My mother had provided perfectly handwritten index cards defining many items, but those were the tip of the iceberg in piles and piles of the past. The high point of each weekend’s work came when my uncle and aunt dropped by at noon on Sunday with a country club hamburger and fries. Every week Uncle Buddy was newly taken aback by seeing so many long forgotten family mementos, and instantly moved to sit down and share sentimental stories from days gone by, the likes of which I had never heard.
Each opened box presented questions I had never thought about asking and, with the clock ticking, it ended up a chaotic enterprise as the final estate sale items stayed behind. When I closed the apartment door for the last time, I thought it was the benediction to my life with Margaret.
A few days later, I got a call from the estate sale lady: “I believe you gave us a box you’d like to have back”.
~~~~~
By the end of my packing up adventure, I had become an ace snap decision maker, and an “Alternating Pressure Pad and Pump System” was something I could live without. Bearing no Sharpie message from Margaret, the unopened box landed in estate sale land, and it was big news when I found out it held her diaries that started in 1938.
Long ago when my mother was 16, her sister gave her a 5-year diary for Christmas, and thus was born the most dedicated reporter of everyday life the world has ever known. Some of the diaries are leather with golden edged pages, some have locks whose keys disappeared ages ago, and all are filled with Margaret’s funny precise script, changeless across time.
I had looked forward to insights about World War II but, in a magnificent plot twist, I landed in the middle of life with the busy Everett family--my mother, her mom, dad, older sister, and little brother. Their home was always jumping with neighbors, friends, dates, dinner guests, club meetings, badminton games, and what Margaret happily called "big crowds” passing through their ever-revolving front door. They never missed church, visited friends a lot, participated in countless civic groups, went to “the picture show” often and, on weekends, took pleasure rides in the car.
My mother faithfully covered details and insights about all five of her little family, every single day. The funny thing was, I knew the characters in the story all my life, yet the younger versions of themselves presented sparkly, brand new people.
Each night I sat on my porch reading what quickly turned into an engaging first person novel, and they all became alive again as three-dimensional people on the pages, particularly my grandmother who always seemed an elderly lady to me. But, early on, Nannie was a wife and mother, a gracious hostess, a teacher, the president of The Old Ladies Home, a gardener, a raiser of chickens, and a regular concert/lecture/picture-show goer. Same for my grandfather who died when I was a baby. Beyond family stories, I’d never glimpsed him as a living and breathing, working, traveling, energetic father and husband—but for a good many years, he was all of these and more.
I read every day, starting with Margaret in high school at home with her family, and followed her to college life at the University of Tennessee, then onwards to young career days on her own in postwar Washington, DC. Along the way, she ran with a big circle of friends, dated a variety of guys, traveled, and went out on the town. (And never missed church, no matter where she found herself).
In addition to family members familiar to me, I met all sorts of other people from a variety of arenas. Some were major players with my mother and her family, and others appeared for a season and gradually drifted off the pages. I grew oddly attached to the long timers, and I wonder about how their lives had turned out and hope they did well.
My mother's kaleidoscopic young life was very newsy to me, and I smiled reading about good times. Across all my years with her, she shared a vague outline of this time and, in spite of my having had a zillion opportunities, it’s obvious I could have been a better listener and asked for details. There were so many great conversations that could have been, and how I wish to go back with my new multitude of questions.
~~~~~
Back in the diaries, I met up with my mother’s beloved little brother Buddy when he was in junior high, and I followed him through his super social City High days, his service in WWII, and I read about the first date with his wife. And there he was in 2008, the same buoyant fellow--82 years old, delivering the best hamburger in town, accompanied by the girl he took on that long ago first date. He eventually joined most everyone else from the books in 2015 when he also slipped away, and I'm glad about having had the time for the stories he told in Margaret's kitchen during my packing days.
I am forever thankful for my mother's faithful correspondence in her diaries all those years, for their fortuitous return from the estate sale pile and, most especially, for the enlightenment they provide about how people once pursued life in an entirely different universe.
There is plenty of subtle, simple wisdom for those of us living in this modern super-connected-yet-disconnected world, and I aim to do better. While I know life back then wasn't exactly a cakewalk, one big takeaway is that virtually everyone on the pages devoted a good bit of time and effort being involved with their community, and most especially with one another.
When I closed the door on Apt. 2-C, I thought it was over, and I’m pretty sure I was wrong. What a wondrous gift came in a nondescript pump box, and there may just be a bigger story in there waiting to be told.
Within these pages every night,
Brief memories of the day I write;
A little word, a single line,
Is jotted in this book of mine—
Not mighty deeds, just common things,
The tasks and pleasures each day brings
And yet I hope that when I look
Over the pages in this book,
Twill be (and, if so, I’m content)
The record of five years well spent.
--- Eloise Woods, 1933
forward to 1943-1947 diary
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