Two diaries belonging to my mother were unearthed from an old cedar chest that has held the last of her things since her passing eleven years ago. I was thrilled at the prospect of reading them. The earliest one was a Christmas gift from her mother in 1950. My mom would have been 18 years old.
The first entry in her new diary was New Year’s Day, 1951 and noted a family supper and a skating party in Dundalk. She and my father had become engaged a couple of weeks earlier so she’d added that news as well.
I pounced on these treasures like a scavenger, excited for any new morsels of information and insights to family history. Flipping through the pages, it quickly became apparent that the notes consisted solely of facts. The diaries were largely a record of births, deaths (including the death of King George VI in 1952), weddings and who’d been ill and prayed for at church.
Innocuous personal entries were also plentiful.
January 9th, ‘51– I stayed up till 11:00 o’clock reading my book – Never To Be Forgotten.
January 16th, ‘51– It was today I got my new guitar.
February 12th, ‘51– We just stayed in and looked at four walls.
March 24th, ‘51– I bought my watch tonight at 7 o’clock.
My mother’s family worked a farm most of their lives and the social activities mentioned in her diaries reflect what I imagine to have been a typical rural upbringing in the fifties. Notes on caring for farm animals were prominent along with endless visits with friends and extended family.
February 28th, ‘51– Joe found the little pigs in the barn this morning. 8 alive 5 dead.
Movies, car trips and dances topped the social agendas of my parents and their friends.
June 29th, ‘51– We went down to Barn Dance. I celebrated my 19thbirthday.
August 15th, ‘51– Betty, Eddie, Joe and I went the CKNX concert and dance in Shelburne. The Grand River Ramblers played.
One piece of information new to me was that my mother, while engaged and presumably not living with my father yet, had a very short-term job in the town where my father lived.
March 11th,‘51– I started work at the Lambert Hotel in Stayner.
April 1st, ‘51 – I stopped working at the Lambert Hotel today.
I would really like to know the story behind this but there is no one left to ask.
Two weeks before her wedding, she notes traveling to Buffalo NY to buy her wedding clothes. Their wedding day was marked on October 6th, 1951, taking place at 9:30am at the Roman Catholic Church in Proton. They honeymooned in Niagara on the Lake, Toronto and St. Catherine’s.
October 14th, ‘51 – We saw Princess Elizabeth and Phillip in St. Catherine’s.
I can’t recall her ever mentioning this to me.
Her diaries were the ‘five year’ variety. Those darn cramped pages, providing a mere one inch by five inch space per entry, meant that even when using the smallest, neatest handwriting, there was little more space than required to note the weather. I wish she’d ventured outside the lines and written much more.
What did I hope to find in her diary pages? I guess I wanted to know who she was as a young woman; her hopes and dreams and what she thought and felt about all that was happening around her. I wanted vivid descriptions, a complaint or two, high emotion and the drama or discord surrounding everyday events.
A few secrets and scandals would have been fun too. Maybe I was just looking for a good story.
Although my mother was not the most expressive diarist, I felt a sweet tenderness toward her as I read her words. She was one of life’s innocents; a little naïve, very funny and kind to the bone. I miss her a lot.
Perhaps I wouldn’t create a record of my secrets and scandals either.
Would you?
