The Gift

November, 1972:  Like most things from the year I turned 12, the details surrounding my birthday are a haze at best. The only salience is the gift from a rather surly grandmother. I never knew what to make of her actions or the motives behind them. I was too self-absorbed and naive to pick the lock that hid her persona. I accepted the gift with compulsory manners and fiddled with the brass-colored closure glued to its cover. There was the slightest tug as my fingers turned the key in the hole. This meant the lock had been released and I could pull out the little hooked knobs and open the flap and witness 365 lined pages, rife with possibility. Funny, the things you remember. 

Two years later, with all vestiges of childhood behind me, my now-tattered diary with its brief, almost daily scribblings was relegated to the bottom drawer as I committed to a decidedly more serious and verbose pursuit. In my mind it was animate, my 8x10 “friend.” Evenings spent alone were the impetus for my ritualistic visitations as thoughts flowed from my head, down my arm and out my pen, onto what were designed to be pragmatic, scholarly notebook pages. The thoughts were rarely good.

An angry teenager, I hated the world that had wronged me and yearned for a Hollywood-esque panacea to whisk me off to that fabled Happyland that had so cruelly eluded navigation. But after a few chilling lessons taught me about the fragility of life, risk-taking was no longer an option. Self-destruction gave way to drone-like movement along the conveyor belt of life. I suppose it was my own version of self-preservation.

Every now and then, I think about the first diary that dwells beneath disorganized bits of drawer detritus. Like a sea creature in need of oxygen, it rises to the surface and gets a quick thumbing-through before diving under again. I just need reassurance that it’s still there, that tangible object that links me to what once was.


Copyright by Grace Peterson