Post on 25-Feb-2023
‘A Continuous Present’
Margaret L. Lundberg
A project submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies
University of Washington Tacoma
2014
Committee:
Chair – Michael Kula, MFA
Readers –
Nicole Blair, PhD.
Andrea Modarres, PhD.
Judy Nolte Temple, PhD.
Program Authorized to offer Degree:
Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences
© Copyright 2014
Margaret Lundberg
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments……………………………………………………………………………..3
Abstract………………………………………………………………………………………..6
Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………....7
Background…………………………………………………………………………………....9
Literature Review……………………………………………………………………………..10
Research Question…………………………………………………………………………….22
Primary Research……………………………………………………………………………...22
Project Summary……………………………………………………………………………... 23
Methodology…………………………………………………………………………………. 24
Analysis………………………………………………………………………………………. 29
Writing Process……………………………………………………………………………….. 36
Reflection………………………………………………………………………………………37
Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………….. 39
Works Cited…………………………………………………………………………………… 43
Excerpt from ‘A Continuous Present’………………………………………………………….48
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Acknowledgements
In spite of all the hours spent alone, huddled over a
notebook or keyboard, no writer works in a vacuum—and believe me,
I am no different. There are so many people who had a hand (or at
least a finger or two) in the creation of this project, I’m not
sure where to begin to thank them all—but I’ll do my best.
My humblest and happiest thanks to—
My committee- Michael Kula, Judy Temple, Andrea Modarres,
and Nicole Blair. Michael, for gently pushing me to turn my story
from something only I could love into a book worth reading. Judy,
for sharing with me her love for Emily’s story, her knowledge of
Emily’s life and home, her original research, and her enthusiasm
for my project—I couldn’t have done any of this without you.
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Andrea, for introducing me to Judy, for making me think hard
about the value of the everyday and ordinary, and the
significance of place in literature. I think of you every time I
write a landscape description. And Nicole, for sharing your love
of literature with me, being my friend, sounding board, and
cheerleader, and keeping me on track in ways you may never
understand. Thank you all—so very much!
My writing group—Kari, Tom and Peter. Thank you for reading
countless drafts, listening to me talk (and talk and talk…) about
diaries, stories, trips to Iowa—and Emily. You guys rock!
My “outside” readers- Patty, Sandi, Linda, Katy, and Cindy.
Thank you for the suggestions, corrections, finding all my typos
and inconsistencies—and the generous words of encouragement. You
truly gave me the inspiration to finish.
My little sister Kathie, who accompanied me on my trip to
Iowa. Thank you for playing research assistant and spending your
vacation pursuing my dreams—poring over Emily’s diaries, poetry,
and knick-knacks; tromping through fields and barns; chasing down
Amish buggies with a camera (ok, that was all you!); putting up
with mosquitos while we watched fireflies and visited Emily’s
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grave, and showing an amazing amount of enthusiasm over my
project—so much that you even fell for Emily’s story for
yourself. I love you (and I’m still sorry we didn’t make it to
Wisconsin).
Wilbur Kehrli, for playing host at Emily’s farm—allowing me
to photograph nearly every inch of his home—showing us around
Manchester, and then becoming our tour guide through the better
part of NE Iowa, all the way to the Mississippi River. Wilbur,
you were an invaluable source of information and inspiration, a
charming host, and inspired a key player in the novel, helping
Lizzie find her story—and herself. Thank you!
The wonderful people at the State Historical Society of Iowa
Archives in Iowa City—Mary Bennett, Charles Scott, and Paula
Smith. They had boxes full of Emily’s papers waiting for me that
first morning I arrived, taught me to use a microfilm machine,
and allowed me to dig through anything with Emily’s name on it,
taking pictures to my heart’s content (wearing the appropriate
gloves, of course). Mary took me on a personal tour of the
“artifact attic” to excavate the items that had once belonged to
Emily and her family (which somehow found their way into the
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novel, buried deep inside the trunk that Lizzie finds in her
uncle’s attic). You were all amazing, and I can never thank you
enough for your help and enthusiasm over my research.
The Golden Key International Honour Society for the generous
research grant. Without it, I would never have been able to make
the trip to Iowa—and my novel would be a much sadder thing. Thank
you!
My entire MAIS cohort here at UW Tacoma, who heard my
research presentation more times than anyone should have to; the
amazing faculty who cheered me on every step of the way—including
Alexis, who told me long ago she knew I’d write a book someday;
UW Tacoma’s amazing troupe of librarians; Amy and Kylie—“I count
myself in nothing else so happy…” as in your friendship (with
additional thanks to our old friend, Will S).
My wonderful and one-of-kind husband, Ralph, who took over
hearth and home (and laundry) for the last five plus years to
allow me to follow my dreams—wherever they led. You are my rock,
and a never-ending source of support and encouragement. I
literally could not have done any of this without you. I love
you, forever!
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My sons, Eric and Ryan, and daughter-in-law, Naomi—who urged
me back to college, and are undoubtedly thrilled I actually
finished (and might now stop hijacking every conversation with
stories about Emily).
My grandchildren—who have been fascinated that I am writing
a book, but still want their gramma back.
My parents—who always cheered my successes. (I miss you
Mom!)
And last—but definitely not least—Emily herself, for
considering her life worth remembering; for being a cooperative
subject, just as I implored her to be, standing at her graveside;
for acting as my muse throughout the entire project.
To each and every one of you, I am eternally grateful!
Abstract
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The readers of a text are—in many ways—also its authors,
with the act of reading creating a dialog between a text already
written and a text generated through reader response, creating a
community along the boundary between author and reader. To
illustrate that boundary, I situated myself—through my research
and writing—as a responding audience to nineteenth-century Iowa
farm wife Emily Hawley Gillespie, as she is revealed through the
pages of her thirty-year diary. Through a constructivist
paradigm, the methodology of philosophical hermeneutics, new
historicism, and the creative vehicle of fiction, I entered
Gillespie’s text to examine the themes which emerged within her
narrative, in the light of the imagined life and experiences of
my protagonist—a woman who finds the diary while cleaning out the
attic of her late uncle’s house. Examining the performances of
self-identity formed between author and reader and the sense of
community that develops sight unseen, I have crafted the story of
a woman who finds herself playing audience to a diarist, re-
envisioning the diarist’s identity (as well as her own) in
concurrence with other possible audiences she imagines through
the crafting of her own text. This paper explains the theoretical
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and personal rationale behind my MA project—a novel, “A
Continuous Present.”
KEYWORDS: Diary, Identity creation, Story, Narrative, Audience,
Philosophical Hermeneutics, New Historicism, Fiction,
Metafiction,
Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can't remember
who we are or why we're here.
-Sue Monk Kidd
INTRODUCTION
In 2001, after celebrating her first Christmas enveloped in
the craziness that often defines my extended family, my about-to-
be daughter-in-law looked at me in the car on the way home, her
eyes alight with startled insight. With wonder in her voice, she
made an announcement that has stayed with me ever since. “I’ve
just figured out who you are…you are storytellers. Every last one
of you!”9
Of course, we all had a huge laugh over her earnest
declaration, but I also have to admit it is true. Our family
gatherings—whether the big inclusive ones, now bursting with so
many grandchildren that my sister-in-law swears every year that
she’ll never do it again (“there are just too many of us now. We
can’t all fit in the house anymore!”), or the simple ones with
one of our grandkids and me making breakfast—have always been
occasions to tell stories. We are all storytellers! My family
teases me that I can make a “short story long” better than anyone
they know—but I can’t help it. My heart beats to the rhythms of
story—and it has for as long as I can remember.
My self-identification as a storyteller forms the basis for
both the topic and the format of the project I chose as the
culmination of my MA research. Yet, in order to offer a truly
complete picture of just how this project came to be, there is
one more story I simply must tell…
It was a Friday evening—a scorching August afternoon just
over a year ago. I was standing barefoot in my University Place
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kitchen, reveling in the coolness of the floor beneath my feet
and tossing a salad for dinner. Reaching into the cupboard for
some dried cranberries, I heard a beep from my phone—a text from
a friend on a study abroad trip to Vietnam. Having a late
Saturday brunch in Hanoi, she was texting to say hello and send
me pictures of her meal—some sort of strange fish-like creature
that she insisted was the best she’d ever tasted. For the next
several minutes, we marveled at the time difference (noting that
her today was my tomorrow), traded photos of food, and talked
about the happenings of our lives while she’d been gone—all
through a series of texts shared across space and time. A few
weeks later, not long after she’d returned home, I was rereading
the script of our conversation, and I began to wonder: if I could
speak to someone on the other side of the world, living a day
that I hadn’t yet lived—simply through the words on a page—why
couldn’t I converse, in the same way, with someone who died
before I was even born?
It was this tiny tale of alternating timelines and texts
that came to me as I considered the question of audience in diary
writing. If, as Margo Culley states, diaries are always written
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to a disembodied someone whether “[f]riend, lover, mother, God,
future self—whatever role the audience assumes for the writer…”
(12), then why could I not become such an audience, entering a
written conversation with someone, not just out of sight, but out
of time?
This query formed the heart of my project. Therefore, in
order to fully understand how a narrated self is created in the
space between a diarist and her audience, I decided to situate
myself, as it were, in this border space between reader and
writer. Mihkail Bakhtin, speaking of this border—or more
literally, this intersection of audience and self—states that “at
any given moment, [words] of various epochs and periods of socio-
ideological life cohabit with one another... Therefore [they] do
not exclude each other, but rather intersect with each other in
many different ways” (The Dialogic Imagination 291). It was Bahktin’s
notion of time-distant words “cohabit[ing]” and “intersecting”—
just as they did in my texted conversation across the
International Dateline—that led me to create this project that
would allow me to examine that dialogic space.
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BACKGROUND
Philip Spalding, in his 1949 book Self-Harvest, A Study of Diaries and
Diarists, stated that, with the exception of those written by Sir
Walter Scott and Lord Byron, “there is hardly an example of a
diary written out of a first class creative mind” (Godwin 12)—and
it is this attitude toward diaries and diarists (most of whom
were female) which held sway among literary critics for
centuries. Historically seen as belonging to the private world
of women, and containing merely personal reflections of everyday
life for countless women over the centuries, diaries have
traditionally been ignored when it came to consideration as
important texts, never seen as measuring up in significance to
the autobiographical writings of men. The early American diary
writings of women have been described by Judy Nolte Lensink as
“written personal narrative[s] least colored by artifice, closest
to American life” (39). Yet, according to Suzanne Bunkers, they
have been disregarded as either cultural or autobiographical
documents, called instead the “private writings” of the “woman’s
sphere” (Diaries: Public and Private 17). In this review of
autobiography, women’s diaries and the creation of self in
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collaboration with a diarist’s audience, I examine literature
that spans the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries, as well as
the progression of ideas behind the scholarship surrounding these
diaries, and the creation of a diarist’s self-identity in
relation to their chosen audience.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Margo Culley describes writing in a diary or journal as “an act
of language that, by speaking one’s self, sustains one’s sense of
being a self, with autonomous and significant identity” (5).
Although the history of journal writing can appear as if
dominated by females, the historical practice of writing in
journals has in reality not been gendered. While male journalists
often took their writings and published them as autobiographies
(after sometimes substantial revisions to their life stories),
female writers rarely had that luxury.
Are diaries autobiographies? Cinthia Gannet stated that female diaries
were historically characterized as “writing that has no audience”
(2), and therefore, non-literary. This type of writing,
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including travel journals and personal letters, was dismissed for
centuries simply because it does not follow the same patterns as
traditional autobiography. In response, feminist critic, Susan
Stanford Friedman, proposed that western ideas of what
constitutes autobiography were inherently individualistic and
male-centered—invariably causing the writing of women,
minorities, or any non-Western author to be ignored (35-36).
Germaine Bree, in her article titled “Autogynography,” notes that
autobiographical scholar Georges Gusdorf offered a definition of
autobiography as “narrative…life as a story,” with Brée adding
that autobiography was a “retrospective reconstruction through
language of a developing sense of self” (173). According to
Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, Gusdorf calls autobiography
“’art’ and ‘representative’ of the best minds of its time because
it ‘recomposes and interprets a life in its totality’” (8).
However, in spite of this definition, Bree claims that “there is
no consensus of opinion as to what formally characterizes the
autobiographical work” (172). For centuries, however, literary
critics did agree on one thing: diaries kept by non-literary
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women were not true autobiographies—and neither were those kept
even by most female writers (Temple 151).
A traditional image of “achievement and quest” controlled
the form and study of autobiography for centuries (Braham 56),
yet for many outside the identity paradigm of the individualistic
white male, the locus of identity formation is found within
relationship. Autobiography became a vehicle of expression
allowed almost exclusively to a single gender—male—and women’s
writings were relegated to family manuscripts, consigned to the
genre of “private writing.” Often buried in attics or passed down
to children or other family members, these writings fill
historical archives across the United States.
This genre of “private” texts, which includes letters,
diaries, and even travel journals written by both males and
females, offers a glimpse of history and the human psyche that
few other types of writing can. Marlene Schiwy writes about
reading the journal writings of others as “giv[ing] us the
writer’s life from her current perspective” (272), and allowing
the reader to “[discover] new stories of how to live, what to
aspire to, [and] what choices to explore” (267), rather than the
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retrospective “telling the story with the end in mind, ” a format
that is typical of traditional autobiography. Through diaries we
can be introduced to first-hand, in-the-moment accounts of a life
lived during watershed moments in human history—such as Anne
Frank’s account of her life in hiding from the Nazis during World
War II. We can also discover what is hidden in the seemingly
mundane and ordinary words of Mary Vial Holyoke—a woman who lived
in the late eighteenth century. On the next page is the
restoration of two weeks from Holyoke’s journal, during which she
gave birth to a son who died four days later. Although the
details are spare, if we read between the lines just a bit, we
can start to uncover Holyoke’s pain at her son’s death—as well as
signs of the often heartbreaking uncertainties of a life lived
nearly 300 years ago.
[1770]May 14. Mrs. Mascarene here & Mrs. Crowninshield. Taken very ill. The Doctor bled me. Took and anodyne.15. Kept my bed all day.17. Brought to bed at 12 of a son.19. The baby taken with fits the same as ye others. Nurse came.Mrs. Vans Died.20. The Baby very ill. I first got up.
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21. It Died at 11 o’clock A.M. Was opened. The Disorder was found to Be in the Bowels. Aunt Holyoke died.22. Training. Mother Pickman here. Mrs. Sarjant yesterday.23. My dear Baby buried.28. Mrs. Pickman, Miss Dowse Drank tea here. Mrs. Jones, Lowell, Brown, Cotnam, Miss Cotnam & Miss Gardner Called to seeme.29. Wrote to Boston and Cambridge. Mrs. Savage Brought to Bed. The widow Ward lost 2 children with ye Throat Distemper from May 25th to May 29th…
(Culley 33)
Holyoke’s entry on May 23—noting the death of her baby—is the
only one which offers an adjective (“my dear Baby”) to enlighten
her feelings about what was surely a personally agonizing day, in
the midst of two weeks that otherwise read like checking off
items on someone’s “to-do” list (including four other deaths).
What anguish must be contained within that one single word? By
studying a diary or journal like Holyoke’s, we discover that the
silences of a text can often speak louder than its words,
offering a way for those who would study such texts to see that
“diary or journal writings offer a sense of life unfolding”
(Schiwy 272).
Less than half a century ago, some feminist literary
scholars began to argue for a re-examination of texts such as
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Holyoke’s. Scholars such as Friedman claim that discounting them
because of their differences from the white male-centric
“individualistic paradigms of self” overlooked the types of
identity that “signal” women and minorities, and ignored the
“collective and relational identities” that define such texts
(35). Relationships, argues Jeanne Braham, play a prominent role
in women’s culture, with female autobiography understood as a
“‘grounding of identity’ through ‘linking with another
consciousness’” (57). This relationship of one consciousness
with another, where the reader takes an “active role” along with
the writer, is a central feature of women’s writings,
“provid[ing] a script the reader enters, resignifies and in some
collaborative sense makes her own” (57). The writer’s audience
plays a part in her identity formation—and both are identified in
the process.
