Journals

I kept journals for the majority of my teenage years. In my early twenties, I went back and catalogued them with their dates on the covers using index cards and tape. The earliest journal I have labeled is from 2005. The last journal I have labeled dates to 2013. I have another journal I've written in from 2013 to the present but it is not finished and therefore not labeled. I don't write in it often anymore, but if I have private thoughts, that's the journal I add it to.

I never used anything fancy. The one subject college rule notebooks were my go-to. They were cheap and easy to find. The colors were a plus. These notebooks are the ones you would have been after if you wanted to know my deepest darkest secrets in high school. 

The oldest notebook is 20 years old!

Nobody cares about my secrets anymore. Honestly, I don't even remember half of what's in these journals.  Will I ever go back and read them? Probably not. I don't think I want to reread any of them because they're cringey and full of my past I'd honestly rather forget. My husband asked me if I would just get rid of them. No, I wouldn't do that either. There's something sacred about having so much of my life chronicled within the pages of notebooks. I don't know what I'm going to do with them, but for now, they're taking up real estate in a cardboard box.

I did retrieve one journal which I did want to reread. This journal was a portion of my lab credits for my first college English class as a senior in high school. I didn't take AP English my senior year and I never regretted it. I had the best professor who is still my friend today. I retrieved this journal and did want to reread it because I had turned it in to my professor once upon a time as a portion of my grade. It wouldn't hold my deepest secrets, but it had to include something worthwhile.

It was a quick read. There were 30 entries written, each in three paragraphs of approximately three sentences. That was the requirement to earn our lab credits. As an adult reading my writing, it was still a little cringeworthy. Maybe I say that because it was my own life I was reading about. I was very much a 17/18 year old high schooler working part-time after school with the same struggles that most teenagers have - emotional turmoil, friendship, and the woes of my job. I can't say there's anything profound about the writing within this notebook and it won't be making any bestseller lists, but I enjoyed rereading it.

Had I not gone through and reread this journal, I would have forgotten about the memory when I drove through a rich neighborhood with a friend and admired the fancy houses and large yards. I would have forgotten about the memory when I took my friend's girlfriend shopping for a homecoming dress when I barely knew her at the time. I would have forgotten about the time my grandmother called my dad's cell phone number by mistake instead of dialing mine because she got confused. And although these are rather "insignificant" memories in the grand scope of life, they were fun memories to relive and relearn about myself. 

Unearthing my journals made me reminisce and miss the time when I used to have to just sit and write. As I write this blog, I'm racing against time knowing I have to change out of my loungewear and get to work in less than 45 minutes. Yes, I work from home and my "office" is probably 30 feet from where I'm sitting as I write this, but it's a mental item which needs to be completed. Life has drastically changed for me. Where I used to have time to sit on the carpet of my bedroom floor and write in journals about boys, I now make sure I have enough food in the refrigerator, leave the house on time to pick up my child from school to make sure she's not forgotten, and make sure the credit cards and utility bills get paid on time. 

Considering the fact that I have forgotten to pay a credit card bill (I believe 2 to be exact), forgotten about a scheduled city permit check (I was a week postpartum with my first!), and forgotten countless times to close the washing machine so the load would start washing and instead having to refill the washer a second time because of the automatic drain feature, the headspace to be able to sit down and reflect on life and write about "simple happenings" doesn't happen much anymore.  There are so many of these everyday events and moments which are not logged because there simply wasn't time or energy to sit down and do it. 

The decade or so of my life which lives within these journals will forever be remembered as a painful but special time of my life because there may never be another decade in which I write so many things down so meticulously. I used to want to remember everything I could in my head and keep it as a memory. As I got older, memories naturally faded and only the most prominent and significant stay long-term. And honestly, it's probably better that way. These will be there if I ever want to revisit them.

For now, I don't. 

The List

I don't actually know what a healthy level of reading and writing should be at the kindergarten level, but I'm pretty sure my daughter is on par if not ahead of the game. It's been a lot of work keeping up with her homework, but she's learning a lot so we choose to put forth the effort. 

