On my fifteenth birthday, September 13, 1983, I received a small diary, and since that date, I’ve kept a diary/journal. I haven’t always been consistent about writing in them, sometimes going months or even a year between entries, but I have kept at the process of recording snippets of my life as well as my thoughts about my life. The first few years are full of embarrassing drivel about boys because I was always boy crazy — the key part of that phrase is “crazy” by the way.
Over the years, the entries grew longer as I worked to hash out problems on paper and as the activities that filled my days became more demanding. The roughly 30 journals contain my high school and college years, my tumultuous and tortuous marriage and subsequent divorce, my life as a mother, my teaching career, my longing to be a writer, my travels, and so much more. Every now and then, I take out the older ones and leaf through them, thinking about using them to write my memoirs, but after reading the words of my idiotic younger self going on and on about one boy after another, I usually return them to their boxes in disgust.
I started reading Matthew McConaughey’s “Greenlights” the other day. He wrote it when he turned 50 and after rereading all the journals he’d kept over the years. His journals, I believe, are much different than mine because they seem to be filled with quotes and things that inspired him. He’s quite the poet and philosopher and has led a much more interesting life than I have, that’s for sure. However, in reading it and enjoying it, I got to thinking once again about my own journals.
In 2012, in addition to the occasional long entry that I still write from time to time, I started using the small journals called “One Line a Day: A Five-Year Memory Book” in which each page has a date at the top, and below that date are five small sections. You fill the first section with a sentence or two about what you did on that date in a certain year, and the following four years you then do the same. Thus, the first book contains the years 2012-2016, the second has 2017-2021, and the current one began in 2022 and will run through 2026. What I like about these is that I can easily see what I was doing on that date in the years prior, once I’ve filled in a few years that is.
I thought I’d share my recordings from February 24th from 2012 through 2022 verbatim. Then I’ll add in some comments to explain more than what may be gleaned from my short recordings.
February 24th
2012: Talked to Trev about his father’s and my inevitable separation — he seems to be o.k. with it actually — old enough now to see that we need to I guess. Sam senses it is on the horizon. Felt blue all day.
I wrote this only two weeks before I filed for divorce. My son was a senior in high school. I hated to do this at such an important time in his life, but I couldn’t take being married to his father any longer. We’d separated when Trev was in 7th grade, but I made the mistake of allowing his father back into my life. By now (2012), though, enough was enough. Sam, my daughter, was much younger, and I knew she would bear the brunt of things, so making this decision and knowing how she would be caught in the middle of it was very hard, so I was blue.
2013: Kind of a blue day again because I was home without Sam most of the day. Cleaned bathroom light fixture and checked papers. Read and chatted with Silvia. Then got Sam and watched “The Amazing Race” with her. His replacement Tammy there all weekend. Really annoyed Sam that she was.
By this time, Sam was having to spend every other weekend with her father. She hated it, and I hated it. When her time with him was finally over and I was able to pick her up, we watched one of my favorite shows to cheer us up. Talking with my dear friend Silvia always cheers me, too. My ex had and still has a girlfriend with the same name as me — thus the “replacement Tammy” comment. While my daughter didn’t enjoy having to spend weekends with her father, she really didn’t enjoy that he chose to have his girlfriend there during the time that he should have been spending with her.
2014: Snowed and kept us from going to Wayne to watch Ponca, but they won in overtime, so we’ll go tomorrow to see them get beat by Winnebago. James and I are discussing a possible Florida Keys trip this summer. Many miles. Remains to be seen but fun to consider.
By this time, my son was an assistant basketball coach for Ponca High School while he was attending college at Wayne State. They did, in fact, lose to Winnebago the following night, and I was there to watch it (but a few years later, his team won the state championship). It was his first year as a coach, something he’s still doing to this date, and his current team is playing in the sub-district championship game tonight, but I cannot attend due to a book event. For a while I dated a guy named James, but we never took that trip because we broke up shortly after this. I still haven’t been to the Florida Keys, and it’s still high on my list of places I want to visit, so I should really get on that.
2015: Walked Biscuit and wrote most of my next column. Stayed after with a student and then got groceries. Kim was home ill all day. Ironic that my son and I just talked about his Florida spring break trip a year after my failed plan to go down there. My son is beating me to Florida. Sigh.
Biscuit was the yellow Labrador we had for many years. I so enjoyed our long walks together and still miss him even though he’s been gone about 4 years now. Kim has now appeared in the journals and still does because he and I have been together since June of 2014. My son did go to Florida for spring break, and I still haven’t been there, but I have been to many places that he hasn’t, so I think we’re even.
2016: (the ex) forgot to get Sam and then called her at 8:30 to try to arrange another time and had the gall to basically blame her for his f___ up. She said she’s busy the rest of the week.