Diary narratives- female autobiography as “nothing in particular.” Amy Wink,
recounting a scene from Virginia Woolf’s semi-autobiographical
story “The Legacy,” tells the tale of a widower who, on reading
through his dead wife’s fifteen-volume diary, described her
written legacy as “nothing in particular” (xi), an attitude that
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was unfortunately shared by many men—and literary critics—of his
day. Lensink points out that women’s writing in diaries, as
compared to what is considered traditional autobiography, was
perceived by many academics as “inherently less interesting”
(40), full of “pat imagery” using “literal and repetitive”
language (41), and therefore not worthy of study as literary
texts. She adds that although the language found in many diaries
is indeed “plain,” the metaphors that often fill “public literary
language” are a male construct, whereas the “private, plain-
speaking voice” of a diary is actually closer to a woman’s true
voice (41), and should be acknowledged as such by scholars. These
boundaries set for scholarly study, Lensink claims, have excluded
women’s voices for too long, and must be reconsidered.
Tethering this idea of women’s writings as previously
considered unworthy of attention (by male literary critics) to
her claim that the significance and power of diary writing comes
in relationship between writer and reader, Wink suggests that in
alienating women from the larger “literary” conversation through
ignoring the significance of both writer and audience, not only
have women’s voices been silenced, but their audiences
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marginalized as well. By discounting their value to scholarly
investigation, she claims, the diary’s power of influence has
been discounted as well. Bunkers also spoke of the comparison of
diary to autobiography, claiming that a typical autobiography—
written by a man—is a “retrospective narrative” (Diaries: Public and
Private 18) which relates the writer’s experiences from a past
tense viewpoint. Therefore, men’s autobiographical writings,
typically written by “important people” in relation to historical
events, tend to create a consistent sense of self gained through
a life already lived. Diaries, on the other hand, may appear
“fragmented and circular” (Brée 172) due to their different mode
of construction—that of daily reflection on a life lived in the
present, the only format for self-remembrance left to a woman by
the times in which she lived. In discounting the diary format as
somehow less important or non-literary due to its form and
subject, we also decline acknowledgment of the only form of
control most women had over their lives—the freedom to interpret
them according to their own beliefs.
The diarists’ worldview. Bunkers describes the nineteenth-century
diarists she studied as primarily second or third generation 21
American women of European descent, with a certain level of
education and financial stability, and just a bit of time on
their hands. Many of these diaries are not discoverable under the
author’s name, but are listed instead according to the man whose
“mother, daughter, wife or sister she was” (18). Culley spoke of
these diarists as playing the role of “family and community
historians” (4), who at the same time recorded a sentimental
“inner life” of reflection as well. Their writings also offer an
honest, gendered view of historical American culture that we can
gain through no other avenue—even if we must read between the
lines and work through the “‘silences’ of the text” to find it
(22).
Diaries often acted as a bridge between the public and
private aspects of women’s lives. Sometimes kept as a sort of
family journal, a few of these diaries are described by Bunkers
as beginning with a couple’s marriage, added to over the years by
their children. In one particular case (Lucinda and Edward Holton
of Milwaukee, WI, married 1845), the couple’s oldest daughter
began adding her own commentary to the diary on her seventeenth
birthday, and ultimately took it over at her mother’s death.
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Emily Hawley [Gillespie] began writing her diary shortly before
her twentieth birthday in 1858, and kept it faithfully until her
death thirty years later. But during those years, according to
Lensink, several entries were made in Emily’s diary by her
daughter, Sarah Gillespie Huftalen, including the last written
two weeks before Emily’s death. Both women spoke of their mutual
record of dysfunctional family experiences, the resultant
physical and verbal abuse in their shared diaries, and Bunkers
mentioned that each, on occasion, wrote entries in the other’s
diary. Sarah began keeping her own diary at age seven, and over
the years mother and daughter several times made entries in each
other’s diaries, with Emily once recording (in Sarah’s diary)
Sarah’s request: “Ma write in my journal. I can’t” (Diaries and
Dysfunctional Families 222). Emily used the opportunity to encourage
her daughter in her career as a schoolteacher and to offer a bit
of motherly advice on relationships, as well. Culley also pointed
out that women frequently used diaries not just to talk to each
other during their lives, but as a sort of “extended letter …
[often] actually sent to those left behind” at their deaths (4),
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not just to be read by those within their own household. They
were only rarely considered private texts.
The diary and its audience. Culley claims that many diaries were written
as “semi-public documents intended to be read by an audience”
(3), proposing that whether or not the writer’s intent was to
share her diary, she still had an audience in mind as she wrote.
Sheadds that even if the diary had been written to contain
thoughts or events that might be considered best kept private,
the diarist—through the very act of writing—created a
conversation with an audience, and that audience, real or
imagined, helped to shape the author’s self in the writing.
Charlotte Linde agrees, stating that the “coherence” of a
narrative is a “cooperative achievement of the speaker and the
addressee;” it does not belong solely to a “disembodied,
unsituated text” (11-12). Monica Pasupathi explains that in
creating a narrative, a sense of self is built that is
“fundamentally collaborative,” in other words, meaning is created
between the storyteller and the audience (138). Mikhail Bakhtin,
in writing about discourse in the novel, claims that discourse
exists “on the boundary between its own context, and another,
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alien, context” (Dialogic Imagination 284), repeated in the
assertions of Culley, Pasupathi and Linde, that a narrative is,
in essence, a conversation.
In what seems an acknowledgement of the dialog which
develops along this boundary between writer and audience, many
authors name their diaries or otherwise anthropomorphize them so
that the act of recording their lives becomes more like a
conversant act. Anne Frank’s first authorial act, writing her
diary during years spent in hiding, is to name her diary audience
“Kitty” (7), and in doing so, she began to shape her narrative,
just as Culley suggests, in the form of a conversation with a
friend. Gail Godwin speaks of an awareness of writing to her
future self—after keeping a diary for many years—in an effort to
“encourage, to scold, to correct, or to set things in
perspective” (13), thus constructing an audience of herself. Linde
proposes that stories shared in these diary conversations are not
“soliloqu[ies]; [they] are told to someone, and…must solicit some
response from [the] addressee” (102), an idea which echoes
Bakhtin’s assertion that “every word is directed toward an
[anticipated] answer” (Speech Genres 279).
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As if in consideration of this sort of dialogic writing,
many nineteenth-century diarists shared their writings with
family and friends. Huff and Schiwy both emphasize that women’s
diaries and journals were not actually as private as previously
considered, but were passed among family and friends as a way to
share common experiences and create a space where beliefs and
concerns could be shared. In this sharing of the commonplace
among the women in both centuries, diaries offer not only access
to an audience in an “intermediate space [of] private and public”
(Schiwy 235), but allow the writer to create this space as a way
to explore the edges of social boundaries and lived experience.
Lynn Bloom asserts that writing a diary is an expression of the
desire to be discovered someday; a perceived audience “hover[s]
at the edge of the page… [and] facilitates the work’s ultimate
focus” (23)—the sharing of one self with another. Aimée Morrison
calls this intermediate space between writer and reader an
“intimate public,” offering a sense of familiarity between the
writer and her unseen audience (38). There is always someone on
the other side of the text.
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Diaries and journals allow not only a glimpse of the
everyday thoughts, events and practices of a woman in nineteenth-
century society, but also the mores of motherhood, the everyday
effects of sexual or racial discrimination, and other aspects of
a patriarchal system that were part of most women’s mutual
experience. In this sharing of the commonplace, diaries offer not
only an awareness of audience but allow the writer to use this
space as an exploration of the edges of social boundaries and
lived experience. Yet most of this writing exists in the form of
“ordinary writing,” seen as conditioned and repetitious—“done
usual work,” “all will yet be well” (“Emily Hawley Gillespie
Diaries”)—and therefore long disregarded as having any value for
study.
Jennifer Sinor, in her discussion of this “ordinary
writing,”1 suggests that it created a sense of “safety and
familiarity” for a woman who might have no other form of
expression, in spite of what can be read as “rote…and mundane”
1 See Sinor’s discussion of “ordinary writing” in The Extraordinary Work of Ordinary Writing (with particular attention to pages 5-7), as she speaks of its definition and status in argument of the “literary vs. the non-literary” (6).
27
to today’s reader (20). Yet, she proposes that diary writing is
considered
…simple, disjointed, bare, and one-dimensional. Because
it lacks detail and does not present a linear, whole
text, it is overlooked or deemed unimportant. Writers
of ordinary writing are afforded the same uncomplicated
position as their texts—ironically affirming Thomas
Mallon’s decree that a diary is the flesh made word.
(Sinor 15)
For a woman who had few choices in her life, the decision to keep
a record of her days—to treat them as if they were something
worth remembering—may have been one of the few things actually
under her control. A diary may have represented her only
opportunity to create her identity on her own terms
Creating self-identity in a diary narrative. Narratives, claim Elinor Ochs and
Lisa Capps, contain the “ordinary exchanges” on which people
build stories of life experience, using them to “establish
coherence” between their past and present selves, as well as
forming expectations for a future self (2). While claiming that
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diarists create their self-narrative unconsciously—for the most
part— Culley also suggests a diary as “a kind of mirror” that
allows the diarist to try on various personas as she creates her
life story. Howard Becker notes that “everyone writes as someone,
affects a character, adopts a persona who does the talking for
them” (33), a truth upheld in diary writing as much as it is in
creating a character for a novel. Bloom describes this self-
construction as an act in which the diary’s author writes her own
character, “becoming the principal actor in the drama of her own
story” (32). As the stories told grow out of everyday events,
they—and her recurrently re-imagined self—become part of the
diarist’s effort to construct sense and meaning, working to
create a long-term sense of self, “with a past that explains the
present, and projects into the future” (Fivush, Habermas, Waters
& Zaman 323). Fivush, et al. propose that who we are is defined
by the ways we communicate our past, and in recounting it we
“simultaneously create a narrative of our self” (324). Over time,
these various personas, constructed in the pages of a diary,
allow the reader a greater understanding of the woman behind the
writing.
29
Yet, according to Benstock, a diary is more than just the
formation of a character on a page. It is a “living presence”
(17), not simply a fictional construct of a life seen in
retrospect, but a place where the boundaries of a diarist’s life
could be examined by the writer. Fivush, et al. suggest that a
diary’s autobiographical narratives represent a crossroads
between self and culture, with Gannett adding an awareness of
history and gender to the construction of self-identity found
along this intersection with culture. Culture includes not just
the larger society of which the diarist is a part, but the
smaller confines of her family as well. Yet, the social
strictures of culture and family can be difficult to overcome
when one is trying to create or maintain a positive sense of
self, especially for a woman who feels she doesn’t quite measure
up to expectations—social or otherwise.
According to Pasupathi, McLean & Weeks, people are less
likely to disclose events that are inconsistent with upholding a
positive self-image. However, even those events that are not shared
with others can have an effect on “the narrated self” generated
through their writing (91). In Gillespie’s published diary A
30
Secret to be Burried (sic), she alludes several times to secrets she
refuses to tell—even within the pages of her own diary— and one
that she intends to take to her grave. In a time when women had
very little about their own lives that they could control,
Lensink demonstrates—through Emily’s words—that simply writing in
a diary helped many women to define and “empower” their lives
despite pre-scripted social roles, giving a voice to thoughts
that might be otherwise unacceptable (A Secret to be Burried xvi).
Fivush, et al. spoke of these rigid life scripts that determined
life choices for nineteenth-century women (whether to marry or
not, age at marriage, number of children, education, etc.), and
claimed that “if one deviates from these scripts in significant
ways…one is compelled to provide an explanatory narrative” (332).
If, as Pasupathi, et al., state “our sense of self is both
reflected in and constructed by the kinds of stories we tell
about our experiences” (90), what Gillespie told—and refused to
tell—worked together to create her sense of self, within her own
set of personally and culturally-constructed boundaries.
31
The autobiographical-self as a fictionalized creation. Shari Benstock speaks of
autobiography as the point where self and writing intersect,
defining it as both an act and a goal. But she also described it
as an unattainable goal, one which begins with “the assumption of
self-knowledge,” and ends in an act of creative fiction, where
the writer “covers the premises” of that creation (11), in
essence taking the real person and hiding him or her within a
constructed character—then concealing that construction behind
what has now become a subjective history. James Olney asserts
that “autobiography is not so much a mode of literature as
literature is a mode of autobiography”2 (qtd. in Smith 3).
Felicity Nussbaum indicates that “language constructs
subjectivity and in turn writes language” (161), presenting the
idea that in narrative, the “I” of the author becomes the “I” of
a narrated character who is now distinct from the narrator,
simply because of the choices made through language. As Nussbaum
applies this thought to diaries, she adds that diaries and
2 James Olney, in a proposal submitted to the National Endowment for the Humanities titled “Autobiography and the Humanities,” dated June 1, 1980 and delivered in a teachers’ seminar at the University of North Carolina at ChapelHill during the summer of 1981 (cited in Smith 177). As a writer, I would haveto agree with Olney—and all the rest of the scholars listed in this paragraph;all writing is, on some level, autobiographical.
32
journals—and by extension, autobiography— merely represent
reality; the diarist “pretends to simply transcribe the details
of experience” (165). Judy Simons notes that women frequently
used diaries to construct themselves as “subjects” rather than as
“object[s] in a male-dominated world” (254). Every time she sat
down to write, the diarist clearly made choices of what to
include based on events important to her narrated “I”—just as
does the traditional autobiographer.
In the same manner as the autobiographer, the diarist
“selects what to describe” and how to relate the story of her
day. Within the text she creates, she may reflect back on past
events—just as does the autobiographer—but it is all part of her
creation of meaning in the here and now—the continuous present of
the diary—creating “a coherent world” formed through her own
observations of it (“Expanding the Boundaries” 42). Wink claims
that “writing is not unadulterated thought”; a diarist takes
thoughts and spins them into threads to be woven into a certain
image of herself and her life (xv). In a mode of writing that is
distinct from traditional autobiography, there is also a sense
33
that diaries are “a series of surprises” to both reader and
writer; neither knows what will happen next (21).
However, not everything is a surprise to the diarist. Some
events recorded in a diary might be revisited even years later,
long after the author knows their result, often in an effort to
either find meaning in them or recreate them in a way she can
accept. Kagle and Gramegna speak of the fictionalizing power of
the diary to reduce tension as the diarist imaginatively revises
real world happenings of the past to “conform to her emotions” in
the present (52). Judy Nolte Temple, revisiting her earlier work
with Gillespie’s diary (writing as Judy Nolte Lensink), notes
that the diary underwent revisions more than once as the author
“wr[o]te off some of my old Diary” (A Secret to be Burried 202),
apparently attempting to recast her past self according to her
current concerns. Gillespie, in revisiting her girlhood entries
some fifteen years after they were originally written, in fact
amended many sections, adding details not previously included and
“editorializing” many of her past experiences and ideas3. In 3 In one particularly telling alteration to one of her original texts, Gillespie took an entry that discussed her attendance at a friend’s wedding, and in recopying it, not only increased the number of words written from about75 to 352, but put herself at the center of the groom’s unrequited affections (see A Secret to be Burried, pg. 12; entry dated October 12, 1858). Although some of
34
light of Temple’s later research, Culley’s suggestion of the
“text…reconstruct[ing] its past” (20) seems quite appropriate.
RESEARCH QUESTION
This idea of a writer’s self-creation within the pages of a text
is what drew me to studying diaries, and to nineteenth-century
women’s diaries, specifically. In a world where so much of a
woman’s life was prescriptive and ordered by culture, the diary
was one space where a woman held some control over her life. In
both the reading and writing involved in my project, I considered
this question the core of my research:
“If the self created in autobiography is a rhetorical
construct, with audience awareness playing a role in
its creation (see Sidonie Smith’s “fictive” reader4),
did a sense of audience awareness make Emily Hawley
Gillespie’s diary writing an “autobiographical act” as
well?”
the original writing (now existing on microfilm) is almost unreadable, there is enough to enable a basic content comparison and word count between the two texts.4 Smith asserts that a “fictive reader” is a “rhetorical construct…created by an autobiographer” in order to bring his or her imagined self into being within the pages of the text (A Poetics of Women’s Autobiography 6)
35
Within her diary’s pages, could Gillespie create—or even recreate
—a sense of herself that might possibly be allowed to exist
nowhere else? Did she create that self-identity in relationship
to an audience of some sort?
PRIMARY RESEARCH.
