Diary Door

Links to My Other Blogs

This is one of my three ongoing blogs. 

My most current writing can be seen at my Riverwoods Blog - Photo Inspired Prose Poems from the Charles River at Rocky Narrows.  This is a journal where I write prose poems and reflections on my experience of nature from my home.  I'm in the process of "illustrating" this journal by including photographs as well.

News and information about my playwrighting can be seen at my Stagedoor Blog.  This is where I publicize my upcoming play productions, performances, participation in play festivals, and publication of my plays.

I hope you will visit these blogs as well, and I will return here to my parenting diary writing soon!

Kelly

Write Me A Long Letter. . .

When my middle daughter, at 14, went away to boarding school nearly two years ago, I committed to writing in her diary every day while she was away from home.  And I have.

Now, she will be home to stay at the end of June, and I find myself less and less motivated to write in her diary every day.  This is a sign of her anticipated homecoming.

She wants letters.  Mailed to her.  Recently, in a long letter to me she asked me to write her a long letter.  She had only to ask.  The long letter was soon written, and mailed, and followed by another.

Her homecoming, her wish for letters, signals a change, for now, in the diary writing.  She needs to be connected by letter NOW, and the diaries, well, they are for later.  This is a blessing of the no e-mail, limited phone calls rules of her boarding school.  Inviting us to write long letters to each other.  Today.  Now.

Kelly

Lists Help Break the Silence

Heavy snow, silent house.  I pick up my daughter's diary, my 10-year old; the last entry was February 4, 2008, an entry that opens with the line,

"Super Tuesday tomorrow!"

My intention was to write on Super Tuesday about how she came with me to vote in the primary, and how I let her fill out the ballot with our choice.  This was a personally historic moment I hoped to capture for her in the diary - casting our vote for a woman presidential candidate. 

Never got to it, though.  There it is - the silence I intended to fill, the gap in dates, the entry never written.

I've learned to focus on writing the next entry, rather than missing the last, because guilt doesn't inspire me, it silences me.  There's no room for perfectionism and the tyranny of expectations in diary writing for our children.

It's February 22, and we're in the midst of her school winter vacation.  To reconnect, I just began writing about her vacation, and I made a list of what we have done every day, starting with last Friday.  Lists are a wonderful device for reconnecting in the diary because they create a container that we can fill with as much or as little as we want. 

Saving the daily highlights for her, day by day, I realize that what I hope she remembers most is the pleasure of having free time.  Really free time.

Kelly

Waiting for Inspiration

Dare I write that I don't feel like writing?

It is cold and windy and the sky is a little blue, but my creative impulses feel trapped beneath an icy, snow-covered landscape.

I am dreaming of gardening in spring. 

There are silences in the diaries.  This is a silence of inner doldrums. 

I am craving inspiration and I am craving spring, and still, it is cold and white and winter.  The diaries wait too.

Kelly

Reconnecting to Passions

My son, at 20, has recently fallen in love with jujitsu.  Three to four nights per week he goes to the dojo, returns home smiling and sore from his workout, stimulated by challenge.  I hug him, now, his chest is a board. 

I love the way the diaries, re-visited years later, surprise me with clues long forgotten, hints of future passions:  It's January 28, 1993, he's in pre-school, and we're living in Florida.  The last line of this brief entry notes: "Your second Karate class tonight."  Two days earlier, an entry recorded on January 26, 1993, is all about starting karate:

Your very first karate class!  Daddy took you w/Perri tonight, and you were so thrilled when I got home to see you late tonight.  You just thought it was the most fun thing you have ever done.  You were so nervous you said your legs were rubbery, but you had a blast. 

He didn't practice Karate for long.  We kept him involved for a few sessions, and when we moved out of the area a year later he joined a new class where he struggled with an intimidating teacher.  Soon, another move, this time to the Boston area, and his passion for the martial arts took a long hiatus.

The diary entries are full of clues, predictions, reminders of passions put aside, forgotten, even abandoned, that may be reclaimed. 

Kelly

The Slap

It's January 13, 2002, and I write to my youngest, at 4, on a snowy Sunday, exactly seven years ago.  Then, she was pre-Kindergarten.  Now, she is pre-teen.  Yesterday we went to the mall on a quest to buy her first i-pod.  Seven years ago, we walked in the snowy woods. Amidst the turmoil of change, there is always a way to find peace.

Friday night to the pool w/the Darcy's.  Then to Amarin.  You very tired by the time we're heading home.  Acting up in the car.  Daddy speaks sharply & firmly to you at home about your threat to open the car door while he's driving.  Then you listen, shut down, tune out, turn off, go straight to bed, exhausted and probably hurt by the chasisement. 

But, it's a sign.  A sign of you not needing to be talked to like a baby anymore.  A sign that you are calling out a new level of discipline. 

I have a bad dream:

You are disobeying me, threatening to run out in the street.  I decide I must discipline you sharply:  I decide to slap you hard on the cheek!

