In my humble opinion, everyone should purchase a diary.
Write in it as often as you can and even when you feel snitty about putting another entry in it, do it anyway. In a few years, you will thank yourself for making the effort.
I thank myself for keeping track of my life in diaries because time flies and memories fade and many come flooding back that I otherwise would have never remembered had it not been written down.
I started my first diary in January 1972 when I was 12 and in Grade 7. My entries were pencilled in cursive and my style was full of flair. It is fascinating to look at how perfect my writing style was, especially now that my 65-year-old cursive has deteriorated into chicken scratch.
Oddly, the pages from Jan. 1 to 12 that year are ripped out. I must have written something I didn’t want anyone else to read, even though the diary had a lock and key. Maybe I will write a novel about the missing pages—something akin to a Patricia Cornwell mystery full of intrigue that grew right here on the banks of Frog Creek in 1972. “The first 12 days in January…”
There are, in fact, no diary entries that year until Feb. 12, save a five-day streak from Jan. 13 to 17 that only lists how many calories I ate—and precisely by each food item. I was tracking food choices at such a tender age, and even though I led a fairly sheltered life, the female social stereotype of thinness had infected me.
But I did have great adventures as a kid. In the wintertime, my Grandpa Drennan provided the best horse-drawn sleigh rides, complete with my dad throwing my school friends and me off the sleigh into the soft snow banks where we would get stuck, laugh and haul ourselves out, run back and hop on the sleigh for more of the same. When it was over, we’d have doughnuts and hot chocolate that made us “cozy and comfortable.” On this particular entry, Feb. 13, 1972, there were “14 girls and four boys” aboard.
On July 20 that year, I flew by myself to Toronto, where I spent a month bouncing back and forth in southern Ontario, staying with my dad’s siblings’ families and my cousins. I stayed with my Grandpa Caldwell in Napanee and had summer adventures in cottage country.
I helped out in my Uncle Al’s store, rode bikes through the town where my dad grew up, spent endless days swimming in my Uncle Jim’s and Aunt Janie’s inground pool, which I considered the lap of luxury. I spent hours in my grandpa’s attic, which was a classic old-world place full of antiques and well-worn books from the late 1800s.
Grandpa told me to take some of the books home, and I didn’t have to be offered twice. I still have them in my bookcase. My Aunt Barb lived and worked in the heart of Toronto, and she loved culture. She introduced me to many classic city attractions, which at age 12 weren’t especially intriguing to me, but I still remember those days like they were yesterday when I read about them in my diary, including the time that summer when my cousin Brad was leaning on the side of the escalator at the Eaton Centre in Toronto as we went up a floor. Something sharp caught on his pants as he continued to ascend, and his pants did not, and they were ripped from his torso right then and there.
That Christmas, I gave Grandpa Caldwell a blank diary “on loan for the period of one year, 1974.” He was a great poet and would often mail me letters in rhyme. His diary entry on Jan. 1 lamented a bit on the task I had given him, but by the next day, his pen began to sing.
“Nothing much to report today, a little work, a little play. Jim and Janie came for dinner. I think Jim is a little thinner. Brad and a friend came out to skate. Too much snow, so they did not stay late. I drove them in and visited a friend. A great day with a peaceful end.”
I also got my dad hooked on diary writing, and buying one for him each Christmas for 20 years was such a pleasure, and he filled the pages like a champ. Thanks, Dad, for all the memories.