In July 2014 I traveled to the State Historical Society of
Iowa archives in Iowa City to study Gillespie’s original diaries
for myself, and was pleased to be able to view some of the
earlier versions of her diary writings on microfilm. After
spending the last year reading through Lensink’s edited version,
I have grown familiar with the major events in Gillespie’s diary,
and to see some of the differences between the versions written
in 1858 (there were two on the microfilm) and those which Emily’s
diary itself claims were “copied over” in either 1862 or 1873 was
a real treat—and strong evidence that a diary is not always an
in-the-moment, unadulterated version of events.
To say that a diary is nothing more than the plain thoughts
of a non-literary writer is to ignore the evidence that some
diarists chronicled their lives in the same way an author writes
a novel: through a series of drafts and revisions. Like Anne
36
Frank, who wrote, and then rewrote and edited her diary during
her years spent in hiding (Frank v)—a diary which was then
revised and edited once again by her father after her death—
Gillespie occasionally redrafted entire entries, adding details
to the 1873 revisions that did not exist in earlier versions
(viewable in the "Emily Hawley Gillespie Diaries," Sarah Gillespie
Huftalen Papers, 1836-1955, available on microfilm in the State
Historical Society of Iowa archives).
PROJECT SUMMARY
My project was inspired by and constructed around the nineteenth-
century diary of Emily Hawley Gillespie, coming into focus as I
asked myself, “How can I use narrative to demonstrate the answer
to my research question?” The diary covers a period of thirty
years, with the first entry made shortly before Gillespie’s
twentieth birthday, and the last entered in her daughter’s hand
about two weeks before Gillespie’s death. I first learned the
existence of this diary through my preliminary research into
women’s diaries, and after a bit of searching found it published
as an e-book, available through the University of Washington
library system. After reading just a few entries of the edited
37
diary (A Secret to be Burried, Judy Nolte Lensink), I knew I had found
the subject for my research; Emily’s diary presented me with a
fascinating “I” to whom I could become audience and respond in
kind. To be sure we were truly compatible, I did a series of
“test responses,” a succession of short pieces in which I replied
to her diary comments or offered a story of my own in reply. When
I had finished, I realized that even over the vast gulf of time,
culture and space, Gillespie and I had found a common space to
communicate.
Gillespie both created and revealed her identity through her
language choices within the pages of her diary. Reading the
diary, and writing responses to her text became a sort of
“conversation” with her, which eventually grew into my MA project
—a novel that documents a mutual journey of self-creation on the
parts of both Gillespie the diarist, and my fictional
protagonist, Lizzie, who is a writer herself.
METHODOLOGY
This performance of self-creation through the words on a page is
what drew me to the study of women’s diaries in general, and to
Gillespie’s diary in particular. Within her diary, Gillespie 38
created—or recreated—a sense of herself that might possibly be
allowed to exist nowhere else, and I believe she fashioned it in
relationship to an audience of some sort. The purpose behind each
of the methods chosen is to tease out exactly how she did this
While viewing Gillespie’s diary through a Constructivist
paradigm, which defines knowledge as socially constructed and
historically subjective (Pascale 50), I am using Philosophical
Hermeneutics and New Historicism as lenses of textual analysis.
The final lens is more subjective and inventive—I have chosen to
use fiction writing as a tool of analysis, as well.
Philosophical Hermeneutics. “Emphasiz[ing] neither the text nor the
reader,” Philosophical Hermeneutics focuses “on the event of
understanding or interpretation as it occurs in the encounter between
reader and text” (Freeman 926, emphasis mine). Hans-Georg Gadamer
calls this “grasping of meaning” by the reader an “independent
productive act” (24), one where meaning is not discovered within
the text, but produced as the reader makes sense of the writing
left behind. Gadamer explains Philosophical Hermeneutics as
“challenging the classic epistemology of the interpretivist
paradigm,” and argues that the understanding sought by
39
Hermeneutics is not the result of interpretation, it is
interpretation (194). In other words, interpretation is not a
process to follow in order to gain understanding; understanding
itself is interpretation.
The notion that Hermeneutics is a process of interpretation
by which one can reach understanding is generated from the
longstanding idea that there is a single objectively discoverable
meaning in any text. Richard Bernstein, summarizing Gadamer’s
ideas on the subject, notes his avowal of a discoverable meaning
within the text “that can be isolated from our own prejudgments”
(139), and held free from distortions and misinterpretations—but
asserts this is not so. He states that interpretation “can [only]
be construed as distorted…if we assume that a text possesses some
meaning in itself” (139). Instead, the claim of Philosophical
Hermeneutics is that meaning is “negotiated mutually in the act
of interpretation; it is not simply discovered” (Schwandt 195).
Meaning, Thomas Schwandt claims, is what happens between the reader
and the text, with the reader’s biases and lived experience
becoming part of that meaning. Knowing, he states, is an active
experience, with the knower playing as great a part as the
40
subject (125). For my work with Emily’s diary, Philosophical
Hermeneutics offers me a viewpoint best suited to the text.
New Historicism. With its emphasis on the social location of texts,
New Historicism crafts an anthropology-like “thick description”
which makes it possible to recreate Gillespie’s place in society
and history. Judith Lowder Newton states that “history is best
told as a story of power relations and struggle” through many
voices, particularly those considered “untraditional sources”—
diaries and letters, women’s magazines and novels (152). Through
the textual analysis of New Historicism, I hope to allow many of
those previously powerless voices surrounding and producing the
realities of Emily’s life to speak. By placing these sources
alongside traditionally studied historical texts, I have been
able to gain a greater understanding of “the social life to which
texts testify” (Fox-Genovese 215), making my work maintaining
Gillespie’s authentic voice and knowledge more comprehensive. I
have also examined several other texts covering nineteenth-
century history in Iowa, where Gillespie spent her adult life;
learning of the temperance movement, of which she frequently
wrote; the Universalist religion, in which she was an ardent
41
believer; and issues of women’s rights and social position, which
also had a great effect on the choices that Gillespie made
throughout her life. I have also read nineteenth-century novels
Gillespie mentioned in her diary (including Tempest and Sunshine
1854), plus several sections of the published diary of her
daughter, Sarah Gillespie Huftalen (All Will Yet be Well, Suzanne
Bunkers), in which Sarah remarks on many of the same events that
Emily discussed. All of these have worked together, giving me
insight into the woman behind the text and making the
interpretation of her character just that much more complex.
“Fiction as Analysis.” My third method for examining this topic of
identity creation through the language of a diary and seen
through the eyes of the author’s audience, is a more imaginative
one. I used the creative techniques of fiction to craft a novel
in which the persona of my fictional protagonist (a writer of
historical fiction who is currently suffering a bad case of
writer’s block)—becomes established as the diarist’s audience, in
spite of the boundaries of time and space. This character,
Lizzie, discovers Gillespie’s diary in the attic of her late
uncle’s home and begins to read it, eventually becoming a
42
responding audience to the diary and the identity that Gillespie
has created within its pages. Lizzie eventually takes Gillespie’s
narrative as her own (in a sense) and begins writing a book about
her life, eventually focused on the “relationship” crafted
between the two women, based on the identity that Gillespie left
behind.
John Dufresne claims that “[he] will believe anything [he]
read[s] except autobiography. A fiction writer has no reason to
lie. A memoirist has an illusion to protect” (49)—and I would
have to agree. Gillespie certainly worked hard to preserve her
illusions. Yet fiction allows the writer to tell a story in the
way it could have happened, enabling a “truth” to be shared
without risk to a person’s self-illusion. It can allow an author
a venue for honesty that memoir does not. Lisa Cron claimed that
a powerful story can “change the way people think simply by
giving them a glimpse of life through their character’s eyes”
(2), revealing truths that just might change our very perceptions
of our own realities. With the very act of writing a diary
already fashioning a “constructed self” (Benstock 11), what
better way to demonstrate this construction than through fiction?
43
In my writing, I also included a few of the signifiers of
metafiction, a style of writing that encompasses “a commentary on
its own narrative…[or] a fiction about fiction” (Hutcheon 1).
Patricia Waugh claimed that “the lowest common denominator of
metafiction” is the construction of a fictional tale while making
“a statement about the creation of that fiction” (6). In my
novel, which includes several layers of audience and identity
within a fictional conversation, this aspect of metafiction is
not only the perfect storytelling device, but came to be an
inevitable feature of the story itself.
Using fiction as a method of analysis allowed me the freedom
to interpret and imagine the “missing pieces” in the accounts
Gillespie left behind. “Recreating”—through close reading and
responding to passages that particularly “spoke” to me as
reader/responder—a sense of Gillespie’s consciousness, and
joining in conversation with her has helped me to construct the
sort of audience relationship that she may have had in mind as
she wrote, allowing me to become—in Buss’ words—an “accomplice”
to the text (86).
44
Yet in any attempt to recreate the life of another through
the words on a page, the reader runs the risk of “seeing” things
in the text that the author may never have intended—and that is a
hazard that I faced regularly throughout the writing of my novel
manuscript. Jennifer Sinor, in her work with the diary of her own
great-great-great-aunt, noted that a diary “bears the traces of
just enough recognizable features in combination with just enough
gaps, omissions and general disarray to make it highly vulnerable
to hyperperformative reading” (88), or an assumption on the
reader’s part that she knows what the text means in spite of what
it says. Having kept a diary on and off for much of my life, I
must admit there was something personally familiar about the
format of Gillespie’s diary—a familiarity that often made me feel
as if I knew what she was thinking simply because I knew what I
would have thought under what seemed to be similar circumstances.
Because this sense of familiarity was occasionally so strong, I
felt this issue of taking another’s words and bending them to fit
my own bias or imagination was an important one to address—and I
chose to do it within the story I created.
45
My protagonist takes several narrative threads that Emily
has woven within her diary and writes them as short stories. In
the writing process she gets a bit carried away by her
imagination, and adds fictional details that she believes will
make the tale more appealing to a contemporary audience. But,
when the hour grows late and she falls asleep over her writing,
she dreams about Emily’s reaction to what she’s done—and Emily is
not happy! Aside from giving me the opportunity to create an
interaction between two characters separated in time by over a
century, this little scene also allowed me to address the idea
that the meaning found in a text is, to a very great extent,
created by the reader (a risk every writer must accept). Although
Sinor warns that the reader of a diary must be careful in his or
her interpretation so as to avoid tainting it with the reader’s
own ideas, it would seem to me that such a thing is not only
difficult to avoid, but to a certain extent inevitable. Taking
into account the historical and social context of a diary is
often the best a reader can do. It only takes a conversation with
friends at a book club meeting to realize that reading any text
is always a work of interpretation. The baggage we carry as
46
readers—through life experiences both positive and negative—can’t
help but affect the ways we interpret any text.
ANALYZING GILLESPIE’S DIARY
In Reading Autobiography, Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson speak
of the means by which autobiographical writings present the
experiences of a self as they are “felt from the inside,” as well
as often alluding to the self that others see (and which the
writer is also aware of), noting that within an autobiography
there is a sense of “not one life but two” (6). They continue to
speak of what they call “autobiographical acts,” or rhetorical
moves which are always “addressed to an audience [and] engaged in
an argument about identity” (63). This argument over the writer’s
identity involves the presence of “multiple ‘I’s”—most
specifically, the “I” who speaks, and the “I” who is spoken of
(71), however Smith and Watson argue the existence of more than
just these two versions of the self.5
5 Defining autobiography as “a retrospective narrative about a …past that is fully past—a life story that is told from the end” (71), Smith and Watson claim that there are not merely two “I”s (the “I” of the present telling a tale of the “I” of the past, but four. The authors make note of four possible “I”s in autobiographical writing: the “Real” or Historical “I”; the Narrating“I”; the Narrated “I”; the Ideological “I.”
47
Taking Smith and Watson’s discussion of these multiple “I”s,
I applied it to Gillespie’s diary text, and discovered that in
many passages, all four of these possible “I”s appeared. Below is
a single entry from her diary, transcribed in its entirety:
March 27, 1883- I finish my nightgown & c. go to town with
James. he feels better natured—I am thankful he does. I sometimes
think it is a real disease that some people have to have a time every so often. they
seem to get so full of some undefinable thing they must explode
[emphasis Gillespie’s]. Henry & Sarah at home. they work and
study as usual. Snow.
Quite happy to nightEvery thing is all right.My prayer has been answeredFor it I am so thankful.May it ever be thus, tis well.My children. Light of my life.Through all pleasure and strife,May their pathway ever beFree from sin and sorrowMay they be guidedBy virtue. My best wishes for all.
(“Emily Hawley Gillespie Diaries”)
In this entry, dated nearly five years to the day before her
death on March 24, 1888, we can see Gillespie speaking as the
historical “I” in her notation of the weather (“Snow”), remarking48
on her daily activity of finishing the sewing on her nightgown,
and describing her children’s actions (“Henry & Sarah at home.
they study as usual.”), as well. Gillespie vacillates between
Narrator (“I finish…go to town with James.”) and Narrated (“I
sometimes think…”) as she describes both her day and her thought
processes. She also introduces the ideological “I” when she
discusses her thoughts about James “disease” from the more
distant perspective of “they” and “some people” rather than
expressing her opinions of his behavior specifically. She lapses
into the ideological once again as she writes a poem dealing with
her spiritual convictions and hopes for her children, which
follows the reporting part of the entry.
Obviously, Gillespie is not writing her story from the end.
There is no sense of a life being viewed in retrospect. She shows
no awareness of any significance of this day over any other, or
that on March 24, 1888 her life will end. Yet, this lack of a
retrospective sentience on her part for explaining her life from
“the end of the story” does not change the autobiographical
character of her writing. Several times over the thirty years she
kept the diary, Gillespie “copied over” her text, noting a sense
49
of “liv[ing her] life over again” through the writing (“Emily
Hawley Gillespie Diaries” May 6, 1873). In her 1873 “version” of
the diary (there were at least three others), the long-married
Gillespie even reinvents herself as the single and desirable
heroine of her story—in an opening banner to the text which
declares it the “reminiscences of the life…of Miss Emmie E.
Hawley” (Temple 155).
Although she may not have recorded her life story from a
retrospective view—but rather on the daily basis of “a continuous
present”—her revision process, narrative stance, and rhetorical
sense of audience, clearly demonstrate the “autobiographical
acts” she performed in its writing. Gillespie also used her diary
as a way to create an identity she could live with. Beyond simply
rewriting her past, she shaped her present as well. If, as Smith,
Watson, and Nussbaum claim, the “I” in a diary has become a
fictional character through the language choices made, then
Gillespie’s diary frequently took a turn toward the imaginative.
In a lengthy entry dated February 13, 1860, Emily recalls a
scene with the family doctor which happened months earlier, and
50
includes it here—complete with dialogue and her dramatic
commentary on the event
Ah, I can never forget how he looked at me when he went
away,--he only said ‘How do you do, Emmie’ and ‘good
bye.’ Yes, I am now in my room alone. All is still and
I am meditating on the past. Aye, that look of
disappointment reminds me of these words he uttered the
evening of our exhibition.—“My dear, dear girl, he said
“I do love you, I would not harm one hair of your head,
I have watched you when you were sick and waited until
you are old enough to answer for yourself to ask you to
be my wife…if you will only say yes it shall be
tonight, now, in less than two hours.” I told him I
couldn’t think of such a thing…
(A Secret to be Burried 30)
The passage continues as if taken from a novel, conveying her
refusal of his proposal, his tears at her reply, and her reasons
for turning him down (“he knows not but he may die at any time
from the effects of cutting his hand with a lance, and, too, he
is eighteen years my senior”), then ends with the final pious
51
remark “—His will not ours, be done. ‘tis about eleven. I must to
sleep. Raining” (30).
In Gillespie’s earlier mention of this same exhibition,
dated November 8, 1859—three months earlier—she writes “Dr.
Chappell was at the exhibition; he talked, Oh so much I will not
write it tonight. Perhaps never” (25). If this event had been so
emotionally fraught that she was still considering it three
months later, wouldn’t it have filled her diary on the night it
happened? Yet instead, it is barely mentioned, while she spends
several paragraphs in the November 8th entry discussing the play
she saw (“Romeo & Juliette was nice…”), a boy who wanted to spend
time with her (“I gave him his ring though he did not want it; I
told him he was only a boy, he would see someone to love better
suited to him than I…”) and noting an article read with a friend
(“Miss Jones and I read an excellent paper”). Was she keeping
secrets and covering them with unimportant details? Or was her
later entry an effort to dramatize a remembered event as she
“meditated” on her thoughts? (Either way, I find it remarkable
that her memory of a three-month-old conversation is so good.)
