Decisions...
Decisions...
Decisions...
Tanya had her baby - Sam, last week on the 17th @ 2:12 p.m. he weighed 7 lbs. 7 oz. and was 18 1/2 " long. He looks just like Jeff and has light hair. It makes me very baby hungry to hold him.*
Ben gave a talk in church yesterday and I am going to take his advice about going to the temple this week. Maybe even twice. Morgen is saving up for a PS2 and the guitar hero game so he has been practicing the piano everyday. Max had the "best day in the whole world" last week. He said as he was going to bed, "It was was my best day in the whole world because I was the leader in my school program AND I won my first soccer game of the season!" He is so cute.
Love,
B
(*This conveyed a descending sense of disappointment, and then resolution. The reason I can retrieve this passage almost seven years later is because of the dilemma it posed. Do I tell the truth on the page or disguise my feelings in words that will be understood only by me? This required skillfulness. I would protect myself and those I loved, giving nothing away. I didn't want to criticize the father of my children. I didn't want to whine (forbidden in our family). But I needed to define my frustration. I called on style, symbols, and shorthand. I learned early how to cover myself as a writer, from when I was a teenager, should the lock be picked on my locked diary and my words read.
What I wanted to say was that in our family, what Ben decided came first. I never knew one minute to the next whether we would ever have another baby until we were actually pregnant. Uncertainty was certain. Everything depended on the state of the budget. Tense negotiations were kept between us behind closed bedroom doors. Would I be able to have another baby? Would Ben pray about it and get back to me? Or would he put it off another month.
I was frustrated. We had been waiting all year. Finally a decision was made. No, we would not be having another baby. I had a record of my complaint.)
"What's in those diaries then?"
"They aren't diaries."
"Whatever they are."
"Chaos, that's the point."
---Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook