Journality

While preparing for my YW lesson on Journals, I was taken back to previous efforts of my to work on a ‘life history’. I realize, that seeing as I am young-ish and have little life history to speak of, this may seem overzealous. However, I am talking about the memories that I have, the small ones that mean so much and are so telling about your life. When I was 15 I started a project to write down and place my memories into context (time, situation, year/grade in school etc) so that I could see how things evolved, and how I changed depending on which memories and events lead to others... A rather overwhelming undertaking, I see now, but I was ambitious and naive (probably still am :). I appropriated my sister’s un-used school notebook, spiral bound with the pages that don’t rip out nicely, and started my work. I made lists of random memories I had, and tried to place them within the fabric of my life....

And why am I telling you all this? Does it matter if I can pin point exactly which fall storm it was that broke the window in our house when I was home alone with my siblings? Does it matter if I can remember how old I was when I was babysitting a 7 month old child and I locked myself out of the house, with the baby still in the house? Will it matter?

No... not really. Nor do you probably care. But. For that one person that will want to see what I am made of, that may be interested in the average life of Marianne, for the prosperity that may care, for the personal discovery and understanding I gain... I write to you.

The point of this seeming collecting of ramblings (no sense in disguising the matter) is that while looking through the notebook begun so long ago I found that I had already forgotten many of the memories I had written down, the small details that had seemed so important at the grand age of 15. That already, even in my current relative youth, I had lost something. This is not to say that I wish to remember everything--no no, I am happy to forget the careless haughty taunts of the school yard both to me and from me--but the simple things, those I want to encapsulate:

The moment of sitting on the back porch step with my father eating breakfast in the sun, or being taken out after school for my birthday ice cream when we didn’t hardly have money for it.

And so I here resolve to more earnestly transcribe the memories I have, the stories I tell, the ones that I hear about me--and those of Eric as well. So if I have children of my own, they will see that I did once throw sand at the neighbor kids, that I did runaway from my Aunt instead of being yelled at, so that they will know that I understand and love them anyway.

And with this resolve I challenge you, any one of you who may read this, to start today--even if it is only writing down one memory a day, or per week. Write down something. So that when your children/grandchildren or great grandchildren ask what was So-and-so like, they will have an answer instead of just a question, and the wait for the millennium.