Even if Emily’s conversation with the Doctor did include a
52
marriage proposal, it took on a fictional quality as she became
the narrator of her own life.
Like Anne Frank, who named her diary ‘Kitty’ as a way to
designate it with the status of audience, Gillespie directly
addresses her diary on several occasions, calling it “my only
confident [sic]” (December 3, 1874), addressing it directly as
“the only confident I ever had,” yet also declaring that “thou
dear journal dost not know every secret” (August 20, 1874). But
as time goes on and her marriage is deteriorating, she sadly
notes “Dear old journal, none but you greet me welcome…” (January
17, 1884). She also more than once speaks openly to her audience,
in her worries over her husband’s behavior and state of mind,
saying, “Reader, do you not feel to sympathize with Emmie?”
(August 22, 1863). Similarly, Emily sometimes indulged in a bit
of self-talk, saying things like “keep up good courage Emmie!”
(April 25, 1882). In this instance she acknowledges herself as
audience, demonstrating a clear awareness of Smith’s “fictive”
reader.
Gillespie also uses her diary writings to portray an image
of herself as a God-fearing woman, dependent on Providence to
53
make things right—a very common image for a woman of her time.
According to Barbara Welter, a nineteenth-century woman “judged
herself and was judged by her husband, her neighbors and
society,” and whether or not she displayed the “four cardinal
virtues” of “True Womanhood—piety, purity, submission and
domesticity” (21). Emily’s diary is full of prayers (“May we put
our trust in Him who doeth all things well, to guide us aright,”
February 13, 1860); desires that she might always be pure (“…that
I may ever be true to my word in all that I say, and may I never
hurt or mar the feelings of anyone,” October 6, 1861); her desire
to be all she feels she should be to her husband, in spite of his
not coming home for dinner as he had promised (“James is too kind
to be spoken harshly to & God forbid that ever an unkind word or
thought from me again,” July 11, 1863); and comments on her own
domestic prowess ( “this forenoon I bake 1 loaf bread & crackers,
churn, do my mopping & ironing & other work. Cut & nearly made a
little sack of my blue dress sleeve this afternoon & usual work,”
August 22, 1863)—an entry that is repeated in some fashion nearly
every day of Gillespie’s life.
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As Gillespie’s relationship with her husband begins to sour,
she demonstrates a drastic change from her earlier comments on
James’ behavior and consideration. She becomes much more focused
on explaining how put upon she is by his lack of concern for her
and the children. She emphasizes what she calls his bouts with
“the blues,” (“James has one of his fits again to night. He shook
his fist in my face… I lay awake most of the time every night
until after twelve. Why fear him,” February 6, 1886), his ill-
treatment of her and the children (“…James having grown so much
worse & having such fits of insanity. Three weeks ago he tried to
choke Henry to death and declared he would kill him,” August 28,
1886). Yet, after remarking that
The heart sometimes is broken by trouble & its posser
[sic] dies a martyr…suffered untold sorrow by hearing
his abusive language, yet I did not dare displease him.
I have written many things in my journal, but the worst
is a secret to be buried [sic] when I shall cease to
be. God alone knows I have prayed every day that I
might have Wisdom, that I might know the right way, &
55
do right in all my words and doings. I can say with all my
heart my conscience is clear. (October 25, 1886)
it is obvious that her audience is meant to see James as an
abuser. In a story like this one, we have only Gillespie’s words
to judge by. Her words make it clear (backed up in some accounts
by her own daughter’s diary) that James suffered from some sort
of mental illness. Yet at the same time, Gillespie’s narrative is
framed in such a way to make her out to be the blameless victim
of her husband’s instability6. She has used the diary’s language
to create an image of herself as a long-suffering saint, while
painting her husband a “raving Maniac” (August 28, 1886).
Nevertheless, something seems to have changed for Gillespie
so that her self-created diary identity moved from fashioning
herself as a bastion of nineteenth-century “True Womanhood,” to
framing herself as the innocent victim of a lunatic. She was
getting older and sicker, and James’ early bouts with “the blues”
had progressed into behavior that slipped from mere sadness to
volatility. Yet I believe there was more involved than just her
6 Lest it seem that I am excusing an abuser and blaming the victim, I have seen parts of Sarah’s diary that—while they do not absolve James—do occasionally offer another side to the story.
56
health and his mental health issues. I believe that Gillespie was
watching her daughter grow up, seeing Sarah as “much like myself
when I was her age” (November 15, 1885), and as “myself living
over again” (February 13, 1886), imagining herself living her
life over through her daughter. She even noted that one of
Sarah’s suitors was “too much like [James] in some things,”
adding that “had anyone brave advised me, to beware of where I
was going to seal my future life, before it was too late. All
those seemingly good excuses [offered] would be but idle talk”
(June 13, 1887). For a woman who is unhappy with the results of
her life choices, what would be more logical than to try to find
a way to somehow reimagine her life? In earlier years, she had
revised her diary story, re-visioning herself as a sought after
young woman. Feeling old and becoming sickly, she may have felt
that wasn’t enough anymore, so she recast herself as a different
sort of heroine—one who is “happy [to] leave this world with a
clear conscience, trusting to go into the future in immortal
glory all is well” (February 19, 1888). Both images left behind
in her diary, show us a woman who—unable to actually live her
57
life on her own terms—chose the image of identity she would leave
behind.
As I discussed in the introduction to this paper, my
research into diaries, journals and autobiography, and
Gillespie’s diary in particular, led me to the conclusion that if
Emily could rewrite her life, surely I—using the methodologies
laid out here—could on some level, do the same. Although I wanted
to be careful not to hijack Gillespie’s voice, using her diary as
the inspiration for my examination of the reading and writing
process—that space where writer and reader meet along the border
of a text—seemed to lend itself well to writing the novel
inspired by her story.
And with what I had discovered of Gillespie’s self-revision
process in the pages of her diary, I somehow felt she wouldn’t
really mind.
WRITING PROCESS
Writing this story of an imaginary meeting and developing
conversation between a “real-life” diarist and a fictional
character has been one of the most enjoyable things I’ve ever
done—and one of the most all-consuming, as well. Except for a few
58
moments when my conscience was screaming “but that is not how it
happened,” writing this story was amazingly easy—so easy that I
often had to sit back and ask myself if I was sometimes
recreating Emily in my own image. I’d like to think I haven’t,
but in reading her diary, I came to see so many different sides
of her character (some I liked very much, and others?... not so
much) that I occasionally had to wonder just which view of her I
was portraying in any given scene.
Yet, can’t the same be said of any of us? I am a daughter,
wife, mother, grandmother, friend, artist, student—and writer. I
can be easy-going or argumentative, friendly or reserved,
idealistic or cynical, dubious or completely gullible—depending
on the situation. Why would I think Emily would not be equally
multi-faceted? Each of us is many different people, depending on
our audience of the moment.
With all these ideas in mind, I spent the summer reading a
multitude of books (novels, books on writing novels, books about
metafictional structure, and metafictional novels and short
stories), as well as collecting the quotes about reading,
writing, diaries, and other topics that I felt helped to convey
59
the theme of each chapter (or in some cases, sections of a
chapter).7 Not only has this reading given me the best sort of
education on how to write a novel, it has allowed me to “study”
with some of the best teachers who have ever written—the authors
who created these amazing works.
REFLECTION
The largest part of my project was the writing itself.
Before my July 2014 trip to Iowa, I had written two short stories
based on Emily’s diary (“Libbie’s Wedding” and “Stranger on a
Train”), both of which became chapters in the novel—although in
slightly edited form. I had also written a preliminary prologue
(since, greatly altered) and the first chapters leading up to
Lizzie’s decision to go to Iowa (now for the most part, excised
from the story). All the rest was written after I arrived back
home. But, since most of the novel takes place in Iowa, it was
the only way it could be done. I would never have been able to
7 With my project in many ways being an homage to reading and writing, as wellas diary and audience, the idea for using these quotes came to me very early in the planning process. My only disappointment with them is that I have collected so many good ones, I’ll never be able to use them all. I have also, as part of the same tribute to writers and novels, mentioned several of my personal favorites (including a few movies and television shows), and even referenced a few “fictional” novels written by my protagonist. Together, theseadd to the metafictional touches sprinkled throughout my novel.
60
write any of it (at least not convincingly) if I had not had the
chance to see the original diary “face-to-face”—reading certain
entries in their entirety—or actually stand in Emily’s home.
Although it had obviously been remodeled in the 140 years since
its original construction, there was something so “real” about
being in the same rooms that Emily had walked through, worked in,
and written her diary in, that in some small way it was like
gaining an introduction.
On that same trip, I also had the opportunity to visit
Emily’s grave—twice. Once with the gentleman8 who bought Emily’s
house from her daughter Sarah in 1954 when he was just a junior
in high school (he still lives there today), and once alone. It
was on that second visit that I took the time to talk with Emily
(and Sarah—buried right next to her—without whom the diary would
never have seen the light of day). Right there, under the white
oak tree that shaded their headstones—and battling several hungry
8 Wilbur Kehrli, the owner of Emily’s house (in Manchester, Iowa), appears several times in the novel as Lizzie’s neighbor, Alex. I offered Wilbur the chance to name “his” character at the end of our day-long visit, and he chose the name Alex to honor an old friend. He was a lovely and gracious gentleman, and I couldn’t let this opportunity pass without a mention of all the help andenthusiasm he offered over my project—even letting me tromp all over his home and property taking pictures of anything that garnered my attention. Thanks tohis grandson, too, for passing along my initial emailed attempt at tracking Wilbur down.
61
mosquitos—I promised the two of them that I would tell Emily’s
story to the best of my ability, asking Emily to please be a
cooperative subject. For the most part, she has been exactly
that.
On September 10, 2014 I finished the first draft of my
novel. Although, I have since added an epilogue and a few
additional scenes and chapters, offering a bit more of Emily’s
story, I considered the story “complete” on that day. I sent the
draft out to several friends who acted as “beta readers” in the
hope of getting some feedback from those who are most likely
among my “target” audience—and their comments have been
invaluable. As a matter of fact, one of those comments led me to
the realization that even as I was examining Emily’s diary for
evidence that she had made choices regarding both topics to write
about and the framing of those topics, in order to portray a
certain image of herself, I was doing exactly the same thing in
my own decisions of what to include.
One additional chapter, added after comments from a few of
my readers that they wanted “more Emily,” dealt with the history
of Emily’s possession of the deed to the family farm. Writing
62
this chapter after the rest of the story arc was complete—and my
portrayal of Emily as a character was fixed—made it imperative
that I choose only one aspect of the conflict the deed caused
between Emily and her husband. Although there were times in my
reading that I was in full support of Emily’s “side of the
story,” there were other times when I was very much aware that
she was fashioning an image of herself that she wanted anyone who
might one day read the diary to see. Because I had already cast
Emily’s character in a certain light, I had to make choices not
only regarding which of her comments to include, but about the
type of impression I was hoping to make with the information in
order to avoid appreciably altering the story as I had already
told it.
If I made these decisions in writing someone else’s life,
surely Emily—and every other diarist—did it while writing her
own.
CONCLUSION
As I studied her life, I was surprised to discover how much Emily
Gillespie and I had in common. Although she was a farm girl, and
I grew up mostly in the city, we were both born in Michigan—Emily
63
in 1838, and I, over a century later—and we both had familial
roots in Iowa. She greatly desired a higher education, although
she was never able to go to college as she wished. Her youthful
dreams of becoming a painter and writer never came to fruition,
but her diary (along with other family papers left to the State
Historical Society of Iowa by her daughter Sarah) overflows with
poems and short stories she wrote, and in her later life she even
attempted to get a few of them published.
Emily was reasonably well-read for a woman of her era and
interested in the ideas of the larger world. She wrote a great
deal about the suffrage and temperance movements. She hated
slavery, yet had some decidedly negative opinions of
abolitionists and the Civil War. She also had two children, kept
house and worked on her farm, earning nearly half of her family
farm’s income through raising turkeys, churning and selling
butter, and sewing for friends and neighbors. She was so
determined that her children would gain the kind of education
denied her that she paid their tuition with her farm earnings,
and went without things she needed just to be sure that they
could continue to attend school.
64
Like Emily, I also dreamed of completing my college
education. Yet, in spite of beginning my college career right out
of high school, thirty-nine years passed before I finally earned
my Bachelor’s degree. I married at 20, raised two children, and
ran a business out of my home, working to put my children into
private schools—just as Emily did. Also like Emily, I dreamed of
seeing my writing published someday—a goal which has in fact been
achieved several times already.
Sometimes I think we could have been friends.
However, in spite of the parallels between us, there are
many ways that our lives are not quite so similar. Although my
twenty-first century American culture has not yet afforded women
fully-equitable status—particularly women of color and those in
poverty—I am much more in control of my life and choices than
Emily ever was. Even in the late-1970s when I came of age, I was
able to work where I chose, marry as I wished (without pressure
from parents or society), own property separately from my
husband, have access to birth control, and vote. I have not had
to deal with serious personal illness or an abusive husband as
she did, and I have not lived a life of hard physical labor on a
65
farm. I may have moved 800 miles from my family when I was in my
early twenties—where Emily moved less than 200—but I was able to
see them at least twice a year, and we spoke regularly by
telephone. Emily did not have that luxury—exchanging visits with
her parents just three times between her move to Iowa and her
death 26 years later.
The opportunity to work with the writings of a nineteenth-
century diarist like Emily Hawley Gillespie, essentially
“collaborating” with her on a creative work, has been a dream-
come-true for me. From my first introduction—at not-quite-eleven—
to the genre of diary writing through Ann Frank’s, The Diary of a
Young Girl, along with my own experiences with diary and journal
writing throughout my teens and into adulthood, I have been
captivated by the notion of penning thoughts that might be read
by someone else one day, leaving behind a legacy of identity for
descendants and strangers alike. Yet, to take the writings left
behind by another—written with the same intent—and playing the role of
responding audience, takes the concept of leaving something of
one’s self behind just a bit further. The creative project that I
envisioned with Emily’s diary allowed me to reach back across the
66
gulf of time and space to connect with the consciousness of
another writer—and whether she knows it or not—enabling Emily’s
words to live once again through the “conversation.”
I envisioned this fictional conversation inspired by Emily’s
story as allowing for a greater consideration of the psyche of
the writer and her times, as well as a deeper understanding of
the role of audience and identity in diary writing. I know that
it has certainly done so for me.
Through the more creative medium of “fiction as analysis,” I have
taken an active role in Gillespie’s narrative, entering her story
and collaborating with her to envision a dialogue involving first
one writer, then another. Although not an exhaustive biography by
any means (how could anyone reduce thirty years of daily details
about someone’s life to a book of 250 pages?), I was able to take
her diary, set myself as a second—and, I hope, create a third—
audience for her story, in the process, fashioning from it
something utterly new.
In crafting this conversation between Emily the diarist, and
Lizzie the “writer’s-blocked” protagonist, I kept in mind a quote
from Mihkail Bakhtin which I discovered early in my research:
67
the unique speech experience of each individual is
shaped and developed in continuous and constant
interaction with others' individual utterances. Our
speech, all our utterances (including our creative
works), is filled with others’ words.... These words of
others carry with them their own expression, their own
evaluative tone, which we assimilate, rework, and re-
accentuate (Speech Genres 89).
The idea that Bakhtin expresses here, that our “speech
experiences” are shaped through collaboration with the speech of
others, and developed as we integrate the words of another person
into our own experience, formed the theoretical underpinnings of
my project. And it is to Bakhtin that I owe a large part of the
inspiration for the relationship which forms between Emily and
Lizzie in the novel, through the words they share with one
another, the identity each creates in intersection with their
audience, and for the knowledge I gained of the part that
audience plays in the identity which each of us creates for
ourselves through the words we speak—and write.
68
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All diary entries described herein as written by Emily Hawley Gillespie are transcribed
from her actual diary, housed in the State Historical Society of Iowa archives, and
include her original and occasionally non-traditional spelling and punctuation.
A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts
imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear
the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of
years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently,
inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of
human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs,
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who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time ― proof
that humans can work magic.
― Carl Sagan
Prologue
It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always.
All the time. That story makes you what you are.
We build ourselves out of that story.
― Patrick Rothfuss
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Life changing moments seldom reveal themselves in advance—
they are usually understood only as we view our lives in
retrospect. You don’t wake up one morning, walk down the same-old
street, then suddenly turn a brand-new corner, without something,
some little thing—or a series of little things—
leading you to that morning…
that walk…
that corner.
