Vol. 36
IN THIS ISSUE: Essay | Now Read This | Listen Up | Final Frame
How do you remember? Do you care to?
I am a longtime keeper of a diary. I rarely write every single day but still, I’ve kept a handwritten journal, with varying degrees of regularly, since about the age of 8. And I still have every journal, stored in plastic bins and hauled along on dozens of moves over the years of my life. I even look back and read them from time to time.
I’m no Samuel Pepys, but then again, that’s probably for the best.
I like carving out time to sit down and remember the ups and downs of my days and weeks, the things I’m grateful for, those things that I’m struggling with and want to figure out.
I’ve recently become more curious about why and how other people keep journals. Like so many personal and seemingly ordinary things in life, until recently, I’d never really thought about the way I write in mine or how it might differ from others. We take it for granted and just assume everyone else does it in pretty much the same way. And then you ask, or are told, and the answer kind of blows your mind.
This happened to me recently, when my partner C asked me how I write my journal entries. I had to think about it for a moment before answering, because no one had asked me this before: For a long time, I’ve written mostly straight-forward accounts of activities, events, weather, news, and my relationships. I included bits of introspection and emotional venting, but part of me has always imagined writing for posterity–for a potential future audience. Who that audience would be, I’ve never taken it so far as to guess or assume. But I’m a history nut and, apparently, a bit egotistical, and I thought it might be useful for someone someday to be able to look back at my journals. Some of my favorite insights into the past have come from regular people keeping journals or writing letters. So then, “For history!” I tell myself. I guess I’m not so different from Pepys after all.
C found this fascinating. Her approach to journaling, it turns out, is almost the polar opposite. She told me she mostly uses it to stream-of-consciousness out her thoughts and feelings at any given time, with almost no context. It’s a space for her to work through emotional questions and challenges.
“Why would I need to explain the context of something that’s about me to myself?” she explained, almost incredulous. Duh, Emily. I mean, it makes sense. If your audience is just yourself, you don’t necessarily need to narrate a scene.
It made me realize that my approach often meant I didn’t allow myself to be really raw and honest. There was always this potential outside observer keeping me in check, intentionally or not. In recent years, I realized that wasn’t, you know, particularly helpful. And it was weirdly vain, to boot.
And so my entries have changed over time. I allow myself more often to just vent, or meander and observe, or write half-formed poetry, or dig into memories and feelings (this has coincided, probably not coincidentally, with getting myself into therapy). I still include accounts of events and activities and news. I open almost every entry with commentary on the weather. I find it very grounding, to be honest. I am who I am!
C admits that she wishes she did sometimes include more context, or at least people’s names, in her entries. Just to help with her own recollection. Because our own memories fade or get distorted over time. Sometimes that’s for the best (people with perfect recall are said to be plagued by emotions that never settle or dull or change at all with time, because every experience holds the exact same sharp immediacy as when it first happened). Sometimes, though, it’s good to be able to look back at an old journal entry—or photograph, or home movie—and be reminded of a time, place, feeling, and/or person that you’d forgotten. Sometimes it’s revelatory—being able to add more clarity or context to a memory that had become tunnel-visioned down to one narrow segment can change my whole perspective on something that I thought I knew or understood. Sometimes remembering is just comforting. Sometimes it’s even healing.
I was going through a bin of keepsakes the other day and came across an old diary that belonged to my mom. She kept it for two brief periods late in her life–initially to track some pain she was having in her hip that she thought was tied to the metal rods in her back. The rods had been placed there a few years before, as part of a massive surgery to correct a lifetime of untreated scoliosis (apparently the prevailing medical wisdom of her 1950s childhood was to “let her grow out of it.” As you might imagine, that…didn’t go well).
There’s a couple years of break between that section of entries and the next, when she begins writing again as a way to keep her mind and memories sharp. This was after a series of surgeries and other interventions to treat a recurring, benign cyst that interfered with her pituitary gland functions and eyesight. The initial surgery went well, but the cyst came back, and subsequent attempts to treat it led to a series of infections, brain damage, and other complications that would eventually, in September of 1997, when she was just 50 years old, lead to a massive hemorrhage that took her life.
The entries are from spring of 1997. I was 15 and a freshman in high school at the time. My older sister was off at college, my older brother just about to graduate and enter the world. I remember being heavily involved in music and softball and theater, always on the go, already perfecting my method of being so busy that I didn’t give myself much time to sit with the pain and stress and fear related to my mom’s illness.
