April 23, 2020
Still alive, still healthy, still working (hunkering down in my bookstore…all alone), I have allowed myself to have a few hours of free time devoted to wandering here and there around the home castle and puttering like a honeybee in a hive looking for a job that pleases her fancy. What’s a diarist to do during coronavirus lockdown besides write about it? Answer: re-read your old journals.
Since it was around the anniversary of my brother’s death on my mother’s April 15th birthday, I pulled out this 1998 diary. Yes, it says “addresses,” but I have frequently re-purposed other bound books. This one had glossy pages with pictures of horticultural interest. I am also a gardener and a houseplant collector.
I discover many things when I take a look back at my life. First, I am grateful for the opportunity to read a portrait of my former self and my life experiences, in my own words, expressed and written when it happened. Who can remember the past so exactly from memory? Can you remember what you looked like as a teenager except through old photos? It is the same with a written record. Memory changes things, generally a whitewash. You forget what you said, or did. You color it brighter or darker than it was. The details fade. When I re-read I exclaim “oh,” and “oh,” and I am astonished. I remember the truth.
Second, I see that I wasn’t such a bad writer. All journals are “first draft.” No revisions. The thoughts spring from deep within your psyche, free flowing, with no censor. The writing follows no rules as to form or content. There should be a separate category of literature just for journals. But there isn’t. We diarists are the illegitimate offspring of the writers’ world.
My brother died of complications from meningitis overlaid on a lifetime of alcoholism. He died conveniently on my mother’s birthday as his parting shot. It took him 55 years to complete death by alcohol and a hedonistic lifestyle. I laughed out loud at his funeral because the minister (who did not know him) made some mistakes while describing his stellar life. The pages of writing I did about my brother’s death and my feelings about him were the most honest eulogy anyone could have written. I never hated him. My love seeps through the writing even though I said some bad things about him.
There were other things in that journal, such as some clear signs that my partner was unhappy with all the work on the farm and would be leaving me for a life of freedom and new horizons. There was joy, as well. I re-lived the birth of my memorable buck goat, Hemingway, and his sister, Anais. (It was a literary names year on the farm.)
The third benefit of looking back in your diaries is you discover the actual date of when something happened. Now I extract those dates to prepare for the creation of a timeline of my life. Someday, if I ever retire, I may finish that project.
So, if you are looking for something to do during the pandemic’s “gift of time,” I highly recommend becoming a time-traveler and diving into your old journals for the memories and insights. You will be rewarded.
National Diary Archive 