It’s those little things, piling up grain by grain like
sand, until one day the direction of your life, like the course
of a river, is changed forever.
I know, because it happened to me.
When I was a child, my mother used to tell me the same
story, again and again, describing the chain of events that led
to the day she first met my dad. One late September afternoon—
after both had been students on the same college campus for two
years—they sat next to each other in a literature class, and were
nearly inseparable from that moment on. But before that meeting
could happen, my Iowa-born father and Connecticut-raised mother
had to move thousands of miles across the country to Washington
81
State. My mother broke up with her then-fiancé and made a last-
minute decision which landed her at a community college where she
took a 19th century British literature class, rather than
planning her wedding. She enjoyed the class so much she later
decided to transfer to the University of Washington, in hopes of
becoming a high school English teacher someday. My father,
likewise, chose a class in Shakespearean Tragedies rather than
the American Lit he preferred, simply because the class was full
and he needed to fill a humanities requirement. If all of those
little things had not happened, they would likely never have met.
Their story would not exist.
And neither would I.
It seemed that whenever I had a decision to make, my mother
would tell me that story. Over the years, I’ve thought of it
every time I came to a crossroads in my life. Moments matter, and
the ones we are least aware of can often matter the most. Those
unconscious moments are the building blocks of our lives—and our
stories.
My story.
82
In many ways, I believe this story has been waiting for me
all my life, but at the very least I know its origins lay well
before the day I discovered a dusty trunk in the corner of Uncle
Dean’s attic. It may have been born the day I got a call from my
accountant about a buyer for the farm or when my agent called for
an update on the book I’d promised to write, or even when my
uncle left his old Iowa farmhouse to me. It might have been
conceived the day I claimed my mother’s old steamer trunk from
the rafters of my grandparent’s garage, hoping to discover some
great treasure inside—yet finding it empty of all save the musty
tang of memory that left me with a longing to recover a past I
had never actually lived. Or it may have had its genesis the day
the daughter of a 19th century farmers placed her mother’s diary
in a wooden trunk shoved into the deepest recesses of what would
one day, not too many years later, become my uncle’s attic.
A hundred little moments, like grains of sand, piled up.
They all led to that trunk…
that diary…
and the book in your hands today.
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If you’re always looking back at what you’ve lost, you’ll never discover the
treasure that lies just up ahead.
― J.E.B. Spredemann
The afternoon was blazing, but curiously for mid-June, not
particularly humid—an occurrence for which I was exceptionally
grateful. Anxious to begin my summer adventure, I left the Des
Moines airport behind me and—with the air conditioner blasting—
turned my rental car east onto the I-80, a freeway that spanned
the state from the Missouri River to the Mississippi. Driving
through a landscape so flat you could see for miles in every
direction, I couldn’t help but marvel at the contrast to the
hilly streets and Puget Sound view of my Seattle home. I felt a
little like I’d stepped off a NASA lunar lander onto the surface
of a green-cheese moon.
The panorama was nothing short of breathtaking.
I was a bit disconcerted, though, by the cadence of car
tires bumping over the concrete sections of the roadway, so I
flipped on the radio in search of a distraction. Pressing the
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buttons one by one, I realized that every preset station played
nothing but country music. Iowans clearly love their Brooks &
Dunn.
Well, Liz, I guess you’ll have to adapt.
With the fiddle of “Boot Scootin’ Boogie” now fighting road
noise for my attention, I turned my focus toward the patchwork of
verdant farmland lining the highway. I’d visited Ireland several
years ago, a much-anticipated excursion on my way home from a
writer’s conference in London, and remember thinking that I’d
never seen a landscape so luxurious. The scenery that surrounded
me now, dotted with farms and carpeted by cornfields, was like a
fresh and dazzling younger sister to Ireland’s lush and nearly
primordial perspective. Neither more stunning than the other, the
difference between the two was simply a matter of time.
My father had often told me stories about Iowa, this flat
green land that had been his childhood home—on a farm with acres
of corn so tall you could lose yourself in it. As young boys, he
and my Uncle Dean spent late summer afternoons playing ‘hide &
seek’ in the fields, one trying to find the other with no hint of
their whereabouts but the sound of their own laughter amidst the
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rustle of cornstalks. Growing a bit older, they spent their
summer days making hay and stacking the bales in the barn, then
jumping from the overhead beams into the deep piles yet
unbundled, over and over until their mother would call them in
for supper. He spoke of fireflies—lightning bugs, he’d called
them—dancing above the lawn like drunken fairies, and flickering
through the fields after dark as he and my uncle tried to catch
them up in jars. To me, the farm sounded like an idyllic place to
grow up. Although my own memories of the place were somewhat
hazy, I couldn’t wait to see it again.
Twenty miles to go…
Stopped at a railroad crossing just after the turn onto Hwy.
6, I waited as a freight train hurtled past, blasting its horn.
Memories of childhood vacations rose with the sound—my little
sister Charlie and I trying to count the cars as they rushed by,
our baby brother Will slumped over in his carseat, fast asleep.
Mom always made a game of guessing which states the train would
pass through before arriving at its destination, while we shouted
out their capitals. Dad, bored with the wait and anxious to get
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moving, would sometimes claim, “This one is so long I’ll bet it’s
in two cities at once.”
I adored watching trains as a child, caught up with a
romantic longing to one day traverse the country on one. I had
dreamed of watching the world fly past my window as I sat curled
up in a private compartment, cheek pressed against the glass,
dreaming of adventure. But two and a half years ago, the crash of
a commuter train with my husband aboard had stolen all that away
from me. My life-long dream transformed into a nightmare of loss
from which I’d yet to fully awaken.
Aside from the heartbreaking separation from husband and
father, my grief lingered in a more tangible form, as well. I had
lost my ability to write. Since Jack’s death, I had been
incapable of committing to paper anything more complex than a
grocery list. As someone who had always sheltered my identity in
writing, there could be little more worrisome. In spite of my
intention of starting a new book this summer, I had no idea how
to actually begin.
At the direction of the digitized voice of the GPS, I turned
west off the highway and was nearly blinded by the gingered sun 88
hovering just above the tree line. Driving slowly in an effort to
avoid kicking up too much dust, I squinted at house numbers in an
effort to find the B&B I’d booked for the night, and wondered how
much farther I’d have to go down this long straight-as-an-arrow
road. Finally, just as I was starting to wonder if I’d been led
astray by a machine, “she” announced we were “arriving at
destination—on left.” About thirty feet ahead, I could see the
farmhouse from the website photo—as well as a plain black buggy,
its two-horse team clip-clopping down the road in my direction. A
grin began to spread across my face.
There are Amish here.
Grampy was full of stories about his Amish neighbors in
Manchester who still lived as if the Industrial Revolution never
happened, farming in little pockets around the state and driving
their horse-drawn buggies up and down the road, past automobiles
and tractors. Every Sunday morning they’d dress in their best and
drive their black buggies to the home of one of their neighbors.
Once there, they’d hold their weekly church services, share a
community meal, and then all drive home again as the sun was
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beginning to set—only to repeat it again the next week at someone
else’s home.
“They were good farmers,” Grampy said, “and good neighbors—
always ready to lend a hand when needed.” I hoped I’d get a
chance be meet some of them while I was in Iowa.
But for the moment, gabbing my bags from the trunk of the
car, all I really wanted a hot bath and a bed.
As the last light of the day was fading, I took a walk just
to stretch my legs a bit. I headed down the dirt road in the
direction I’d come, crossing a bridge that spanned the creek
which ran next to the house. I could hear the croak of frogs in
the creek mingling with the laughter of my host’s children. The
boy was tossing a ball for their golden lab, while the youngest
girl chased fireflies with a mason jar. Hearing the crunch of
gravel on the road behind me, I turned to see a scruffy little
cairn terrier who looked just like Toto from the Wizard of Oz.
With his black-button eyes intent on me, clearly speculating
about the stranger who’d taken up residence in the neighborhood,
he was just about the cutest little dog I’ve ever seen.
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“Well, hello there fella! Where did you come from?” A
giggle bubbled up as I leaned down and scratched behind his ears.
Looking him square in the eye, I couldn’t help but ask, “Hey, did
you know you’re not in Kansas anymore?”
I remember reading the Oz books with my Gramma Zizzie for
the first time, coming across Baum’s description of Toto as "a
little black dog, with long, silky hair and small black eyes that
twinkled merrily on either side of his funny, wee nose," and
being disappointed that the dog in the movie had looked so
different.
That night I’d written my first story, about how the
Scarecrow had dyed Toto’s hair so the wicked witch wouldn’t
recognize him. I recall little else about the story, but I do
remember Toto had not been happy with the results of the dye job.
I’d had such fun imagining the scene playing out inside my head,
then writing it out to read to my sister. From the moment I saw
the smile on her face as she, too, could see what I saw, I was
determined to become a writer.
With one last pat on his head, I stood and said, “So, little
guy, did you get a bad dye job, too?”
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Since I was very young, I’ve lived my life mostly inside my
own head, imagining interactions and conversations with
characters I discovered in books. Gramma Zizzie often read to me,
her voice bringing the simplest stories to life. The tales she
read me before bed would fill my mind with images and keep me
awake for hours just imagining how I might go to the ball with
Cinderella, push through rows of coats in the wardrobe with Lucy—
or even explain away the wrong color dog.
When I began to write my own stories, those imaginings had
continued, but now with the characters I created. Sometimes I’d
argue with them over the things they’d say or do—things that I
never expected, in spite of the fact that I was the one telling
the story. It might have been silly, but those characters in my
books had always seemed so alive—even if it was only inside my
own head.
Yet since Jack died, the characters had stopped visiting.
There were no conversations, no arguments. What had replaced them
was worry. Fear over my daughters’ futures. Nameless anxieties
that haunted my nights and kept me almost frozen at times, unable
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to act in all but the simplest ways. Making this trip across the
country was the gutsiest thing I’d done in over two years.
Yet somehow, I’d done it. If only I could find my way back
into writing...
Between the shift in time zones, busy thoughts that refused
to rest, and my usual discomfort in unfamiliar surroundings, I
woke for the day well before I wished to. Peeking out the window,
I could see the rapidly lightening sky and decided I might as
well greet the sun face-to-face. I threw on some sweats, grabbed
a notebook, and skipped quietly down a staircase lined with
cross-stitched samplers and out the door.
If I was going to start writing again this summer,
journaling about a sunrise seemed a good way to start. Tucking
sleep-crumpled hair behind my ears, I picked up the pen, took a
deep breath and said a little prayer that the words would come.
June 20th- Sunrise and sunset have always been
my favorite times of day—but I imagine that is true
of most people. Watching the colors shift the sky
so gracefully makes me wish I could splash the
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vivid hues of dawn across a canvas and send them
out to reach another’s heart.
A soft breeze stirs the leaves above my head.
They quiver and then quiet—like a baby just
beginning to wake. I wonder—does the breeze always
arrive with the sun, or is it just here for the
day? The sound it makes is so familiar, like
uncooked pasta shells sheeting into a bowl… Not
exactly poetic, is it? Still, I am writing. A week
ago I wouldn’t have thought it possible…
I sat under that tree for nearly an hour, watching and listening
intently, writing every word that came into my head. Little of
what ended up on the page could be called art by any stretch of
the imagination, but I had done it. I had actually written
something!
I knew this trip would be good for me.
After an enormous breakfast—the omelet alone could have fed
a small army—I made a few phone calls to reassure my family I’d
arrived safely. Daisy was full of stories about all that she was
learning in her job, and the weekend trip she and her boyfriend
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had made out to Martha’s Vineyard. Alice, on the other hand, was
in Oahu—five hours behind me. She and a friend had left for their
study abroad trip a week early in order to gather a little
sunshine before heading straight into an Australian winter. We’d
talked before she left and she assured me “You’ll find some cool
new story idea Mom, I know it. This trip is just what you need.”
She wished me luck and promised she’d call once she arrived in
Australia.
“Just text, honey. Let’s save the phone calls for once
you’re settled. And don’t forget— there’s a fifteen hour time
difference between Iowa and Canberra.”
“Don’t worry Mom, I’ll try not to wake you at the crack of
dawn.”
I think I’ll call Alice later.
My call to Charlie went straight to voicemail. No surprise
there. An associate editor for the same New York publishing house
where Daisy was interning, my little sister was one busy gal.
My brother Will—always the hardest to catch—actually
answered on the first ring. After exchanging the usual
pleasantries and assuring him that I was just fine, I mentioned 95
again my wish that he’d visit the farm, even if it was just for a
day or two.
“I know.” He said. “Me, too. But I’ve got that bookseller’s
convention coming up right after the 4th. Between that and my
manager’s maternity leave, I’m just swamped.”
I assured him I understood, and reminded him that Charlie
was planning to visit sometime next month. “I’ll be fine, Will.
You don’t need to worry about me.”
“Come on Lizzie J, you know I can’t help it. Jack would’ve
expected me to watch out for you.”
My old childhood nickname usually pried a feigned protest
out of me, but I could hear the regret in Will’s voice and I
didn’t want to go there. I promised to call again as soon as I
was settled on the farm, and to send pictures of the place
neither of us had seen in over thirty years. Tapping the “end”
button, I firmly turned my thoughts away from my constantly
lurking apprehension and toward the day ahead.
For the rest of the day, I played tourist around Kalona.
Driving down streets occupied by both cars and more of those
black buggies, I felt as if I’d traveled back in time—sort of.
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The town itself was a peculiar mix of old and new. Sparkling new
sidewalks—inset with colored-concrete designs of quilt patterns—
vied with storefronts that screamed vintage 1940s, while the town
center was bordered by homes built near the turn of the last
century. It was nothing if not quaint, yet Kalona’s greatest
tourist appeal was surely the Amish presence. It certainly was
for me.
I paused several times to watch Amish families circulate
amongst the tourists and townspeople. Children walked single-
file, like ducklings following behind mother or father, as black
buggies drove the main streets and tethered alongside their
neighbors’ parked cars. I held a brief conversation with an Amish
woman who—as I walked by—commented aloud about the crumbling
chimney of the building across the street, wondering if it might
need rebuilding after being struck by lightning a few days
earlier. Although in many ways, the Amish held themselves apart
from the world around them, they were quick with a smile and
“good day” as they passed. I watched their faces and saw such a
sense of serenity there, I had to admit to a bit of envy—though I
wasn’t sure how I would handle the lack of 21st century technology
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(I do love my iPhone). They, however, seemed to be doing just
fine without it. Something about what I saw as their desire to
linger within the security of a by-gone era echoed my own.
When I’d exhausted the supply of shops in town, I drove out
to The Cheese Factory to sample some of their celebrated cheese
curds and ponder the purchase of a handmade quilt. After months
spent trying to share the splendors of Shakespearean prose with
cynical high school students, it was the most relaxing day I’d
had in a long time.
On my way back to the B&B, I toyed with the idea of making
my next book about the Amish. Might there be some heroic Amish
woman I could write about? Someone who had assisted escaping
slaves during the Civil War, or offered some other daring story
to tell? A shopkeeper had spun a quite a resourceful yarn for me
about quilt patterns directing escaping slaves along the
underground railroad—assuring me of its veracity in spite of the
fact there were no…facts.
“Is that true?” I asked her. “I’ve never heard that story
before.”
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With a conspiratorial smile, she leaned across the counter,
and in a whisper said “Well, there’s no proof, if that’s what you
mean. But there are stories—and those had to come from somewhere…
didn’t they?”
She looked so serious, I swallowed the laughter that
threatened to bubble up. I knew very little about the Amish apart
from my Grampy’s stories and what I’d seen today, but I loved
historical research and the Amish lifestyle certainly intrigued
me. Maybe there was a story to be discovered in their history.
At the very least, I was glad I bought the quilt.
By ten a.m. the next morning, I was on the last leg of my
journey to Manchester. Unlike the brilliant colors of yesterday’s
sunrise, today’s sky was veiled in a flutter of clouds,
alternately exposing and concealing the blue. I hadn’t heard the
overnight rain, but the grass glistened with it and several large
puddles dotted the still-wet road in front of the B&B. Though I’d
slept through today’s sunrise, the pleasure I’d felt in the small
amount of writing I’d done yesterday as I watched the birth of
the day still sang in my veins. Headed for the farm I remembered
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with such pleasure from my childhood visits, I knew I had made
the right choice about coming here.