She started writing "lists" recently, but it's really just a bunch of scribbles on a piece of paper. She made an H-E-B list as well as a B-B-q list. I'm not really sure what B-B-q is supposed to be, but I know where she got her H-E-B inspiration from, haha. 

She kept telling me she was going to make a shopping list and give it to me. So I told her, sure, make your list and give it to me. Anything she can write down, spelled correctly, and read to me accurately, I will purchase at the store. 

I might be shooting myself in the foot with this offer because she's a lot smarter than I think (maybe). So I gave her two caveats:

- She has to do this before her 6th birthday or the offer expires.

- There's a $50 limit on what I buy off her list.

Oh, and obviously no parental help on this list. That should be understood, but I'll have to tell my husband just to make sure we're on the same page. *You're reading this, right? Got it? 😝*

Let's be honest. If the kid figures out how to spell lobster, and adds the word whole in front of it, I'm screwed. Especially if that's not the only item on the list! (Academically, she has learned all the phonetic rules to piece together those two words. 😱)

I'm kind of excited actually. I legitimately want to see what she would write on the list and what she actually wants me to buy. "Peas" is easy, but she doesn't like peas. Probably wouldn't want "beans" either. She might write "rice" but I can afford that one. 

Am I a genius or a crazy mother for doing this? Anyone out there want to try this for your kids now?? 😄

Dear Mommy, ; Love, Mommy

My 7th grade English teacher gave me a journal and a locket when my mother died. She told me to write my memories of my mother so they could be remembered. I'm not sure I wrote down memories of her, but I ended up writing letters to her. I started each one with "Dear Mommy,". In the first ten years or so, they were frequent. I would write almost monthly. In a way, I felt forced to because I wanted to somehow keep her in my life and feel like she was still there. But then, the letters became less frequent. After getting married, I didn't write any letters to her until I got pregnant. I think in a way it's symbolic of the grieving process I experienced represented by the frequency of the letters. Life became more normal without her and slowly her presence faded. Doesn't mean she mattered any less to me, but it was a new normal.

She kept a diary in the last few years of her life. Most of it was written in Chinese. She would write down the happenings of the day, the progression of her prognoses, and include tidbits about what was happening in our lives as well. She never shared it with me or anything, and I didn't think much about it. After she died, my grandfather requested to have her diary. I never asked him about what was written in it and he never shared. Perhaps it was more sentimental just to keep the diary than actually reading through her logs. He died less than a year later and the diary moved along with my grandmother because she could not live alone. When I spent summers with my grandmother during the last few years of her life, I'd occasionally look for the diary, but I never found it. Even if I did, I doubt I would have been able to translate most of it.

I don't really have anything in writing left from my mother. That's something I wish I had more of. The most I have in writing from her is a newsletter journal from the first grade. Throughout the school year, about six times total, we would write letters to our parents about what we were learning or what events were happening at school. Then, we would take the journal home and our parents would read our letters and write one back to us. My reply letters were written by my mother.

About two months ago, I went out and bought a journal. If you've known me a while, you'll know that I've journaled and written diaries for years and years. But what you may not know is that I have always journaled in the cheap spiral notebooks you used to be able to find on sale for 10 cents each during the school supply sales. I wasn't into the fancy notebooks with designs or bound in leather because I felt like you couldn't neatly shelf them - it wouldn't be consistent. So I figured the simple spiral notebooks were easier to keep organized. Ironically, they're all boxed away sitting on a shelf somewhere. I don't know what I will do with them. Perhaps when my daughter goes through her teenage rebellious phase, I'll bring out the journals and let her read about my own teenage rebellious phase.

Anyway, the journal I bought is for her. I started writing letters in them before she was born, and whenever I get a chance or have something worth noting, I write it down in a letter to her. Jonathan writes in it occasionally, too.  Every letter in there I write ends the same way: Love, Mommy.

I'll probably still write letters to my mother. Perhaps not as often or as frequent, but now, I am also Mommy.