Graf # 7
Things.
I kept a notebook for quite a number of years filled with secrets. Most of which were my own but some were the secrets of friends and lovers told to me in the strictest of confidences. I kept this notebook during my twenties and early thirties when I was trying to work out the world of Amy. All the anger of youth was stored in those pages. All the angst of self-betrayals and self made chaos and disaster. All of my most secret sins were confessed to the blue lines.
I filled the margins with quotes that I felt were applicable and that helped me in some way or another to see a different side of a situation that felt hopeless. There wasn’t a time that I wrote in that notebook that my eyes didn’t burn with tears or that my writing wasn’t slanted with the obvious mark of anger and disappointment.
I didn’t waste a page sweating the small stuff. I didn’t put a self-pitying word in it. It was all fact and written as though I were making a statement to some authority that would judge me. It was as unemotional as a court document read back by the court reporter. Just the facts, ma’am.
I don’t know that when I started the notebook I had any grandiose plan. My thought has always been “better out than in”. Writing gives me a chance to not only say things to myself but to have them read back to me years later in that same voice but with different ears. There’s a perspective comes with that.
I carried that notebook around with me for a long time. I’d jot down whatever I remembered when I remembered it, or sometimes as it happened. After my first son was born the notebook was moved to the desk. I had diapers and wipes and bottles and such. There was no room for a notebook and who had time to write that sort of thing anyway with a baby? Eventually I packed it away somewhere and forgot about it.
The summer before my 39th birthday my son and I moved to an apartment in downtown Bangor. I was sitting on the floor unpacking my “things” when I came across that notebook. I hadn’t looked at it for years. I sat right there and read every single word on every single page. And then I read them again. I thought about each and every sin for as long as I wanted. Hours passed. I thought about that girl writing in the dark of her fear (and that’s what all that was). She thought she was so tough, that one, and she was, in her way. I decided to keep that notebook out as a reminder of something. I wasn’t sure just what but it needed to be left out.
For a couple of days as I was still moving around busily making our place home I would see the notebook and think about what I wanted to do with it. I didn’t want those sins anymore. I didn’t want their record; I didn’t want their accusations. I didn’t need their atonement. I did however want to keep their lessons. How?
My son and I drove out to the lake one day. We played in the water and splashed and built stick figure castles in the hot sand. We decided on the spur of the moment to spend the night. Of course the tent was in the trunk. The tent is always in the trunk along with a few other essentials. I grabbed the tent and Aska’s bag and the notebook fell out on the sand beside me. Aska said he needed paper and put it in his bag. I finished unloading the things, built a nice fire, had more sandwiches and fruit for supper, went for a walk with Aska, got him settled into his tent for the night and went out with the notebook to sit by the fire.
As I sat there, I read every page, tore it out and put it in the fire. I can’t remember a time that I felt so free and alive. It was just a me thing, a my spirit kind of thing but it was a powerful moment in my life. When I was done all those hours later I crawled into the tent beside Aska and slept the baby’s sleep.
The next day as we were cleaning up to go I found the wire spiral of the notebook. I twisted it all up to put it in the trash and as I was just about to drop it into the bag I stopped and pulled it out.
That wire spiral sits on a shelf now like a knick-knack. It’s reminded me when I’ve forgotten that sins are not our definition. Our fallacies and our faults make us human and beautiful. The details don’t matter. What matters is that the lessons become so much a part of us as to be as unremarkable as the grays in our hair.
I’m ready to throw away even the spiral. I am the reminder. My life and my choices are the proof of the lessons. I don’t need a wire to know what I see every morning in my mirror.
Besides, that’s one less “thing” to carry around.
I kept a notebook for quite a number of years filled with secrets. Most of which were my own but some were the secrets of friends and lovers told to me in the strictest of confidences. I kept this notebook during my twenties and early thirties when I was trying to work out the world of Amy. All the anger of youth was stored in those pages. All the angst of self-betrayals and self made chaos and disaster. All of my most secret sins were confessed to the blue lines.
I filled the margins with quotes that I felt were applicable and that helped me in some way or another to see a different side of a situation that felt hopeless. There wasn’t a time that I wrote in that notebook that my eyes didn’t burn with tears or that my writing wasn’t slanted with the obvious mark of anger and disappointment.