“As soon as the quarter is over, I’m going to Iowa.”
The moment those words had dropped from my startled lips
during a conversation with Amy, my literary agent, I knew it was
meant to be. My accountant had called earlier that morning with
an offer on the farm, but I didn’t feel ready to let it go—not
just yet. A visit to Manchester would be just the ticket to
decide whether or not to sell, and in at moment with Amy, I knew
it would also be a good place to start writing again.
I just wasn’t sure why I’d told her that.
“Iowa in the summer? Liz, are you sure? It’s hot and humid,
not to mention all the tornados—and the bugs! What about the
bugs?” At my lack of response, Amy hurried on. “And what on earth
will you do? There’s nothing there but corn and cattle.” She fell
silent for a moment, but I could feel her disapproval practically
radiating from the phone.
“But that’s why it’s so perfect,” I said, surging ahead
before she could come up with any more reasons why it was a bad
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idea. “There won’t be anything to distract me. I haven’t been
there since I was ten, so it’s practically an unknown. The trip
will also give me a chance to reconnect with half my heritage.
Maybe I can even uncover a story about some amazing woman who
pioneered the Oregon Trail or something…something that I can base
the book on. I haven’t written an American story before.”
But I could tell she wasn’t keen on the idea. Kylie, the
publisher’s rep, had mentioned more than once that Avalon hoped
for another book like my last—The White Heart of the Rose—based on the
life of Elizabeth of York, wife of King Henry VII. British
historical fiction always sold like hotcakes, so Avalon was not
likely to be happy with an American story.
A story I hadn’t even written yet...
I could hardly believe how quickly I’d managed the
arrangements for this trip. Three weeks ago, I’d announced my
intentions of spending the summer in Iowa hoping to begin a new
book—a book I’d promised my publisher, but for which I had no
ideas. Yet in spite of any trepidation over the actual writing,
my eagerness to see the farm again was enough to carry me through
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the last few days of the school year—impatiently grading essays
and final exams—and onto a plane bound for the Midwest.
Now that I was here…well, I was desperately hoping the muse
would follow.
Just north of Cedar Rapids on the I-380, a scan of my rear
view mirror revealed a rapidly darkening sky blowing my way. A
gusty wind had kicked up, and the earlier patches of blue began
to disappear. Along with the clouds, a sense of gloom began to
settle over me. My earlier delight in yesterday’s writing began
to give way to waves of a nameless anxiety. Peering up at the
now blackening sky, I considered the possibility of tornados.
What did they look like before they fell from the sky?
Had there been storm warnings in the weather report I’d
turned off earlier this morning?
I tried to push away the spiraling negativity that seemed to
drop out of nowhere, replacing my earlier optimistic outlook. I
forced my focus toward a strange thumping noise coming from
somewhere underneath my car. Sure—at first—what I heard was
nothing more than the tires thumping over the concrete roadway, I
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ignored it for a few moments. Then I realized I was having
trouble steering.
A flat tire? Really?
I pulled off onto the shoulder, getting as far over as I
could, turned on the flashers and shut off the engine. I closed
my eyes for a moment and took a deep cleansing breath.
It’s fine Liz. Everything will be just fine.
I had my AAA card, but surely a breakdown was the rental car
company’s problem, not mine. I was sure there was nothing to
worry about. This would be taken care of with one phone call.
Still, I was the one stuck on the side of the freeway just before
noon on a hot and increasingly tempestuous day.
Opening the door, I got out to assess the situation. Moist
and heavy, a hot wind whipped my hair across my face, and my
uneasiness rose with every gust. Brushing it aside, I circled the
car to discover the source of the noise—a flat, right rear tire,
with a large nail visible in the tread. A few heavy raindrops
fell, almost sizzling as they hit the pavement. I popped the
trunk and rummaged around, only to discover that although there
was a spare tire, there was no jack.
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No Jack…
Out of nowhere, a sob burst from my throat. Rapidly-
multiplying raindrops splashed hard against the concrete, and a
pop of lightning flashed the sky. As the rain began to fall in
earnest, the dam holding back all my fears suddenly gave way.
I began to weep uncontrollably. It didn’t matter that there
was no jack in the trunk—I had no idea how to change a tire
anyway. What was lacking in that moment was my Jack. Not just
because he would have handled the whole thing (although he would
definitely have been the first to point out that I really needed
to learn how to change my own tires), but because I missed his
companionship, his bad jokes … the sound of his voice. There on a
freeway in Iowa, I grieved—yet again—the loss of my husband and
the life I had so carefully built. A life now gone forever.
Somehow, I managed to drag myself back into the car.
While the storm raged outside, I wept as I hadn’t in months.
It was as if the accident that stole Jack away from me had
happened all over again. In the early days of my grief, I’d held
myself together during the day, allowing myself the luxury of
tears only at night, hoping my daughters wouldn’t hear me. But
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there had been occasions when, without warning, anguish at my
loss would overwhelm me like waves of the sea—mourning that could
not be held back a single moment longer. As time went on, those
waves came less often and with less intensity, yet my emotions
would still arise at odd moments and would not be denied.
Today was clearly one of those days.
Finally, the tempest inside me began to calm. I dropped my
head onto the steering wheel, my hair sheeting around me, as if
veiling me from the world outside. Drawing shaky breaths in an
effort to regain control of my ragged emotions, I considered once
more the life left behind in the wake of Jack’s death. Once the
initial shock had passed, I pulled myself together enough to take
care of the details of our lives—my life—to be a passable mother,
and to do all the things that needed to be done. But without him,
I found myself unable to write. The one thing I had always
depended on, the foundation of my identity, the thing that had
always brought me so much joy seemed to have left me—just as he
had.
And now, here I was, wailing like an overwrought toddler on
the side of an Iowa freeway. The promise I’d made to write a new
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book roared from my pocket, while the only writing I’d been able
to do in over two years was scribbled in a notebook now resting
uneasily in the back seat of the car. I had felt so hopeful
yesterday when I’d been able to feel the joy of the writing surge
through me. Yet a day later, I was terrified by the very
existence of those pages.
Fearful that I’d never be able to write another book, I was
also worried that even if I somehow did manage it, it would be
awful. That without Jack I’d never be able to stick to the work
long enough to accomplish my goal. But now I confronted another
fear—that I’d somehow be betraying Jack if I could find a way to
write without him. The force of that realization threatened
another round of tears.
“You won’t be, you know…betraying me.”
Jack.
I closed my eyes tight, and listened for his voice with
everything in me. It might only be inside my head, but if I
didn’t open my eyes, maybe—for just a little while—I could
believe he was actually there.
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After a few moments, he spoke again, his voice raw with the
ache that I felt. “This kind of life isn’t what I wanted for you.
Fear of failing. Fear of succeeding. If I were here, I’d…
“But you’re not here, are you?” I interrupted. Drawing a
shuddering breath, I asked the question that it seemed I’d been
asking all my life.
“Why did you have to go?” My question hung in the air,
expanding into the space around me. Crying out from the very
depths of my being.
“You know the answer to that.”
I did know the answer—or at least, I thought I did. For over
two years it had haunted me. Was it my fault that he’d been
killed on that train? He might not have even been on that train
if it hadn’t been for me. If I had gotten a real job, rather than
holding tightly to a dream that required so much of my time yet
offered such capricious rewards, I might have helped more with
the family finances. Jack wouldn’t be dead if it wasn’t for my
dream.
Was that true? Or was I simply indulging a misguided sense
of guilt as an excuse to avoid living my life?
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A professor of Asian history and culture, Jack had been in
great demand as a consultant for private corporations and
military contractors. With the girls on college, tuition was a
huge expense—even for an occasionally-successful author, and a
college professor. The honorarium from the conference that he’d
been attending when he died would almost cover a semester’s
tuition for one of the girls, allowing me to stay home and write,
thus perpetuating my image as “professional” writer as opposed to
a high school English teacher who wrote historical romance novels
in her spare time. I knew he took on the position because he
believed in me and my abilities, but occasionally I wondered if
my fierce determination to be a “real” writer had forced his
hand.
But a writer is all I had ever wanted to be. Crafting living
personas from the lifeless pages of history books—and my own
vivid imaginings. Through imaginings decanted into a draft, I
fashioned an identity for characters who never really existed
outside my own invention. I offered my readers a vision of
heroism and strength in women who simply lived their lives as the
rest of us wished we could, facing things as they came and trying
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to make the best of the circumstances of their lives. Heroism is
often more accidental than anything, Jack had reminded me more
than once—sometimes it is simply being in the right place at the
right time. Although the strength of character I tried to depict
in each of my protagonists was lovely, it was all part of an
illusion—an identity fashioned with words.
Jack often asked me whether I tried to do the same, using my
words—even those spoken by the characters in my books—to create
an image of myself and my life, showing the world what I wanted
them to see. Rewriting history as I thought it should have been,
not necessarily what it really was.
“But isn’t that what writers do?” I had asked him. “Don’t we
create the worlds our characters live in? The worlds we want to
live in?”
But it’s not just writers. Every day, in every conversation,
we all create images of ourselves through the stories we tell.
So what story am I telling myself now? If it’s grounded on
guilt, then refusing to live my life is the punishment I deserve.
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Pulled away from my internal interrogation, I could hear the
gentle irony in his voice as he spoke again, “I went because it
was time to go.”
“That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”
“You want to know why I died? You’re asking the wrong guy if
you want the answer to that one, love...but that isn’t really
your question, is it?”
No…the why was no longer my question. I had called it out
into the soundless void so many times before—beginning with my
mother’s death nearly thirty years ago and continuing on through
so many other family members I had loved and lost. With Jack’s
death, it was still a question I had no answer for—at least none
that satisfied me. But Jack was right. My question was no longer
why, but how.
How do I go on with my life without you? How do I act as if
your death hasn’t changed everything—including my own identity?
If I can live without you, what does that say about me—and our
relationship?
How do I escape my fears?
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“You know how. You start by letting go of it—and me. Don’t
use me as an excuse anymore. Not for not writing. Not for not
living. The only way can you betray me is by refusing to move on.”
I sat for a moment considering his words, remembering lines
Joan Didion had penned in The Year of Magical Thinking, near the end of
her first year as a widow. Lines that tore at my heart when I
first read them nearly two years ago—“if we are to continue to
live ourselves, we must relinquish the dead, let them go, keep
them dead.” We must—I must—let them go.
Let you go.
She was—you were—right, I knew. I had been avoiding my own
life. Jack had been so much a part of me that just continuing to
exist without him seemed a betrayal of his importance to me.
For a split second, I could almost feel his fingers ruffling
the hair on the back of my neck, his breath tickling my ear, see
his dimpled grin. Sighing deeply, I reveled in the rush of memory
before it faded. Outside the car, the wind and rain began to
abate. The world around me hushed, allowing me time to reflect.
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Jack was right. I had been using him as an excuse. Afraid to
let go, to move on, I had simply stood in place, stoic and
immoveable.
“Let me go, Lizzie, and pick up your pen. It’s time to
write for someone else... to find another audience.”
I had tried. At Charlie’s suggestion, I tried writing about
Jack, and our life together. I even tried writing poetry (really
bad poetry), attempting to give voice to my grief, but I couldn’t
write a thing worth reading. The harder I tried, the worse it
seemed. The words simply refused to come.
“I don’t think I can.”
“You can, love. I know you can. The story you’ve been
waiting for is just down the road…waiting for you. It’s time to
go and find it.”
It’s time.
I sat quietly for a few minutes, eyes still closed. Whether
they were the imaginings of my own mind or not, I knew Jack’s
words were true. It was time to find my own story. I lifted my
head from the steering wheel, peering through foggy windows to
see patches of blue starting to burn through the clouds. I rubbed
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now-sticky tears from my cheeks, blew my nose, and reached for my
phone.
It’s time.
After speaking with roadside assistance, I was assured that
help was on the way. The car rental office promised there would
be a replacement spare and jack waiting for me—along with profuse
apologies—in Waterloo. Within what seemed mere minutes, a tow
truck had arrived, and the driver changed the tire quickly and
efficiently, and waved me off toward Waterloo, with the
directions to the rental office programmed into my GPS.
I could still make it to Manchester by three to pick up the
key.
There was still time.
Chapter Two
Memory is a living thing—it too is in transit. But during its moment all
that is remembered joins, and lives—the old and the young, the past and
the present,
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the living and the dead.
-Eudora Welty
The farmhouse looked pretty much as I remembered it—double
hung windows and white clapboard siding. A widow’s walk circling
the roofline. Maybe a bit more rundown—I couldn’t help but wonder
if it was my imagination or was the front porch actually listing
a bit? But really, what could you expect from a house built
probably 150 years ago?
Climbing the front steps, I turned and surveyed the scene
around me. The sun shone hot—all hints of the earlier
thunderstorm were gone. There was truly not a cloud in the sky.
Just as I remembered them, the fields surrounding the house and
barn rippled with the verdant leaves of waist-high corn plants. I
could almost hear cattle mooing in the barn, my Grampy and Uncle
shouting at them to “git.”
Am I really here?
I’m not sure how long I stood there, sodden with memory,
before I heard a shout from the end of the driveway. I looked up
to see a red Dodge Durango, its gray-haired owner smiling and
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shielding his eyes with one hand, leaning out his open window. He
looked to be about the age my dad would have been if…
“Hello there. You wouldn’t be Dean’s niece, would you? I
heard you’d be coming sometime soon.”
“I am.” I wasn’t really sure who he was or how he knew who I
was, but he seemed friendly enough. “I’m here for the summer.
Getting the place ready to sell, I think.”
“Now that’s too bad. Pattersons have owned this place for a
long time, ever since…” His voice dropped off and he seemed deep
in thought. “But I’m forgetting my manners. I’m Alex… Alex
Hikler. I live just up the road—next farm over.”
Walking toward the truck, I held out my hand.
“Nice to meet you, Alex. I’m Liz Benton.”
We spoke a few minutes, as he told me a bit about himself
and the neighbors around us, and shared a few stories about my
dad and uncle. I mentioned my tentative plans for the summer.
“That’s right, you’re a writer. Your uncle was pretty proud
of you, you know?” Squinting at me from under his hand, he asked,
“Are you going to write about someone from Iowa this time?”
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I told him I was considering a story about the Amish, but
didn’t have anything definite yet.
“We’ve got a lot of Amish around here. Good woodworkers. A
couple of Amish boys helped me rebuild one of my barns last
summer. I’ll tell you some stories about them one of these days,
if you’re interested…”
I said I couldn’t wait to hear all about them, and told him
to drop by anytime. He promised to look in on me in a few days,
“just to see if you need anything,” offering me his phone number,
“just in case.” Thanking him for his thoughtfulness, I waved as
he drove off down the road. I stood a moment, just a bit
overwhelmed by how warm and welcoming everyone had been so far.
Alex had known my family since childhood, and was enthusiastic
about sharing what he knew of our history, as well as helping me
settle in any way he could.
I don’t think any of my neighbors at home would do that.
In that moment, I decided I liked Iowa. A lot.
Walking back up to the porch, I fished the key from my
pocket and pressed it into the lock, my heart beating wildly with
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anticipation. I couldn’t wait to get inside the house and get
started on my great adventure.
I’m not sure what I expected when I opened the door, but
what faced me were spare furnishings, bare floors and white
walls. Yes, the layout of the front room was pretty much as I
remembered it, but all of my Great-Gramma’s homely touches— the
gleaming wood of the dining table and sideboard, the Victorian-
style sofa and chairs, and her prized mantle clock—had been
replaced by a few pieces of what looked like standard rental
furniture. I knew it was silly to expect it to look as it had
when I was eight, but I couldn’t help feeling just a bit
disappointed not to walk into the room I remembered.
Setting aside my disillusionment for the moment, I began to
take stock of the house. Aside from the sparse furnishings the
property manager said he’d left for me, the fragrance of still-
curing paint filled the air—mingled with the citrusy smell of
wood polish, and just a hint of bleach. Wood floors, though worn
in spots, gleamed in the sunlight pouring through the windows. It
was nearly as warm inside as outside, so I opened a few windows
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to let in some fresh air. With a ceiling fan in the living room,
I figured it shouldn’t be too hard to get some air circulating.
I meandered the downstairs rooms, running my hand along
doorframes and the fireplace mantle before entering the kitchen.
