Wednesday, January 12, 2011

The Notebook

Some people save pictures in scrapbooks, ribbons and trophies, figurine collectibles.  I save everything I've ever written, from the moment I started writing things down.  I asked My husband to retrieve "my box" with all of the older stuff in it so I could fill in some memory holes for my foreign exchange book.  It took all of Christmas vacation, but it finally appeared, and right on top was a school notebook from 1984.  I'd etched the Van Halen logo in several places and written other random things on the front.  As I started reading the stuff on the inside I had to put it down and walk away.  I left it for another week, and then one of my girls read a page---"AAACK don't read that, you must never read any of that."  So I'd just given her the greatest temptation ever.
 I took the book back in my hand and read through again, feeling nauseous, feeling very sad.  In French I told my husband what I'd written about, stuff he knows, some he doesn't.
"Girls, I want you to know that the reason I don't want you to ever read that is because it's not your mom.  That isn't me.  It's who I was before I knew Christ."
The notebook is now strategically hidden.  I've made a plan to make one more pass through it and then throw it away.  Burn it.  It was my lonliest most tragic summer, filled with things I'm forever scarred by, things I truly regret. I'm not ashamed for my daughters to know what happened, but I want to tell them with my true voice, not have them hear it from the very confused girl, who wrote about herself in the third person half the time.
There is one piece that I will keep, an ode to an Autumn leaf, that I wrote on stationary and tucked neatly in the notebook.  I'll keep this thing because it is truly beautifully written and it celebrates beauty and being alive. The rest will burn.

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