She seemed to notice this, too, though she never called it out for what it was. The entries are mostly dry accounts of her days–a lot of church related friends and activities, in her role as pastor’s wife. She only briefly touches on how she feels about her ongoing medical issues, giving fleeting glimpses of what I have to imagine must have been overwhelming worry, stress, and frustration. She was, in her own way, doing exactly what I used to do with my journaling. I can’t pretend to know her innermost reasons for doing it. All I have to go by is what she says in the diary.
I wish she’d said more. I wish the diary was more than a tantalizing glimpse of her inner life during the last months of her life. But then, if there was an imaginary outside observer sitting on her shoulder while she wrote, it might well have been me. And she might not have felt comfortable sharing her deepest, darkest thoughts and feelings with her kids. My mom was a woman raised in a button-up, conservative, white middle class world of 1950s America after all. There were things you didn’t let your children–or even your husband or friends–know about you. Maybe you didn’t even let yourself know about them, or write them down.
I can do some reading between the lines, though. Several times, she mentions that my dad was coming home very late from work (I could read into this in a hundred different ways, but that’s an essay for another day). She talks about not being able to drive because of her condition, and how frustrating that is. About trying to build up and maintain her physical stamina by taking short walks to the mailbox.
The entries are also filled with frequent references to how active I am, how she doesn’t know where I get the energy, and how she worries it’s negatively impacting my schoolwork (surprise: it was).
There’s one entry in particular that sticks out to me, and not just for the beautiful cursive handwriting:
Sat. May 18: Walked to mailbox today. Sat down on way back. Yeh! Went to Em’s music awards. She got a pin for participation. No scholarship this year which is ok since I can’t drive her to lessons anyway. She and Alysia stayed for dance then got to bed late. She sure looks tired! She’s had a busy few days. Let’s hope she can get her homework done tomorrow night, otherwise she may have a [??] like she did this Thurs.
My parents never had a lot of money, even when both of them were working–my dad as a Presbyterian minister, my mom as a substitute elementary school teacher. But especially with mom unable to work and in and out of the hospital so much, medical debt started to take its toll (my father would eventually have to file for bankruptcy in the wake of her death). They always worked hard to provide us with opportunities, nonetheless.
I’d been interested in learning to play the drums since I was in diapers and finally had the opportunity to take private drum lessons in the 7th grade, largely thanks to a small community music scholarship. I remember that my mom diligently drove me to those lessons once a week for two years, where a very kind, very patient, long-haired metal guy taught me the ins and outs of rock and jazz drum kit rhythms.
I don’t remember why I didn’t win the scholarship again in 9th grade. I was still heavily involved in the school band, in addition to playing in a punk group called Milk. It’s possible I forgot to apply or didn’t take it seriously. I definitely didn’t fully understand or appreciate at the time just how precarious our financial situation was. My parents mostly kept that sort of thing secret from my siblings and me.
But the way mom both makes a point of mentioning that I’d have to stop going, but that “it was for the best” since she couldn’t drive me anymore, caught my attention. It says a lot while saying very little, I think. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but it feels like my mom is trying to convince herself that “it was for the best,” while actually feeling much more sad and frustrated–by her inability to drive, by her poor health, by my losing out on the opportunity–than she’s letting on. Maybe it’s self-censorship. Maybe it’s her version of faking it ‘til she makes it.
Whatever the case, once I set aside my initial frustration that the diary isn’t all I’d hoped for, I’m ultimately just so grateful that it exists at all. Even this small, incomplete window into my mother’s internal world is priceless to me now.
I don’t know if my journals will ever be that for someone who loves/d me. Maybe it’s strange, but I find it comforting to think that they could be. If nothing else, ultimately, my journals are for current and future versions of me. I’ll write and try to do right by that person, who may very well start to lose their memories entirely—and that’s enough.
(If history ends up benefiting from it, too? Well, my silly little ego still doesn’t hate the thought.)
Now Read This.
“Why Is Madison a hub for race fraud?” [Rodlyn-Mae Banting & Jenny Fierro for Tone]
The depth and extent to which LeClaire was able to deceive so many people doesn’t reflect Indigenous communities’ naivete or gullibility. Rather, it begs to question the systems in place that allowed them to carry out their racial fraud for so long and with such intricacy.
“What the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s redistricting ruling represents: Hope” [Dan Schafer at The Recombobulation Area]
This is a profound moment for the state of Wisconsin. These gerrymandered maps have warped politics in the state for the 12+ years they’ve been in place, creating outsized Republican majorities, unaccountable to the public and virtually impenetrable to any of the typical change that could typically be delivered by voters.
