I found my voice when I turned ten. That voice was pen on paper. A three by five red leather-bound notebook - my first ever diary. I showed it to my firstborn son a few weeks ago, when he turned ten. I wanted to show him proof that I was once exactly his age. I wanted to show him proof that who I am now, began all the way back then.
There are similarities, of course - parts of him were handed down from me, unscathed. Blue eyes, the shape identical, the color, same shade. We both wrote songs at ten, rhymes we furiously sought out or ones that flowed. Mine were mostly about aching - baby ooh baby wontcha be mine we don’t got much time. His most recent one is titled Rebellion. He is lovelorn, like I was. Inside my diary, the first ever note to the first ever boy I crushed on, named Robert, who I met at the local pool on Avenue H. He told me he liked me at 10 o’clock in the morning and by 3pm he dumped me.
My diary starts out with an introduction where I go into grave and great detail about my physical shortcomings - pimples, glasses, buck teeth, “plump in my middle area” which I assume was my stomach. My son has none of the same insecurities and I wonder if that is simply because he is a boy or because I tell him often how beautiful he is. I love my parents very much, but growing up, at at least from age ten on, I don’t remember one instance when they told me I was pretty. Did it matter? It must have, because my self-doubt grew and followed me like a relentless shadow. Even at my sexiest, best-bodied self, I always wondered who I was fooling and when the jig would be up.
I don’t recall who got me the diary. Had I saved a few dollar bills, was it purchased on a whim at Woolworths? Who knows. I wrote in it daily at first, hourly, always the same beginning - “Dear Di” - and always the same ending - “XXOO Dags.” Most of the pages are allocated to future goals (fight the Commies!), present woes (we probably won’t go camping; daddy’s drinking again) and not a word about my past.
It is a strange, bittersweet relic from a strange, bittersweet childhood.
I was a nervous kid. I had a wild imagination, one I nurtured but kept to myself. I bit my nails. I hadn’t traveled back to Poland yet, so I was fully into adapting, changing, growing. I looked forward, not back. I was tall, I wore salvation army clothes. I read books, ate junk food, cowered, and rarely brushed my teeth. I was afraid of so many things but I was also feisty and silly. I was ten and the world was small; it didn’t go beyond Brooklyn, but I had a feeling there was so much more “out there.”
My son had fun listening to me read out loud. He had questions, especially about my parents awful bickering. He loves me to bits, my son does, and I think the diary makes him appreciate - although not fully understand - why I am the way I am, and why I have moved on without forgetting where I came from.
I’ve tried to make him keep a journal. He’s succeeded a few times. The One-Line-A-Day For Three Years, the Doodle Your Day one. He’s a good boy, and an able keeper of chronicles. He knows how important is it to take stock, to make memories. I want to pour my soul into his, but just the good parts. The parts that were able to seek out solace at the age of ten, in the pages of a flimsy notebook, the parts that dared to dream, and plan an escape route.
When my son turned a decade old, I gave him a book, which I’d spent weeks writing. A book about his life, thus far, as imagined through his eyes. With pictures and photographs of special moments, friends, family. Ten chapters, a hundred some odd pages. A small story, with a slight cliffhanger, and a happy ending. I paid to get it self-published.
I was worried he wouldn't ‘get it,’ that he’d toss it aside and wonder if my husband had gotten him those Virtual Reality glasses he’d been pining for. I asked permission to give him my gift before he opened the others, before cake and all that. I was nervous. But when he ripped off the wrapping and held the slim volume in his hands, his eyes lit up. His eyes welled up. “This is the most amazing thing ever, mommy.” And everything stopped moving, and everyone else disappeared and it was just the two of us - me, ten all over again, and him newly minted.
He snuck off, my book his book our book, in hand. “I’m going to go slowly, Mommy, because I can't wait to start reading, but I never want it to end.”
I’m no longer nervous. My husband is “big time” and I buy knee-highs from CVS and wear them proudly. I still hate brushing my teeth. There are a hundred things I want to change or fix about me, and a thousand things I love. I’m anxious about things like my children’s health, or flying, or dying, but for the most part I’m a badass. Regardless of what others see. That’s the best and biggest difference between ten-year-old me and me three-days-shy-of-forty - I don't give one gorgeous flying fuck about what someone thinks about me. I’m no longer afraid of people who don’t like me.
It is the closest thing to freedom a person - a woman - can attain.
