#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream

Goldenrod in the afternoon meadow

At some point you will turn the diaries over to your children unfinished, incomplete, imperfect as they may be.  You will wonder if you have said all you wanted to say, said it well enough, and said it in a style you admire that your children will appreciate.  You’ve misspelled words, been sloppy or sentimental, committed yourself to beliefs you no longer hold, exposed your shortcomings intentionally and, worse yet, unintentionally. You will be aware of all the ways you fear that the diaries, like your parenting, don’t measure up to what you wanted your children to have from you. 

All you have in the diaries are the stories you have paid attention to. Have you paid attention to the right ones?  Enough of the right ones?  You’ve bared your soul to your children, to their children too, perhaps – future generations who will judge you according to the standards and wisdom of their generation and not of the one that raised you.  You wonder if the quality of your parenting will stand the test of time.  You wonder if you’ve been crazy to be so vulnerable as to preserve it in the diaries. 

Yet, you’ve done your best.  At times, you’ve been excellent – the diaries reveal this.  And yet, they also capture you in your weaker moments, the way you sometimes feel trapped in unflattering photos. 

You will see that the diaries, unfinished, imperfect as they are, must be left to the future beyond your control.  And you must accept that.  Because writing diaries for your children is an act of love, and every act of love is a risk.  So, at some point you leave them at the mysterious and uncertain doorway into the future, hoping they will nurture your loved ones in the ways they have nurtured you. 

~ Excerpt from Before You Forget–The Wisdom of Writing Diaries for Your Children, Kelly DuMar

Some mornings, the ritual must shift. I went to the supermarket at 7:00 a.m. to avoid the crowds and this was like excercize, I supposed, by the time the basket is filled and overflowing, loaded into the car, unloaded from the car and put away, multiple trips to the basement fridge, up and down stairs. Rather exhausting, but a job well done, and then I don’t have time for my walk with Charlie and Suzi. So, when my youngest comes home at noon I happily go for a mid-day run with her to the meadow that’s full of the lace, her favorite place right now. It’s nice to run and talk with her and catch up on all her thoughts and feelings, and share my own under the lovely sky. In the late afternoon I go on Zoom to start the intensive manuscript conference I’m going to this weekend, and, to my surprise, a dear poet friend and colleague from the International Women’s Writing Guild is there–and I leap for joy to see her. She is a fine poet, the loveliest of women, and a poet in her 80’s, going strong and stronger every day. We break at dinnertime and I get to eat on the deck with the family; my son and his girlfriend and puppy come and keep their distance in the yard. My son has been asking me all week if I can find the diaries I kept for him in 1994 and 1995 when we moved from Florida back to New England. I have been putting it off all week, not because I don’t want to, but because I’ve been busy and to get those specific ones, I’ll have to thumb through all the journals for all three kids and check dates, etc. He asks again, tonight, and I put him off. They leave. And I realize, for heaven’s sake, Kelly–just go do it! This is why you kept them, so they would ask for them some day! So, I go up to the book cabinet where I keep them all and I open them one by one, find all of the ones he’s asking for - there are four of them. And then I ask my husband if we wants to ride with me to his place nearby to drop them. And, so we do. Special delivery: here are the journals you’ve asked for. I share the quote from my book above, because I do feel a little strange. I haven’t read these particular books in years. And they mean a lot to him. And I’m honored and thrilled that he’s asked. And still. What is he looking for, I wonder. And what will he find? In a few days I’m sure he’ll come over. We will sit in the yard together. He will play his flute. We will meditate. And then we will talk. It’s a beautiful thing that he’s asked. And that I kept them. And now they are his.