I do it!  I hit you hard, feeling horrible.  (This, of course, I've never thought of doing in real life, you prescious, tender thing).

But I think, somehow, this is the right thing to do -- I must MAKE you AWARE.  You're a big girl now.

Ouch, I want to sob as I write this. . . Who's really feeling the sting of the slap?

I remember having a similar dream about Landon, turning twelve? or thirteen?  I remember writing it down.  Realizing it was a rite of passage dream. . . the archetypal slap, signalling the new stage, the new role.

For both of us. . . .

Monday night a beautiful time with you. 

Snow.  A light snow falling.  Not a storm.  Just a couple of inches.  It is before dinner. Landon's at Scott's.  Perri home.  I will walk Flash.  It's dark, but I have the headlight Dad gave me for Christmas. 

You beg me to come.

I will not refuse this request! 

We dress warm.

A still and quiet evening, light snow, we enter the path toward the pond, the soft straw on the road, then the frozen ridges of mud.  Pass the pond -- no skating for awhile!  Not sure where we're headed, but happy. energetic.  Peace. . .

Up toward Gram's, but we decide not to stop -- we cross the Christmas tree field, head down the road that runs under the pines, parallel to their driveway. 

Cross the street into Mayo's field, crossing, entering the horsetrail behind Katie's house, trudging up through the "Erico's" backyard, cross Course Brook Road. 

Home.  Happy.  Cold.  Hungry.  Perri wildly happy to see us. . . .

Kelly

Woods, On a Snowy Evening

Another day, another year, another ski, another child.

It's twenty years ago, January 9, 1998, my son's diary. He is eleven.

I like where this entry takes me, takes us.  Re-reading it, I return to the tranquility of the snow, the woods, my pre-teen son, his desire to be go there with me, and the good fortune to seize a moment in time, even as it is melting away.

By the time we put on our skis together and pushed off down the driveway, the snow had turned to rain.  But there was enough -- about three inches -- to make a good enough cover over the ground to have a real ski.

We had been roller skating in Norwood.  You had cheerfully rented skates despite your expectations and hope that you could blade there.  So, you just adapted by skating as fast as possible.  Even I skated and I really got the hang of it.

It was snowing hard when we arrived, and snowing hard when we left, with Ross, Cara, Tori and Perri.  The traffic was backed up badly; it took an hour and more to get to Friendly's in Medfield where we had dinner. 

Home in more snow, snow that we knew, because of the forecast of impending rain, will be with us only for, perhaps, an hour or two more, until it warms up and turns to rain.

And I had not yet skied this season.

Dad picked you up some second hand x-country skis last summer.  As son as you saw me glide down the driveway on mine, you thought of yours.

"Mom, after Ross leaves, can I go with you?" you asked while busy building a snow fort w/Ross & Perri.

"Sure!"  I skied around the back yard, waiting for you, as the snowflakes grew wetter and wetter until they felt so wet they had turned to rain drops and the texture of the snow on the ground grew sludgy.

Ross left.  Your skiis fit.  We took off in the couple of inches of snow up the dark street toward Mayo's field.  It was after nine, warming up, slippery, but like sludgy glue if you stopped for a moment.  We kept moving, climbing the gradual hill by the paddock, gliding down the hill toward the open field.

The street was fast skiing now, home around ten.  Happy.  We had grabbed the snow in the moment. 

By morning it was gone.

Kelly

This Day, January 8, 2001

More leafing through my children's diaries.  One I find, for my daughter Perri, has an entry for Jan. 8, 2001.  The cover of the diary is a frame, holding a picture of her heart shaped face, hand under her chin, she is lying on a hammock, near water, above grass, leafy green trees are the backdrop, and into the camera, she is smiling. 

She is nine.  I write:

. . . We went cross country skiing just before dinner in the dark - you, me and Dad, and you were terrific.  Your first big scary adventure.  We separated from Dad, tired and hungry, heading home, took a shortcut that was the opposite of short, had to climb the big sledding hill and all the while I wasn't sure you could hold up -- but you did. . . We ended up at the place where we left our stuff. . . a few moment before Dad, and you were happy to see him!

After dinner, I write, she joins me as I clean up dinner, sits on a bar stool, and tells me a secret.  I keep it, in her diary.

This Day Then

I go back in time through my childrens' diaries, back to this day, another year.  Yesterday, I came across an entry to my son Landon on January 4, 2001, about taking my mother to the pulmonologist.  This morning, in my youngest child's diary, I find January 5, 2001, continues the narrative of my mother's - her grandmother's - health crisis. 

To Franci, (age 3) January 5, 2001

Yesterday at noon I took you up to Grammy's while I picked up a lab sample from her that I had to deliver to the hospital for testing.  Grammy may have a lung tumor, and we will know next week.  By the time you read all this some day, the facts and mysteries of Grammy's pain and sudden deterioration three weeks ago will be solved, and I will understand with some larger perspective all the events of this challenging time. . .