(Had it always been this small?) It looked just as I remembered
it, though, right down to the dip in the ceiling where it met the
upper cabinets. In spite of the popcorn texture applied in the
years since, its waviness was still visible. Grampy assured me
such slopes in the ceiling were typical of old houses,
particularly after being fitted with new fixtures.
When my five-year-old self feared the ceiling might tumble
down, he’d told me, “Old houses were mostly built by hand, my
little Lizzie. By hand and by love. New ones are made with power
tools.” He’d smiled then, and told me not to worry. “The new ones
might be straighter, but the love in this old house is too strong
to let it fall.”
I hadn’t really understood his words, but I knew he meant
I’d be safe there. His love would always protect me.
Sometimes I can’t believe how much I still miss him.
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Walking toward the window over the sink to distract myself
from the tears that threatened once again, I looked out across
the drive to the acres of corn beyond. Before I was born, that
field had belonged to my great-grandparents, but I had no idea
how long they had been here. I struggled to remember my family
history, the year when the Patterson family had come Manchester,
but I drew a blank. I knew that information lay buried somewhere
in a family genealogy chart—now in the care of my much-more-
orderly sister—but for the moment, I had no way of knowing. As a
child I believed this farm had always been ours, but now I wanted
to know the real story behind it.
Turning away, I made a quick tour through the rest of the
house. A long narrow room stretched behind the front room. It
looked like it might have once been two rooms, but I had no real
memory of that part of the house, aside from the big fireplace at
one end. It didn’t appear to have been added on; maybe it had
been used as an office, or storage? Walking back through the
living room, I climbed the sharply-curved stairs to the second
floor. I remembered playing dolls with Charlie right here on the
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landing, hauling out the huge wooden doll house Great-gramma kept
for our visits.
Straight ahead was the door to the attic. I’d never been up
there as a child, but I had a feeling if any of the furnishings I
remembered still existed, that was where I’d find them. I’d have
to take a look soon—but not today.
The bedrooms looked just as I remembered—albeit much
smaller. The largest one boasted a view across the neighboring
cornfields, with a second window overlooking a large barn behind
the house. In the smallest room, where Charlie and I had slept, I
discovered a bird’s nest outside on the windowsill, entangled
with the trumpet vine growing up the side of the house. I stood
for a few moments, watching as a mother bird hopped into the nest
carrying an insect in her beak, obviously on her way to feed her
babies. The window itself looked original to the house—single-
paned, wood-framed, with the sill low to the floor—and I listened
hard, thinking I could hear the chirps of the baby birds inside.
Laughing a bit at my imaginings (it’s certainly my day for
hearing things), I realized that I still had groceries in the car
and I was ravenous. Aside from the iced mocha I’d grabbed in
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Waterloo, I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast, and I was more
than ready for some dinner. I trekked out to the car to fetch in
the groceries, and deposited the bags on the counter. To my great
relief, I discovered the refrigerator had been cleaned out, and
the rest of the appliances seemed functional, as well. I found
cookware, flatware, and dishes in the cupboards—and hallelujah,
even a dishwasher. If the water heater worked, I’d be a happy
camper.
I made a mental note to send the property manager a thank
you note.
Later that evening before setting on for the night, I sat
down with pen and paper once again—and wrote of my day
June 21st - I can hardly believe it, but I’m
actually here—sitting in the kitchen of Uncle
Dean’s farm. It feels like this whole trip to Iowa
happened so fast I never even had time to think
about it. That’s probably for the best, though. If
I’d taken the time to think, I probably wouldn’t be
here now--and I’m so glad I am.
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I had a long talk with Jack today—on the side
of the freeway in the middle of a thunderstorm (I
don’t think I’ll mention that to the girls, though.
Daisy worries about me enough as it is. She doesn’t
need to wonder if Mom is losing her mind). He
assured me a new story is out there waiting for me—
I just need to hold on until I find it. Sitting
here in this house after so many years, I can
almost believe it might be true. It feels so close
I can almost touch it—maybe even right here within
these four walls.
It’s been a good day, but I’m exhausted.
Goodnight!
Coffee mug in hand, I opened the door in the laundry room
and stepped outside. The morning had awakened fresh and clear, a
breeze whispering through the corn even as it ruffled my hair.
Tucking curls behind my ears to keep them out of my eyes, I
looked up to admire the shimmering leaves of the surrounding
stand of oaks. Watching as they seemed to shiver in a draft, I
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couldn’t help but wonder how long they’d stood here. Had they
been here when Gramma Zizzie came? A British War Bride from
Little Snoring, Norfolk, she’d followed Grampy home to Iowa, six
months pregnant with my dad when she’d arrived on the farm to
meet her in-laws for the very first time. Somewhere I have a
black and white picture of her, young and smiling, sitting with
Grampy under a tree, the tiny baby that was once my dad wrapped
in a blanket and sleeping in her arms, her blissful face dappled
with the sunlight that peeked through the leaves. Was it one of
these trees that shaded her that day?
There was something so steady and strong about trees. No
matter what Nature threw at them—wind, storms, even the annual
loss of their life-sustaining leaves—they stood in their places,
year after year. Tall and strong, they offered a silent testimony
to the continuity of life in spite of its trials.
Moving out from under the trees, I rounded the corner of the
house, coming across an old pump, its red paint worn in spots,
handle slightly rusted, bounded by a low fence. A mist of memory
began to bubble the surface of my thoughts. It felt like just
yesterday…123
Two little girls, barely more than a year apart—the younger
one, blonde; the older a brunette—arguing over who would get to
ride the tractor when Daddy and Uncle Dean returned from the feed
store.
“It’s my turn! You got a ride yesterday.” Charlie glowers at
me, arms crossed tightly across her chest. “You always get to
ride. It’s not fair…”
“Lizzie! Charlie! Can you come here, please? I need your
help. It’s very important.” Grandma Zizzie’s voice cuts through
the middle of our argument, just as I am about to deny Charlie’s
claim.
“Coming, Zizzie!” We hurry back toward the house, and I lean
over and hiss in Charlie’s ear, her wheat-color hair tickling my
nose.
“It is too, fair. No one got a ride yesterday—and it is my
turn!”
Normally, this would be where Charlie bursts into tears,
wailing “Nooo, it’s not fair!” But Zizzie intervenes quickly,
handing us a bucket, and assuring us “those poor thirsty cows by
the barn have been waiting all day for a drink.”
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Though we immediately run for the pump, Charlie and I are
still squabbling over who will work the handle and who will hold
the bucket. Eventually, though, we decide that we can set the
bucket under the faucet so both of us can pump.
Our mother watches from the doorway, shielding her eyes in
the bright afternoon sun. Calling out as we make our way toward
the barn, she warns, “Be careful, girls! If you don’t slow down,
you’re going to spill it all before you get there.”
I can still see her smiling as we picked our way ever so
carefully over the gravel path and out toward the barn.
With the sloshing bucket held tightly between us, we are
quickly surrounded by black and white cows, crowding the trough
as we heft the bucket to pour out the water. I giggle with
Charlie as we gingerly touch the cows’ wet noses, wrinkling our
own over their “earthy” smell.
“Pee-yew! You stink,” Charlie shrieks, all the while patting
the nearest cow firmly on the head.
My heart squeezed a bit with the recollection. In that
moment, I realized that Zizzie had simply invented a chore to
pacify two bickering little girls. The house had long had running125
water and I was pretty sure there had been a spigot down by the
barn. We hadn’t needed to go to all that work to bring water to
the cattle—the few buckets we hauled couldn’t have made much
difference anyway—but it gave us something to do, making us feel
a valuable part of life on the farm. It had been such fun to work
the pump and watch the cows drink that we spent nearly every
afternoon hauling buckets of water down that same path. At the
end of our visit, when we were piling into the car to begin the
long drive back home, I remember Charlie crying, wondering who
would take care of the “poor thirsty cows” when we were gone.
I continued my exploration down by the barn, but there were
no longer any cows there. Most likely, there hadn’t been any
since my uncle died. Heaving open the big sliding door, I could
see a few hay bales piled inside and stacks of lumber leaning
against the wall near the back, as if someone had paused mid-
project, meaning to return to it later. Standing in the open
doorway, I closed my eyes and breathed in the scent of the barn—
stale air mixed with the fragrance of hay.
It smells like … home?
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I wished now I’d been able to spend more time here. Even
though we never came back after Mom died, Uncle Dean still came
to visit us once a year, staying with Zizzie and Grampy, and
spending time with my siblings and me. At the time, it had seemed
enough. Once I hit my teens, summers on a farm in Iowa—far from
my friends—seemed far less attractive than vacations to Oregon
beaches. Now, I wished things had been different.
I wish so much had been different.
Although my memories of this house were few, something about
being here made my past feel very close. I knew my father and
uncle had grown up here—my grandfather, too, if I remembered
right. Grampy, Zizzie and their sons had lived here among “the
cows and the corn” on my great-grandparents’ farm until a job at
the Collins Radio Company moved Grampy and his family away to
Cedar Rapids in 1960. Three years later, a new job at Boeing
brought them to Seattle. This final move made possible the
auspicious—for my siblings and me, anyway—meeting between my
mother and father at the University of Washington in 1967, and my
own birth at Swedish Hospital just two years later.
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But there was more history for me here than just my father’s
childhood and the early years of my grandparents’ marriage, more
even than the few visits I’d made as a child. A larger history
existed within the walls of this house. My great-grandparents—
people I could barely remember—lived here, raising their family,
their crops, and their cattle. I wanted to know more about them,
about this house. Had they, or their parents—or their parents,
perhaps—been among Iowa’s early pioneers, maybe building a sod
house on this land before constructing the one where I now stood?
I wished that one of them was here with me now—my father, or
my grandfather—with ready answers to the questions about what
life was like in Iowa a half-century or more ago. I wondered if
there was anything left behind by one of my ancestors, something
that could tell me what I longed to know. There was no longer
anyone living who had the answers.
Gulping down breakfast, I hastily scratched out a shopping
list. I needed to pick up a few things before I could really
settle in, and now was as good a time as any. I grabbed my purse
off the living room chair, and folding the list into a back
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pocket, heading out the door for the drive into town. Yesterday,
on my way here from the property manager’s office, I spotted a
place on Franklin Street that looked like a coffee shop.
Time to pay them a visit…
Chapter Three
As a historical novelist, there is very little I like more than spending time
sorting through boxes of old letters, diaries, maps, trinkets, and baubles.
― Sara Sheridan
Leaving The Coffee Den—a soy latte in one hand and a sack of
whole-wheat bagels in the other—I noticed Honey Creek Furniture and
Flooring about half a block down on the other side of the street. In
very short order, I’d bought a queen-size bed and a few small
tables, a really comfortable overstuffed couch with a couple of
chairs to match, several lamps, a small kitchen set with a couple
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of chairs—and even a day bed where Charlie could sleep when she
came to visit. I also picked up a few rugs, just to make the
place a bit cozier. I told myself I’d just sell the furniture
with the house, so I probably bought more than I really needed--
but it would be nice to be comfortable while I was there.
After the salesman assured me that the furniture would be
delivered by the end of the week, I headed off to grab the rest
of the items on my list. Finishing quickly, I arrived back at
home by two—mission accomplished.
By 2:30, I was ready to explore.
Grabbing a flashlight from the laundry room shelf, I headed
up to change into the grubbiest clothes I’d brought with me, then
headed for the door at the base of the attic stairs. More than
anywhere else on the farm, the attic called to me. If anything
had been left behind after Uncle Dean’s death, this was where I
was going to find it.
With my hand now resting on the doorknob, I hesitated—just
for a moment. Was it my imagination or did the air seem charged
with anticipation, as if someone had been waiting for me to
finally open the door? Chuckling at such a ridiculous notion, I
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shook my head as if it was an etch-a-sketch wiping away an image.
The only impatient person here was me.
At the top of the steps I saw a large dimly lit space full
of crates and boxes, and a few sheet-covered objects.
Great-gramma’s furniture, maybe?
I certainly hoped so, but it appeared to be mostly a whole
lot of clutter. My flashlight exposed a view of aging cobwebs
spanning corners of the levelled ceiling, and a thick layer of
dust covering everything in sight.
Clearly, no one had been up there in a very long time. There
were no windows, and the air was stifling. One solitary bulb
dangled overhead to light the space. A tiny thread of sunshine
rimmed what appeared to be a hatch of some kind, up where the
ceiling flattened out—likely offering access to the widow’s walk
that circled the roof. I wondered if the door would even open—but
if it did, it would give me some extra light and let in some
fresh air at the same time. I’d only just climbed the stairs, but
sweat beaded my forehead already.
Reaching the center of the room, I pulled the string on the
light fixture, washing a faint yellow glow across the room. I
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needed something to clear those cobwebs before I would touch that
hatch, let alone spend the time searching out the treasures those
boxes might contain. I headed back down the stairs in search of
cleaning supplies.
In the kitchen, I grabbed the broom and dustpan, some rags
and a box of trash bags. Stopping on the upstairs landing, I tied
scarf over my head before continuing back up the attic stairs.
The last thing I wanted was spiders in my hair.
I really hate spiders.
A short time later, most of the cobwebs dealt with, I was
ready to tackle that roof hatch. Dragging over a large wooden
crate, I scrabbled to the top, reaching for the handle now right
above my head. After positioning the flashlight, I grabbed a
rag, scrubbing at the deadbolt, then gripped it tightly and
pulled. For a few moments it wouldn’t budge, then I felt it start
to give—just a little. I jimmied it back and forth a bit, then
finally felt it let go. I pushed against the door, and after yet
another moment of uncertainty, it flew open at last. Sunlight
flooded the room, and I could feel the attic heat rushing to
escape its prison. Rising on tiptoe, I could see just enough to
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know the view of the countryside must be amazing. I made a mental
note to get the roof checked out. It might be a great place for
some nighttime star gazing. But in the meantime, I had work to
do.
Pulling my head—quite literally—back into the game, I
clambered down from the crate and turned to the boxes. There were
a few more wooden ones, but most were just cardboard, containing
little more than sold clothes and blankets. Others overflowed
with children’s toys. An old electric train and its track were
piled up next to several small boxes of paper-wrapped mercury
glass ornaments. Some of the boxes might have been left behind by
tenants who either forgot to check the attic, or just didn’t want
to make a trip to the dump.
Finally, I spotted—leaning against the wall opposite the
stairs, tucked behind a few boxes—an old iron bedstead I was
pretty sure came from Uncle Dean’s bedroom, a writing desk, and a
few much-worn, cane-seated chairs that looked like they might
have been part of the dining room set. Just what I was hoping
for.
Maybe the old mantle clock is up here, too.
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After spending several hours digging through boxes and
trying to create some sort of order out of all the chaos, I was
hot, tired and filthy. I’d bagged up a lot of the trash,
separated out the things worth keeping—or at least worth looking
over one more time before making a final decision—shoved all the
furniture together closer to the stairs, and swept the floor
before getting ready to head back down. The clock I’d hoped to
find was unearthed from the depths of one of the crates, and sat
atop the writing desk awaiting its return to its former home on
the mantle. As soon as I had a few extra hands to help move them,
I wanted to bring the bed and desk down, too.
There was still plenty left to do, but my body insisted that
it had done enough for one day. But just as I’d laid down the
broom, picked up one of the now-filled garbage bags and turned
toward the steps, I spied a shadowy object tucked far back into
the darkest corner of the attic, right behind the chimney at the
verge of the roofline—as if it had been placed there on purpose,
then purposely forgotten. Only the light reflecting off the now-
cleared floor made it possible to see it at all.
How on earth had I missed that?
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In spite of my exhaustion, something about this discovery
drew me in. Draped with a sheet and covered in soot and dust, it
was massive—standing about three feet high, at least four feet in
length and probably another three feet deep across the bottom. I
wondered how long it had been hidden away back there, just
waiting to be found. By me? Smiling a bit at my whimsy, I tested
its weight, tugging on the heavy iron handle on its side. If I
could just get it out into the middle of the room. The shadows
back there made it impossible to get a good look. Heavy cobwebs
in the corner made me nervous, but the broom took care of them in
short order. I took a few swipes at the floor around the piece,
too, just to be sure I wouldn’t be surprised by a nest of mice,
or some other disgusting creature entrenched in the corner behind
it.
Shouldering it—with more than a few grunts and groans—into
the puddle of light in the middle of the room, I finally had it
situated so I could look it over. Standing slowly, I brushed off
my filthy hands on the seat of my equally grubby jeans, wiping
beads of sweat from my forehead and arching my back and shoulders
in an attempt to relieve aching muscles. Chuckling a bit, I
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wondered if I would ever remember that I’m not twenty-five
anymore...
