My Stolen Diaries – Chapter 1: In The Beginning

Teri's Novelog — My Stolen Diaries, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

CHAPTER 1

IN THE BEGINNING

It all started back in 1960 when my Aunt Mona, who I barely knew, gave me a pink diary for my seventh birthday. I wrote in it every day, and when it filled up, I got another, and another, and another.

Too young to know better, I believed those chintzy locks and keys kept my diaries safe from the outside world. All of my thoughts, fears, dreams, and schemes were packed into those volumes for me and me alone to write, read, and reread. And in so doing, to never forget. Or so I thought.

I stored them under whatever bed I was sleeping in. A collection of heartwarming, terrifying, funny, and not-so-funny words. I took those twenty-six letters in the alphabet and created a magnum opus out of them.

In my naiveté, it never occurred to me that anyone could be so deceitful as to read them. And I never thought anyone else would have a faint interest in what I felt or thought anyway.  And yet I kept those diaries safe and sound under locks and keys just in case. At last count, I had over forty of them and a President Kennedy key ring full of tiny diary keys.

I have been keeping a written recording of my life since elementary school. I still keep a diary although now I call them journals.

My treasured Kennedy key ring is gone. And with it all the keys, and yes, the older diaries are gone too.

Stolen, read, and interpreted. Or I should say misinterpreted.

And that’s what this story is about. In the pages to follow I will try to remember the entries, the momentous and not so momentous times in my life.

But the diaries are gone, so I can’t recreate the voluminous entries spanning a lifetime in a Dear Diary format.

But what I can do, is recreate the diary entries from the volumes seared in my memories.

And to the thief, and you know who you are:

You might have been able to dispose of the diaries, but you can never do away with my memories, my words, or what’s in my mind.

Click here for Chapter 2: To Know Yourself Is to Know Your Family

My Stolen Diaries Disclaimer

Teri's Novelog — My Stolen Diaries, , , , , , , , ,

DISCLAIMER

I have decided to go for it and start blogging my novel titled My Stolen Diaries.

In doing so, I first needed to create a blog category, so after much thought, I finally settled on: Teri’s Novelog — i.e. novel on a blog.

One day I’ll turn it into an actual book, but I’ve been saying that for the past thirty years, so in the meantime, here it is.

First things first.

My disclaimer:

My Stolen Dairies is a work of fiction. F-I-C-T-I-O-N.

Although its format is based on a personal diary, it’s not real.

It’s made up.

Places and time have been moved around to accommodate the book, and except the mentioning of some public figures, any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

The events expressed in My Stolen Diaries are those of the characters and should not be confused with the views and opinions of the author (me).

The author will not be held responsible or liable for any perceived or actual loss or damage to any person or entity, directly or indirectly caused by or alleged to have been caused by anything in My Stolen Diaries.

If anyone happens to see themselves in any of the characters, that’s on them and a figment of their overly imaginative imagination.

Click here for Chapter 1: In The Beginning

Chiaroscuro

Observe & Ponder, ,

I was cleaning out some old files today and found Chiaroscuro, my Brevard College literary magazine from 1972-1973.

I barely remembered the magazine, so imagine my shock when I opened it up and discovered that I was the Editor-in-Chief!

I also forgot about the stuff I wrote in it.

Yikes, it felt surreal reading through my 1972-1973 self.

Of the five things I wrote in Chiaroscuro, one screamed out from the rest:

Joanne

Individuals are peculiar. They say and do things that they don’t mean and regret later. We are all like that some time or another.

This is how I remember her. Twelve-year-old Joanne was about four feet eight inches, forty-five pounds, with hollow, pitiful blue eyes. Due to her unnatural thinness, her face was sunken and homely. She was one of a family of twelve, her father deceased. Her clothes were tattered and worn and extremely old-fashioned. You’d think this tiny forlorn youth would be understood by her classmates. Instead, she was our victim, marked for ridicule and laughter. I recall that she always appeared to be carrying the world’s grief upon her shoulders.

