Memory Lane

I have this overwhelming desire to read over my old diaries. The problem is that they are in my college trunk, up in my grandmother's attic. Maybe when we go up to visit the next time, with our new/old car, I'll take that trunk back with me. It has everything from my years before the city. It's all the stuff from before I didn't have any room in my city apartments for nostagia. I want to read over my adolescent entries, looking at curly writing that I can't believe was mine, seeing if I've truly changed at all since then. I remember when I got older, worried that someone would find those diaries and judge me for my language, my thoughts, I took a big black magic marker and marked over all the "bad" things I wrote: "Mom is a real {BLACK MAGIC MARKER} today. Sometimes, I really think I {BLACK MAGIC MARKER} her." I wish I hadn't done that.

My mother after all was the person who told me to never write anything down that I didn't want somebody else to read. I couldn't help it. I loved to write and my diary was my sanctuary. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that when I wrote my sister a letter home from college, telling her how wasted I was and how I had hooked up with a guy that I longed for and that I don't even remember what we'd done but didn't care because I LOVED him, that my sister would leave that letter in the bathroom for my mother to find and read. Mom was right. I shouldn't have written that, for I did NOT want HER to read it. It was not until my mother asked me to go for the dreaded walk that I knew something was up. Awkward silence for about a mile until she finally exploded on me. That was her way. Hold it in until the fury replaces any reason and explode. My response naturally was "Was that letter addressed to you? No. So you shouldn't have read it at all. Ever hear of the word 'privacy'?" Because of moments like that, I vow to give my daughters privacy, should I have daughters. Sons, too, of course. I vow to never read their diaries. It won't be easy, though. I am very nosy and I like to know everything that's going on in the lives of the people I love.

Anyway, back to my trunk full of memories and all of the things that I've kept through the years. I really want to go through it all, share it with my husband. Let him see another side of the girl that he married. Explain to him why I kept certain things and show him my poetry and drawings and yearbooks. I don't know if he'd find it as much fun as I would, but he'd have to sit through it anyway. Nostalgia is the one emotion that I have a hard time dealing with. Whether it is a longing for the past, or just the general rememberance of things that have come and gone, it makes me kind of sad. Yet, I still want to look back and touch those relics that I've saved. Though it may not have been an extraordinary childhood and the things I've kept and the words I wrote may not mean much to anybody else but me, that's the point. I didn't write in those diaries for anybody else to find and read. I wrote so that I could.