“The skeleton in the chimney” [Doug Moe for Madison Magazine]
A cold case in Madison gets new life thanks to advances in technology and the commitment of a group dedicated to giving names to the forgotten dead.
“Maybe the best way to oppose facism is to fucking oppose it” [Noah Berlatsky at Everything Is Horrible]
I don’t know how to put it any more clearly. "If Trump is taken off the ballot his supporters will respond with violence" is literally saying the law is whatever fascists want it to be because you're afraid of them.
Yay! “A Case for Hope: The Victories Trans People Won in 2023” [Erin Reed at Erin in the Morning”
2023 was one of the toughest years for transgender people ever, but it was not without its victories. I list the biggest ones here.
Boo! “Only 5 Days Into the Year, 125 Anti-Trans Bills Have Been Filed” [Erin Reed at Erin in the Morning”
This year's anti-trans legislative surge resembles the second wave of a tsunami, leaving little time for recovery from the initial impact. States are now revisiting anti-trans bills that failed in their own borders but succeeded elsewhere, effectively borrowing legislation from one another to enact the full gambit of discriminatory laws. Among these are book bans, drag bans, bathroom bans, and forced outing bills.
“America is killing its mothers” [Lyz Lenz at Men Yell At Me]
I understand the impulse to ask where the happy mothers are. We are here. But our happiness has nothing to do with the daily Rube-Golbergian-herculean task of simply finding someone to care for our kids while we work. In an era where our rights to bodily autonomy are being taken away and mothers are facing jail time for stillbirths — and only a few years out from historic shutdowns that crippled mothers by forcing them to be the social safety net — branding the life-threatening decision that motherhood has become as a marketing problem is missing the forest for the cute baby snuggles.
Listen Up.
Need some lovely, chill, instrumental music to help you through your work day, meditation session, writing spring, or anything else? The excellent Flow State blog has put together its annual list of favorite releases of the year. I also recommend signing up for their daily newsletter, which recommends (almost entirely) instrumental music from throughout the decades, first thing in the morning and once a day.
Final Frame.
Did you know that the Wisconsin River in the winter is the prime time and place to spot bald eagles? Ferry Bluff Eagle Council organizes Bald Eagle Watching Days every January (this year it’s Jan. 13 & 14), which involves bird-watching stops staffed with volunteers, presentations, and other fun, free, open-to-the-public activities.
Me? I had the privilege of spending the weekend at a friend’s cabin on the river, where I got to watch them from the front window. At highest count, there were 51 (!!) bald eagles hanging out along the river. By far the most I’ve ever seen!
Go out and look at some of these majestic m-fers. And listen. Their calls are delightfully high-pitched and warbly.
‘Til Next Time.
Thanks for reading and for standing up for your friends and neighbors! Take care of each other out there.
Always feel free to hit me up with questions, comments, suggestions, and tips on great hiking spots or good books. And please feel free to forward this email to a friend and/or hit that subscribe button. xoxo
i journaled the same way until I read "We Both Laughed in Pleasure". Although it was always extremely sporadic. Usually I'd write about a new crush or fling or boyfriend, then nothing, and then write again saying something like, "Well, that didn't work out like I planned". ha.
I did keep some really raw and sad journals when I was a depressed young teen, but they were too painful to keep around.
"We Both laughed in pleasure" is a collection of journal entries by Lou Sullivan, a gay trans man who grew up in Wisconsin(!!) in the 70's, and died in SF in the 90's. It's carefully curated (but not censored, besides aliases!) from thousands of handwritten journals by his friends and accomplices, finished only recently, but it caused me to question why I had this rigid thought process around my journals. I also have less of a filter when I type, so while I was reading it I started writing on my laptop. I now have a doc that I add to every year, one for 2022 and one for 2023. I think that taking a less performative approach has been really beneficial, and it allows me to understand what I was going through at those times when I read through and find patterns.
I highly highly recommend the book!! It's a beautiful, intense, complex picture of a lost queer elder, someone I felt a lot of kinship to.
My mom has suppressed her emotions for so long, it's really a glass case of explosives at this point. I found an old worksheet she'd filled out with a mentor of some kind about how directionless she felt as a young stay-at-home mom in very rural & conservative North Dakota. It's like a glimmer of the discontent she can't really talk about now.
Thank you for sharing.