Every so often I go missing from Diaryland for about a week for no apparent reason. For the past seven or eight days, I have had little interest in reading diaries (though I've tried to keep up with a few), or writing in my own. Usually this happens when I get so busy at work or at home that I just don't have time. This time, though, I think it was just the opposite. I've had a bout of total apathy.
The kind of thing where I try to think of something to write about, and I just end up thinking, bleh, who cares. I can't even come up with something I want to write down just so I'll have it documented for myself or for B when she grows up, which is why I've written almost everything that I have.
See, I never really knew how my own mother felt about things. About anything really. She was a non-person, of sorts, way back then, when I was much too young and much too selfish to know the truth, which was that she was a thinking and feeling real live person who I should have gotten to know better. Oh, I loved her and thought of her as a mother, but I wasn't on the inside, see. Not like her best girlfriends, or maybe even my Dad. I didn't hear stories about her childhood, though I heard rumors that she had one. From what I understand, though certainly not because anyone has told me directly, she had a very rough childhood, the specifics of which I do not know. There are things about my family I wish I could ask her now. Things about my entrance into this world that will always be a mystery to me. Things about my infancy and childhood only she would know, and now she'll never be able to tell me. Like, at what age did I walk? What was my first word? When was I potty trained? What foods did I like, and what made me sick? Did I get ear infections?
I'd like for B to have the answers to all these kinds of questions, even if I'm not around. I hope that by reading some of my writings, she will get a glimpse of what her infancy and toddler life were like; the years before her own memories actually start forming. I want her to know that I thought she was cute, and that I loved watching her learn new things. And even when she got on my nerves, I always always loved her, no matter what.
And for the record, she walked at 11 months, her first word was Daddy, she was potty trained at two and a half, loved Rice Krispies, bagels, broccoli, spaghetti, corn-on-the-cob, pizza, and tomato soup. Hated steak, but liked hot dogs. Would have lived on candy and cookies if allowed to. Caught colds often, and had so many ear infections in her first two years that her doctor came close to putting tubes in. Got her first flu shot and her first Jeep at age two.
Yeah, that kind of stuff. I'll never know it about myself, but my child will.
And she'll know how her mother felt about things, especially about her daddy. She'll have a glimpse of my feelings, my hopes and dreams, aspirations. Hopefully a little of my humor. And, if God forbid, I'm gone from her life before she's had a chance to learn these things first hand, then there's always these things I've written over the past couple of years.
That's the sort of diary this is.
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