I have a mean name for my ex, so I left that out. Clearly, as you can see, he hadn’t gotten any better at being a father by this date, well into her junior year of high school. Spoiler alert: he still hasn’t.
2017: No school — again. Crazy winter. I cancelled our trip to Centura for a meet tomorrow, too. Sam filled out a few more scholarship forms. I worked on next column and watched 2 dumb webinars to make up for the snow day. Sick of those things.
Apparently, that winter was much like the current one. While I no longer teach, my son does, and his school has had so many snow days that they have to make some up at the end of the year. To “make up” our time, our school made us watch webinars from the ESU and write up short reports about them to email to our principal. I would rather have made up the time with the students because that is the point of school. The meet I had to cancel was a speech one — I coached speech for upwards of 20 years.
2018: Checked a lot of papers. Trying to catch up. Didn’t get the snow that was forecast thankfully. Supper at Mom’s. Walked 2 miles on the treadmill and watched 2 movies with Kim — “No Reservations” and “Erased.”
I have no memory of what those movies are about. For the past 3-4 weeks, currently, I’ve been logging 2 - 3 miles each day on the treadmill. Normally, the winters aren’t so harsh and I can get outside to walk more, but this winter drove me back to the treadmill just as it did in 2018.
2019: Another cold day. Checked papers. Mom and Dad stopped by. Watched the Academy Awards tonight. Lady Gaga spoke to my soul. Paul took Sam to supper with them for John’s birthday.
Paul was my beloved uncle who passed away in 2020 (see an earlier post about him), and his son, John, lives in Lincoln where my daughter was attending college by this time. I’m so glad he took her along with them. After watching the Academy Awards, I typed up what Lady Gaga said, and those words still hang over my basement writing desk. I’ve never done that before, but her words really did speak to my writer’s soul and the desperate desire I had at this time to get out of teaching and focus on my writing dream.
Here they are: "And if you are at home, and you're sitting on your couch and you're watching this right now, all I have to say is that this is hard work. I've worked hard for a long time, and it's not about, you know...it's not about winning. But what it's about is not giving up. If you have a dream, fight for it. There's a discipline for passion. And it's not about how many times you get rejected or you fall down or you're beaten up. It's about how many times you stand up and are brave and you keep on going. Thank you!"Thank you, Lady Gaga.
2020: Monday. (sad face) Then I also got the rejection from Vanderbilt. Cried a bit. Praying the agent comes through. It’s all such a crap shoot that it depresses me a lot. Trev’s boys lost in sub-districts. The Neligh boys won their game.
I had applied for the MFA writing program at Vanderbilt, but I did not get in. The agent also did not come through; nor have any of the other agents I’ve attempted to get since then. It still is a crap shoot, but I’ve learned to stand on my own instead. I no longer hate Mondays now that I’m my own boss and doing what I love to do.
2021: Had my one week post-surgery check up. Left eye doing well. Had writers’ group this evening. They are still loving the in-progress Tybee novel.
I had recently had cataract surgery. I’ve been in the monthly writers’ group for many years. The Tybee novel was released late in 2022 — “Trouble on Tybee.”
2022: Kept Willow home again because of the cold. We’ve bonded a bit these 3 days. Edited some more. Still trying to get back into the story so I can finish it. Russia has attacked the Ukraine, and I’m worried for the world.
I’m still worried for the world, but for many reasons beyond Russia and the Ukraine. Willow is our silver Labrador who was still a puppy at this point last year. She would go to work with Kim quite often, but it was too cold for him to be keeping her in the garage where he was working, so she was home with me. Nowadays, she is always home with me, and she and I have a tight bond. She’s an amazing dog, but she thinks she’s a lap dog and loves to climb up on me while I read. (The painting in the background is of our other dog, Blaze, with Biscuit, who is no longer with us. My daughter painted it in high school.)
By this time last year, I was well into my life as a writer, having retired from teaching in May of 2021.
2023: — I haven’t written the entry for today, yet, but it will contain the results of my son’s sub-district final game as well as the results of the Taste of Albion event at which I’m setting up tonight to sell books and watercolor paintings.
So, those are my February 24ths from the past 12 years. A LOT has changed in my life over those years, and I’m in a much better place now than I was when I made that entry in 2012. That’s one of the things that I do love about having all my old journals — I can look back and really see how far I’ve come. Maybe someday I’ll write my memoirs, and maybe I won’t, but my journals will be there for my kids to read someday if they want to know more about their mom. That is, if I don’t decide to burn some of the earlier ones to permanently erase the inane drivel about boys. Sheesh. Embarrassing.
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Until next time.
Tammy Marshall
Journaling