Dear Diary
It was an old, old habit of hers; so old, in fact, that it had long since passed into tradition, and then into ritual. She would brush her teeth and wash her face, dress for bed, and then open up her diary to record the events of her day. Ever since her tenth birthday, she had been doing it. There was a box up in the attic full of old diaries, a new one started on every birthday since then. If she filled up one before the year was out, she added entries on notebook paper until the next birthday, and the next fresh volume. Tradition. Ritual.
Tonight she began as she always did, taking a deep breath and clearing her mind as she opened the book. "Dear Diary," she wrote, and then paused. There was always the question of what to include, and what to leave out. Some days it was fairly obvious what needed noting, but not always; the most mundane, uneventful things were, after all, what made up the flavor of a life. Whatever random details she chose to write today would be her only record of what it had been like to live this day. Years later she might look back on tonight's entry, and wonder at who she had once been. She already did so with the old volumes, dozens of them, stretching back to distant childhood. The words would be as immutable as if written in stone when that time came.
These thoughts were not new to her, of course, and as always they helped to provide focus for her memories of the day. A brief smile moved across her face as the entry took shape in her mind. She gripped the pen tighter, took another deep breath, and then, once more, began to write.
No comments:
Post a Comment