Tentatively you approached her room. . . your resistance, I believe, has to do w/fear, perhaps sadness & confusion - Grammy is confined to her room, pretty much, in her bathrobe, in her chair, now w/a walker.  And, to be perfectly honest, she looks terrible.  Worse every day, not better.  You hug Abby, are stirred up by the story you heard that Grammy tripped over Abby, which is what caused her condition.  Grammy tells us she did, but we begin to doubt it's true. . . My Mom's mind and body are failing fast, and three weeks ago I took her for granted - she'd always be there, driving herself around, calling me every morning to check in, living her life w/o much help from me or anyone.

Those days are over. . . .

She asks every day for you.  'Where's Franci?  I want to see her.' It's natural for you to withdraw right now.  So yesterday, while I sat w/her, you finally joined us, shyly telling her about your dance class and you visitied, and I was supremely grateful, because I want to do things w/my mom that help her to cope each day w/these radical, painful changes.  So I rub and massage her feet and do what I can, as we all do. . .She's so vulnerable and frail, and at time, I feel so helpless.  So, you coming into the room on your own was a gift. . .

What didn't I see coming?  The mystery wouldn't be solved: No tumor would be discovered, but her health would continue to decline, and Abby, her dog, would die as my sister-in-law Billie and I sat with her, in the spot beside my mother's bed she loved, last summer, soon after my mother was moved to a nursing home.

This hasn't changed:  The way my daughter brings light to her grandmother's eyes. 

What Was This Day Like Then?

Listening to WBUR this morning, I was inspired by a wonderful BBC interview with blogger Bill Lamin and the blog he created to exhibit Private Harry Lamin's letters  from World War One: Experiences of an English Soldier.  Posted exactly 90 years to the day after they were written, Lamin said the soldier's letters are seizing present-day reader's interest as his almost century old story unfolds, a day at a time, on the blog. 

Readers, Lamin says, are captivated by the compelling daily narrative and the suspense of wondering, and having no idea, how Lamin's story ends.  They must keep reading to find out.

The ability - the need - to look back to a specific day when we moved in another landscape, another time, inhabiting a world around or inside us under changed conditions, amidst different constellations of relationships, with feelings we no longer recognize, ideas we no longer find compelling, dreams we've realized or lost, is a motivating and intriguing force for diarists and their readers.  Now, Lamin's blog has inspired me.  I'm intrigued.  I must see what's there. 

I take boxes of dusty notebooks out of the closet, flipping through the diaries of my three children, seeking entries written on January 4 in previous years.  What were we doing this day in January, last year?  Ten years ago, three, twenty? 

What have I forgotten?  What have I learned?  What didn't I see coming?  What hasn't changed?

I find three entries.   

To Perri, January 4, 1996, Squaw Peak Resort, Phoenix. 

. . . . Meeting Erica, your six-year old friend, was a spontaneous, instant attraction, as soon as the two of you had the chance to interact.  We went on a jeep tour out to see the desert with this other family of four. . . Alabama was our cowboy tour guide who packed a pistol that intrigued you. . .

This entry, I instantly remember, became a story I had published in a parenting newspaper.  Perri, age 4, on a family vacation meets a little girl and creates friendship entirely with body language, without actually speaking a single word to her. They never see each other again.  What have I forgotten?  How shy Perri was. . . perhaps still is.  What have I learned?  Her body language, her gestures, are still a map to her world.

To Landon, Jaunary 4, 2001, Home. 

As usual, you sit at the table eating cereal and drinking hot chocolate, and only when you see the bus go by do you jump up from the table, grab your bag and coat and fly out the door. . .

What's changed?  Nothing.  He hates to be early.  He hates to be late.  He likes to be on time.  He doesn't believe (how could he, why should he, so young?) in leaving time for surprise and unexpected road blocks. 

The rest of this entry is about taking my mother to a pulmonologist, exploring the possibility of a tumor.  What didn't I see coming?  How long her poor health, endless doctors appointments, and fragile condition would last.  And, still do.

To Landon, January 4, 2003, Home.

Dark.  The snow falls and falls and continues to fall, all thorugh the night.  It's a Saturday.  The snow started around 2:00 yesterday - thick and fast.

Again, the bus.  He falls asleep and misses his stop on the way home from school!  But, that morning I have insisted - we have argued and I have insisted - he bring his cell phone with him, and so he calls me when he finally gets off the bus two miles from home, and I drive through the falling snow saving him the long walk home.  He is grateful.

What's changed?  Nothing, really.  We still argue over silly things that I think he should do that he doesn't want to do, and occasionally I'm right, I never rub it in, and he thanks me.

I will continue blogging this month of January sharing entries I wrote on the exact day to my children in previous years.  I will see what was there, then, and what it means now.

Kelly