” was an entry that revealed how far I really was from being a teenager as hard as I was trying to be one.
I loved seeing Jimmy and Danny’s names written in pencil in my ten year old cursive penmanship. I was disappointed that there wasn’t more written about them, but my mind was on boyfriends not brothers back then. The Richard thing didn’t last, but Jim and Dan did, not for as long as I would have wished for, but for as long as they could.
Post Notes: The above was adapted from a passage in “The Jim and Dan Stories” for the Sunday Scribblings prompt “Dear Diary.” For a photo of my updated diary, go HERE.
August 18th, 2007 11:35 am
Even if you didn’t write much about your brothers in the diary, just reading it will evoke precious memories. The only year I kept a diary was 1949 the year when MTL and I parted for thirty years. I never could bear to read it until I started writing ‘Past Imperfect’ and then I had to. It helped somewhat that he was by my side.
Strictly speaking I was under Michele at Meet an Greet, so I came here instead. Glad I did!
August 18th, 2007 12:10 pm
Hi Colleen, Lovely post – and it led me over to your website.
Thanks for visiting me – and putting me on to Squirrel Spur. I’ll keep her on my knitting favorites. Rabbit = angora = lush!!! 🙂
BTW, you remind me of a singer named Holly Near (some of her earlier pictures with long hair are very similar to the way you look)
August 18th, 2007 1:00 pm
The musings of a ten year old are amusing to read. It is sad that we don’t realize at that age how much we’ll want to be able to remember the important stuff as opposed to the trivial stuff that we think is important. Sorry about the loss of your brothers.
August 18th, 2007 1:15 pm
Hi Colleen,
Such a beautiful post — I too, get lost in my old diaries, just wondering what I did or thought. I started in my high school years, so there is ALOT about this boy or that, and funny enough, girlfriends I still have after 30+ years. I’m sorry to hear about your brothers tho — and all your losses. Glad to hear you were able to keep pictures and your sweet diary.
(thanks for stopping by my TT — and when I said “blog”, he actually had started a written journal that was published, and I figured, hey, isn’t that a blog???!)
August 18th, 2007 1:21 pm
Enjoyed reading this!
I wish I’d kept a diary as a girl. There’s so much I don’t remember.
August 18th, 2007 1:53 pm
This was a really engaging post… I enjoyed it!
August 18th, 2007 3:19 pm
what an amazingly personal post.. i do so love when i am allowed a private peek into someone else’s private life.. thank you
August 18th, 2007 4:08 pm
What an incredible gift to still have your childhood diary. Sorry about the passing of your brothers.
August 18th, 2007 4:47 pm
What a treasure to still have your childhood diary. Mine would have been nearly worthless even if they had survived moving 14 times in 12 years. Even as a kid…I wrote fiction.
August 18th, 2007 5:01 pm
I like this post too!!
I wish I had one of my diaries.
August 18th, 2007 10:56 pm
Colleen, you are lucky to have that. I didn’t keep a diary until I was in high school and it got thrown away in a fit of jealousy soon after I was married. I wish I had it now.
August 18th, 2007 11:42 pm
I think it’s interesting that of all the things I could have saved and didn’t bother to, I ended up valuing my diary. Even as I young age the written word was important to me. The diary was a prototype to many journals that followed.
August 19th, 2007 12:16 am
I have had a diary for as long as I remember. I value it above everything else.
I liked reading about yours.
August 19th, 2007 8:46 am
I hardly ever write about my brothers in my diary but my memories about them has not diminished at all.
August 19th, 2007 10:33 am
Why were the other things burned? Would you mind explaining?
August 19th, 2007 10:42 am
Good question, Raymond. I left a link under the words “left in my closet” in hopes that those who were curious would go to that post which explained more. I was 21 and not living in my childhood home when the town burned it to make way for a sewer plant. I could have gone home and got my stuff that was still there, but I didn’t and have regretted it ever since. I knew I did not want to see them burn the house, but I could have went before that. I was distracted with whatever we are distracted by when we are 21.
Because this was adapted from a larger story (the book I wrote about losing my brothers) some of the details were told in other places.
August 19th, 2007 11:22 am
I remember reading your “Second Chance” post now that I went back and read it again. I need to be more mindful of clicking on links. Thank you for providing this explanation.
It’s haunting to me: the thought of your family’s home being burnt to the ground, of the government determining its own physical wants supersede all the emotional and spiritual investment your family had in that house. It’s haunting to me, also, to think of childhood belongings left behind and going up in smoke.
I hear again and again, especially from my college students, the declaration, “I have not regrets.” I can never believe anyone that I hear say this.
I found it refreshing, although sad, that you wrote in “Second Chance” that you regret not having gone back to retrieve belongings.
I think regrets are instructive and that we ought to own up to them, not act as if they don’t exist or that we don’t feel them.
Again, thanks for taking the time to explain this to me.
August 19th, 2007 3:52 pm
I think diaries are just as meaningful for what they trigger as for what they actually contain. Your brothers may not live on in the pages themselves, but they certainly do in the memories those pages provoke.
August 19th, 2007 5:34 pm
Thank you for sharing little glimpses of your life…I can’t imagine the bittersweet feelings of reading about your brothers who are gone now. So poignant…
August 19th, 2007 5:56 pm
What a great entry point to yr own past. I never kept one up for long and rarely wrote anything of day to day. Perhaps blogging is overcompensating for years of diarylessness? 😉
August 19th, 2007 8:58 pm
Hi Colleen! I enjoyed the look into your diary from childhood–how precious are those thoughts regarding the difference between committing something to pencil instead of pen. I really enjoyed this–thanks for sharing!
~Saoirse
August 20th, 2007 2:08 am
Wow! What a cool thing – to have your diary from so long ago. I wish I had kept some of mine.
August 27th, 2007 6:01 pm
How precious! I remember those! I had a pink ponytail school bag I loved at age 10.