I didn’t waste a page sweating the small stuff. I didn’t put a self-pitying word in it. It was all fact and written as though I were making a statement to some authority that would judge me. It was as unemotional as a court document read back by the court reporter. Just the facts, ma’am.
I don’t know that when I started the notebook I had any grandiose plan. My thought has always been “better out than in”. Writing gives me a chance to not only say things to myself but to have them read back to me years later in that same voice but with different ears. There’s a perspective comes with that.
I carried that notebook around with me for a long time. I’d jot down whatever I remembered when I remembered it, or sometimes as it happened. After my first son was born the notebook was moved to the desk. I had diapers and wipes and bottles and such. There was no room for a notebook and who had time to write that sort of thing anyway with a baby? Eventually I packed it away somewhere and forgot about it.
The summer before my 39th birthday my son and I moved to an apartment in downtown Bangor. I was sitting on the floor unpacking my “things” when I came across that notebook. I hadn’t looked at it for years. I sat right there and read every single word on every single page. And then I read them again. I thought about each and every sin for as long as I wanted. Hours passed. I thought about that girl writing in the dark of her fear (and that’s what all that was). She thought she was so tough, that one, and she was, in her way. I decided to keep that notebook out as a reminder of something. I wasn’t sure just what but it needed to be left out.
For a couple of days as I was still moving around busily making our place home I would see the notebook and think about what I wanted to do with it. I didn’t want those sins anymore. I didn’t want their record; I didn’t want their accusations. I didn’t need their atonement. I did however want to keep their lessons. How?
My son and I drove out to the lake one day. We played in the water and splashed and built stick figure castles in the hot sand. We decided on the spur of the moment to spend the night. Of course the tent was in the trunk. The tent is always in the trunk along with a few other essentials. I grabbed the tent and Aska’s bag and the notebook fell out on the sand beside me. Aska said he needed paper and put it in his bag. I finished unloading the things, built a nice fire, had more sandwiches and fruit for supper, went for a walk with Aska, got him settled into his tent for the night and went out with the notebook to sit by the fire.
As I sat there, I read every page, tore it out and put it in the fire. I can’t remember a time that I felt so free and alive. It was just a me thing, a my spirit kind of thing but it was a powerful moment in my life. When I was done all those hours later I crawled into the tent beside Aska and slept the baby’s sleep.
The next day as we were cleaning up to go I found the wire spiral of the notebook. I twisted it all up to put it in the trash and as I was just about to drop it into the bag I stopped and pulled it out.
That wire spiral sits on a shelf now like a knick-knack. It’s reminded me when I’ve forgotten that sins are not our definition. Our fallacies and our faults make us human and beautiful. The details don’t matter. What matters is that the lessons become so much a part of us as to be as unremarkable as the grays in our hair.
I’m ready to throw away even the spiral. I am the reminder. My life and my choices are the proof of the lessons. I don’t need a wire to know what I see every morning in my mirror.
Besides, that’s one less “thing” to carry around.
posted by millay at 1:20 PM
4 Comments:
This straddles the line between private and public, between confession and headline.
It's certainly well-written, it certainy drags the reader into the crannies with you, but I know with a piece like this, that might be pretty irrelevant to you.
It seems, to me, a little desperate in tone, rushed, breathless, something you're eager to be done with but don't quite know how--not just the notebook but the topic of the notebook and the writing about the notebook.
It's a piece for the writer in the end, I guess, more than the audience, though you haven't scanted the audience. Is any of this helpful to the writer?
I can tell you this...I finished and posted the piece, unposted and reposted and so on...then got up threw the wire in the trash, closed the bag and took it out to the box. Gone. There wasn't a rush of relief or anything but it did feel like "one less thing". And now this feels like one less thing on my assignment list-- that is IF it satisfies the teacher.
I'm satisfied--you have enough mileage with me over last semester to know if I'm easily satisfied.
hey aim...sickness finally took over the house and i got a chance to catch up on some reading...it is perfect and good. like light and razz's eyebrows. so...thus said...you're doing well!
now hurry up so i can get in the lab....gawd!!!!
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