Taking Notes

 

Recently hubby and I were starting at the edges of a huge job in his parents' house.  We have to go through their belongings and prepare the house for sale in a few months.  At the very beginning of this task, I ran across a very plain brown book sitting in the bookshelves.  It had no name or title on the spine, and it somehow drew my attention.  My mother-in-law is an avid reader, so it made me wonder what she enjoyed in this book.

I pulled the book from the heavy wooden book case and immediately found it was quite old.  The cover was a cloth type over a hard board, and old glue and string held it together.  Inside the pages were yellowed with age.  Little post-it notes were at dates important to hubby's mom.  

It was a diary.  My mother-in-law's mother's diary from 1934 or 1935.  

It's in her penciled handwriting, with an entry for each day.  It was a 365 day book, and some days she wrote a little extra to the side margins.  In the back she wrote birthdays of people she knew and loved, with some well known names in our town included.  She kept track of how many eggs she collected and how much she sold them for, how many pigs slaughtered, when she and her husband purchased a new car, and so on.  These events during the Depression years were big to them.  

She kept track of each day most often with "this is a fine day".  I love how she put that on most of the days.  A fine day.  She sometimes put the weather of the day, whether it felt like snow, or if it rained a lot, or was too hot to work inside much.  One day in the middle of January she opened the house up as it was quite warm.  That's not normal in Southeast Kansas.  She wrote of dust storms that worked their way through.  We know them as the Dust Bowl storms.  She spoke of the extreme summer heat, the brutal winter cold, a fine spring day, a beautiful autumn breeze.  

Grandma Goshert wrote of shooting rabbits by the railroad tracks, after learning how to shoot her new rifle.  Hubby has that heirloom somewhere, it hasn't been used in many many years.  She penned how she had to give away the family dog because he ate a chicken.  She spoke of butchering and canning and sharing meals with lots of friends and family.  Never did she speak of the hardships of the Depression.  

She shared good things, the days her beloved worked and how she'd visit with a sibling or her parents or his parents.  Housework even made it into the pages.  From her writing she and her husband spent evenings playing various games with friends and family, or going to an occasional show close by.  Many shared meals made it to the diary's pages.  

She shared the things dear to her.  

I doubt she ever dreamed her grandson's wife would find her diary nearly 85+ years later.  I also doubt she would ever think she'd inspire someone else to write as well.  

Today I picked up a journal with dotted ruling, just an inexpensive thing, and I am beginning to write the little things as she did.  The weather, a nap enjoyed in the afternoon, the day's work, etc.  The little things that usually are normal day to day things that we don't think much of, how they might just fascinate another generation to come.  I imagine a diary of 2020 would fascinate and amuse just about anyone in generations to come.  

Have you ever kept a diary?  Did you keep up with it for long periods of time, or drop it after short spurts?  I'd love to hear from you in the comments about your writing!