I never saw her smile.   Not once.    Not ever.

My classmates and I would swarm around her during recess, like bees after honey, and make her cry. One dreary afternoon she shyly approached me and asked if I’d hopscotch with her. I indignantly pushed her down on the playground cement and stalked away, feeling somehow insulted. She didn’t cry, though, for I suppose she was used to it. For the remainder of the school year, we constantly annoyed, ridiculed, and hurt her. And she would attempt nothing, but frown at us and walk with her head down to a secluded corner of the playground where alone, she would sit and stare into some unknown space, and cry sometimes.

Then summer came, and the homely little girl was pushed out of my mind until opening a local newspaper I fell upon her picture. She had died of leukemia, a disease she had known she had for years.

And as I stared at the photograph of the homely little girl with her large hollow eyes and her sunken face, I cried…

                                                for she was smiling…

Jesus. Was I a bully? I don’t even remember Joanne.

Did she even exist?

What was twelve-year-old Theresa trying to say?

Or maybe it was 1972-1973 Teri speaking.

I can’t imagine that I would bully, but then, if Joanne wasn’t real, who was I writing about?

And her clothes couldn’t have been tattered, worn and old-fashioned because we all wore uniforms.

Or maybe I saw Joanne outside of school in crummy old clothing.

But back in the day, I wore used clothes and shoes from Goodwill, so who was I to judge?

And why would I make fun of a homely scrawny kid who appeared to be carrying the world’s grief, when I was similar to Joanne in so many ways.

This also got me thinking about all kinds of places and times and events — triggers be damned.

I shoved Chiaroscuro back into my filing cabinet, depressed, not only by the thought that I might have been a bully but at the possibility that in some twisted way, I was Joanne.

Describing Thanksgiving

Holidays, ,

When I was in London last November, everyone kept asking me the same question:

Why are Americans so obsessed with Thanksgiving?

I didn’t want to insult anyone, so I left out some of the Pilgrim stuff.

How would they have felt if I told them that the Pilgrims were refugees fleeing persecution due to the brutality of the English monarchy?

They would surely have been insulted if I said to them that the Pilgrims fled England because of the despicable treatment by their government due to religious, cultural, and societal intolerance.

So, I told them the bare bones of Thanksgiving:

In 1620 the Pilgrims sailed from England on the Mayflower and landed near Plymouth Rock in what would later become Plymouth, Massachusetts. The Pilgrims had a good harvest that year, so they wanted to celebrate.

During that “First Thanksgiving,” European Immigrants broke bread with their friendly Native American neighbors in harmony and peace.

I didn’t tell them that the friendship between the immigrants and the Native Americans didn’t pan out and that most of New England’s native population was wiped out over the next few decades.

But what I did tell them was that every year we continue to celebrate the first time that races and cultures came together and left out the ugly stuff that happened after that initial Thanksgiving.

I also told them that in 1863 Abraham Lincoln made it an official national holiday. And that Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving as a holiday just a few months before he delivered the Gettysburg Address, declaring that in America, all men were created equal.

Several Londoners asked me if that meant that Thanksgiving is a celebration of American equality.

My answer was that Thanksgiving celebrates what makes America so great: Religious and personal tolerance, the belief that we are all equal, and the inclusiveness of every culture.

As I explained Thanksgiving, I said the words, but they felt empty to me. I wasn’t buying my explanation.

If I wasn’t buying it, why should they?

Here I was tying Thanksgiving together with America’s core values, but instead of feeling pride, I felt embarrassed, like I was an imposter.

And as I explained that Thanksgiving was a celebration of American values, not only could I see their pessimism, but sadly, inside, I felt it as well.

As I spoke out loud about American racial and religious tolerance, combined with the acceptance of multiculturalism, I was asking myself:

Am I talking American bullshit? Is Thanksgiving a sham? Is it merely an outdated holiday with no actual meaning?

God help us if it is.