Now that a more thorough investigation was possible, I
pulled off the sheet to see what I’d found. It appeared to be a
trunk of some sort, but like none I’d ever seen before. Though
showing its age around the edges, its finely-grained wood shone
in a golden glow. With dovetailed joints and cast iron hinges, it
almost looked more like an enormous desk than a trunk—its hinged
front panel resembling the writing shelf on a secretary desk. A
bit too low to actually write on, though. There were lightly-
carved letters on the front that looked as if they might have
been part of a name or address, but were now too worn to read.
The top and front sections looked like an animal of some sort had
been gnawing on along their shared edge, which allowed a bit of
light through to the inside. Hoping that whatever chewed on the
wood had departed long go, I peeked through the hole, hoping for
a glimpse of the treasures within. I could hardly wait to get it
opened.
The trunk itself brought back a flood of memory, of youthful
dreams of long-forgotten treasure when my fourteen-year-old self
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rescued Mom’s old steamer trunk from a trip to the dump after
finding it in Gramma and Grampa Oliver’s garage. Although it had
been empty, rather than filled, as I’d hoped, with the artifacts
of some other era, it found a home in the corner of my bedroom,
and through the rest of my teen years, held close the relics of
my own life. When Mom died just two years later, its still-fusty
scent embodied, to me, her life now past—the trace of memories
not my own, but which I ached to hold onto nonetheless.
Surely this trunk isn’t empty, though; it’s just too heavy.
I reached for the latch, surprised to find it unlocked. I
worked at the rusty bolt, hearing it drop with a satisfying
metallic “thunk,” and then pulled at the bulky lid with both
hands. Rusty hinges seemed reluctant to let go for a breath or
two, but finally cracked open, releasing that wonderful musty
tang reminiscent of both the trunk of my youth and the antique
shops my mom had loved so much. For a moment, tears threatened,
but once my curiosity got the better of me I carefully lowered
the lid and peered inside.
Two drawers extended across the top. One opened easily,
revealing a few small books, an embroidery hoop with linen
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stretched across it, and a still-threaded needle tucked into the
weave—as if the seamstress had laid it aside for just a moment,
but never returned. The second drawer was jammed shut. I tugged
at it for a moment, but it just wouldn’t budge. Anxious to
search through the rest, I decided I’d deal with it later.
Two open sections lay below the drawers. A patchwork quilt
with a lattice pattern lay folded atop the right side, stacks of
books and a mass of small objects wrapped in yellowing paper
filled the other. I didn’t know how long these things had been
there, but the quilt looked in surprisingly good shape—probably
due to the multiple mothballs that fell to the floor as I pulled
it from the trunk. Running my hand across the aged fabric, I
marveled at the pattern and intricate workmanship put into what
was likely just a good use for the remnants of someone’s
clothing. Carefully refolding the quilt before setting it aside,
I continued to unearth the trunk’s contents, one item at a time.
A couple of calico dresses, a flower-bedecked hat, and several
tiny shirts, all carefully folded and tied together with a
ribbon. My mind began to race. Who had these things belonged to?
The trunk looked too old to have belonged to Uncle Dean—and
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somehow these things didn’t look like a man’s belongings anyway.
Could this trunk have belonged to my grandmother, my great-
grandmother—or some other, more distant, relative? Was it
possible these baby clothes had been worn by my father or
grandfather?
A bit more quickly now, I gathered everything I’d uncovered
so far and set them atop the quilt. A few loose papers covered
with spidery writing, a couple of account books full of what
looked like algebra problems, a pottery pitcher and several small
figurines, a few photographs, books, and a small, round cut glass
bud vase wrapped in yellowed newspaper surfaced next—all were
quickly set aside. There were wooden tools of some sort,
resembling nothing more than oversized sewing needles; framed
needlepoint pictures and bookmarks... Finally, I came to a large
paperboard box knotted with twine.
Had I finally found my treasure?
Deciding to open it in place rather than carrying it from
the trunk, I quickly untied the bow, and lifting the box lid—
carefully—I discovered inside a few more loose papers, a stack of
envelopes tied with ribbon, and several books.
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Reaching for the one on top, I opened its cover and smoothed
the yellowed pages. The book was hand-written and dated on every
page, beginning at March 29, 1858. Turning to another volume,
then another, the dates began to diverge: August, 1861. January,
1882. May, 1868. But in spite of the assortment of dates, the
handwriting seemed the more or less the same.
Before I knew it, I had the books stacked on the floor,
organized by date. Ten volumes in various sizes, they covered
about thirty years’ time, and I was fairly certain they were all
written by the same person.
The first volume began with a name: Emily Elizabeth Hawley;
and a date—1858… more than a century before I was born. Wouldn’t
that make this woman too old to be even my great-great
grandmother? I didn’t remember any Hawleys on the Patterson
family tree, but I could certainly check with Charlie about that.
Just who was this woman?
I wanted to look the trunk and its contents over in better
light, but it was too heavy to get it down the stairs without
help, so for now it would have to wait. I’d call Alex tonight to
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see if he and one or two of his sons might come over tomorrow to
help me wrestle it down the attic stairs. In the meantime, I
gathered up the quilt, the bundles of letters, and all the rest
of the items, and placed them securely back into the trunk.
Then, gently collecting what I’d decided were surely the volumes
of a diary, I carried them downstairs.
An hour later, well-fed and freshly showered—my grimy
clothes churning in the antiquated washing machine—I flung my
exhausted self onto the overstuffed couch, flipping on the lamp
so I could examine my treasures. Ten bound volumes lay on the
coffee table before me, just waiting for me to open them and
begin my investigation. A sense of expectancy tingled through me
as I ran my fingers over the books, marveling that they had been
hidden away up there for so long, but even more amazed that I had
found them. Having found the diary in this house, the writer must
surely be a relative, right?
Since I had already put them into chronological order, I was
able to grab the first of the series right off the top of the
pile. Opening it gingerly, I breathed in the musty trace of
ancient books, evoking the library in my grandparents’ house—141
books that had been stored in boxes in their basement until they
had gained a room of their own when Uncle Dean returned to the
Iowa farm, right around the time I was born. I grew to love that
fusty scent; it seemed to define those things I loved best. There
was something so settled and comfortable, and yet anticipatory
about the fragrance of old books—like the promise of discovery in
worlds yet unseen. My heart began to beat just a bit more swiftly
as I turned to the first page and read, written across the top of
the first page:
Diary—which may compose the reminiscences of the
life, from day to day, of
Miss Emmie E. Hawley
A.D. 1858
Medina, Lenawee County, Michigan
Monday, 29 March – Today I commence to keep a
diary…
Following that somewhat pretentious opening banner, Emmie
recorded her days in the usual diarist’s vein, listing events
(“went to Uncle Benjamin Osborns, make a head dress for Aunt
Mary…”) and noting the weather (“pleasant only the wind blows, &
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is cold”). However, nearly three weeks later—she sets down words
that seem entirely different:
Tuesday, April 20th- Last Christmas & New Years I
attended Cotillion parties at Canandaigua with Sylvenus
Hamlin. Libbie wants him pretty badly, she can have him
if he will marry her. I do not want him for a
companion, no! no! not but that I like him. I do very
much as a friend…
I had to smile. For nine days Emmie had little to say aside from
recounting her daily activities and chores, when out of the blue
she began to tell a story.
I was enchanted.
For the next few hours, I skimmed through the first volume
of the diary, noting the things she thought worthy of discussion,
but especially her continued references to Sylvenus and Libbie.
Between the threads of that story, she included remarks about
other men who either expressed an interest in her (“Horace Jones
ask me to attend a party with him. I refuse him again,--tis at
least the 20th time.”), or declared their wish to marry her (“why
is it? I ask myself that every young man one meets with must
begin to talk of love & marriage first thing”). There were so
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many. I couldn’t help but wonder, what was it about this woman
that made her so attractive?
Another thing I noticed was her industriousness—Emmie, just
twenty years old, was one busy woman! She made (and apparently,
remade) clothing for herself and her family, and acted as
seamstress for the entire neighborhood, as well. She “put up”
strawberries, crocheted lace collars for her dresses, made
something called hairflowers (I really need to find out what on
earth those are)—and taught school. All this was in addition to
her chores around the house, things like baking cakes and pies
several times a week and helping her mother in the garden. Emmie
wrote poetry, read novels, and acted as “Editress” of the local
literary society. She also complained a great deal about the
difficulties of poverty, but declared herself unwilling to be a
servant to anyone.
A rhythmic thumping from the out-of-balance washer dragged
my attention away from the seed of story entrenching deep within,
and returned my thoughts to the present. I set down the diary,
walked into the kitchen to adjust the load in the washer so the
cycle could complete. Through the window, I could see the last
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golden rays of the sun reaching out from behind the barn,
enticing me to join them. Since my first morning in Iowa,
watching the sun set had become the perfect way end the day,
something I rarely took time for at home.
Miles of corn in the surrounding fields shushed and
whispered in the breeze, rippling beneath illuminated clouds,
gilt-edged and splashed with fuchsia, reflecting the last light
of the day. The barn nearly glowed with it, as trees cast
rhythmic shadows across its side. Although mostly hidden from
sight, birds chirped from within those trees as if singing
lullabies to their young, while a few stragglers flopped around
the driveway taking dirt baths like drowsy youngsters at the end
of the day, bathing under parents’ watchful eyes before being
bundled off to bed.
I’ve always loved this hour when it seemed like every
creature of the day prepares for sleep, just as those of the
nocturne awake to perform. Bats would soon begin their
summersaults through the air in search of supper (or is it
breakfast?), and fireflies to flitter, like Woodstock dizzily
circling Snoopy’s doghouse. Roving gangs of mosquitoes would soon
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begin their nighttime barrage, whizzing past my ears. Twilight
always seemed like a changing of the guard—the sun replaced by
the moon and stars. One set of creatures for another. And
although one watch ended, another always began.
If I was patient, I’d see it.
Watching the colors slowly fade, I considered that maybe a
change was happening for me, too. Jack had always been my sun;
our life together the only story I knew—at least the only one
left to me after so many others had ended. Yet without my
happily ever after, I had no idea how to write anymore. But that
didn’t mean there were no more tales to tell.
He promised my story was waiting.
Then… so will I.
In the end, the moon, though not enlightened by the saga of
the sun, still rises—in its own time.
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Chapter Four
Writers do not find subjects; subjects find them.”
― Elizabeth Bowen
I woke the next morning energized and eager to get back to
exploring the diary—at least until I tried to get out of bed.
Every muscle ached, and I had nearly decided I’d just stay put
for a few more hours when I looked at the clock and remembered
Alex would be over in an hour to help me haul that trunk down
from the attic.
So much for sleeping in…
I—quite literally—rolled off the bed, groaning as I hit the
ground feet first. Righting myself and grabbing a robe, I made a
few tentative stretches on my way into the kitchen to make
coffee. Those yoga classes I’d taken in Sedona came to mind as I
gingerly reached for the mugs in the cupboard; maybe I should
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consider taking it up again? Meanwhile, a hot shower would
probably go a long way toward loosening up my stiff muscles.
An hour later, nursing both a second cup of coffee and
still-achy shoulder muscles, I headed to the door to answer the
bell. Alex and a tall young man stood on the front porch, right
on time, just as he had promised.
“Mornin’ ma’am! What’s this about you findin’ a treasure
chest in the attic?” Alex chuckled at his own joke, before
adding, “I brought these pirates here to help us move it. If it’s
heavy as you say, we’ll need them.”
“Alex, thank you so much! I did manage to shove it over a
few feet, but I’d never be able to get it down the stairs by
myself. And please, call me Liz.”
“Well Liz, I’d like to introduce you to my boys here. This
Matt, my oldest grandson.” Turning, as a third man—resembling
nothing more than an older version of Matt—walked up onto the
porch, Alex gestured in his direction and introduced him with,
“And this is his daddy… Liz, this is Dan, my oldest boy.”
As Dan stepped onto the porch, I held out my hand to greet
him, taken aback by his pleasantly weathered face, and a pair of
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the brightest blue eyes I had ever seen—and, I must admit, felt
knocked a bit breathless for a moment. Pulling myself together
and hoping I wasn’t blushing, I shook hands all around, and
offered coffee. Alex and Dan were all business at this point,
though. “Let’s get that trunk moved and then we’ll see about the
coffee.”
Thanking them again for their willingness to help, I led the
way as we all trooped up the stairs. At the landing, I pointed to
the attic door—although Alex seemed to know it already.
With memory shining in his eyes, Alex told me the attic had been
among his favorite places as a child. “I haven’t been up here for
years. My brother and me…we used to play up here sometimes—mostly
on rainy days—with your dad and his brother. We’d bring over our
collection of toy soldiers and set up camps all over the attic.
Bobby—your dad—and Dean were a bit younger than we were, but we
all had fun. This attic was a great place to play.” He chuckled
to himself, remembering. “Your gramma was a real good sport about
all the noise we made, too. All that stomping around up there… my
momma would not have put up with it”
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Intrigued at finding someone who might know something about
my family history, I wondered where to start with all my
questions. But before I had time to set them in any order, the
first burst out of my mouth. “I found an old diary last night. In
the trunk. But I have no idea who it might belong to. I don’t
remember any Hawleys in my family, do you?”
“A diary, huh? That might be interesting to see…” Alex
thought a minute, looked at Dan as if he might have an answer,
and then shook his head slowly. “Hawley? Noooo….doesn’t sound
familiar. Let me think on that a bit.”
By then, we’d all climbed the attic stairs, and were
standing in front of the trunk.
“Wow…I’ve never seen one like this before. It is big.” Dan
scanned the trunk, then looked back toward the stairs. I could
see him mentally measuring the space. Was it even going to fit
through the opening?
Alex, had also apparently assessed the situation and
assured me that they’d be able to get it down the stairs intact.
“It might take a bit of finagling, but we’ll manage it. After
all, someone got it up here.”
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I offered to empty the contents, but after testing the
weight between the three of them, they assured me it wasn’t too
heavy. I did check it to be sure everything was secure though,
before they moved it, but Alex guaranteed the contents would be
just fine. I climbed back down the stairs, clearing the path so
they could set it into place without tripping over anything.
A considerable amount of grunting was heard over the next
twenty minutes or so, and more than a few heads were banged
against the sloping ceiling. There were also one or two flashes
of panic on my part that the trunk would plummet and splinter
into bits as they guided it down the steep attic stairs. But the
three of them moved slowly and carefully, and in the end the
trunk rested comfortably in the corner of the living room, right
next to the window. However, after watching them move it into
place, I was definitely glad the room had already been painted—I
certainly didn’t want to have to move it again anytime soon. A
few touch ups where the trunk had scraped the walls of the
stairwell and the room would be good as new.
I offered coffee once again as we stood admiring the trunk,
and this time they took me up on it. I gathered mugs, cream and
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sugar for the coffee, placing the last of the cookies I’d brought
from the bakery in Kalona onto a large hand-painted tray I’d
found in the attic yesterday, while they returned to the attic
for the writing desk and chairs. By the time I had set the loaded
tray on the table, they were back in the kitchen, mopping sweaty
foreheads and gulping glasses of ice water.
Alex, clearly not one for small talk, got right to the
point. “So, tell me about this diary.”
“I was so surprised!” I said. “I found it in a box at the
bottom of the trunk. Ten volumes, covering about 30 years. But I
can’t figure out who the writer is…I don’t recognize her name.”
He thought for a moment. “What was it again?”
“She writes her name on the opening page as Emmie E. Hawley
from Michigan. When the diary begins she is almost twenty, and
obviously not married. As I skimmed through it, though, I found
places where she mentions her children so she must have gotten
married at some point.”
Listening intently, Dan asked, “Did she write about coming
to Manchester, or mention a married name?”
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Alex looked a bit puzzled, like he was trying to remember a
detail he used to know, but it refused to be found. “… And there
are no Hawleys in your family?”
“No, at least not that I remember.” I paused a minute, then
asked, “Do you have any idea how long my family has lived here?”
He thought a moment. “I don’t. My parents probably would
have, but it’s too late now to ask them about it. But don’t
worry, Liz. It shouldn’t be too hard to find out. They have all
kinds of ways now to help find out about people. Did you find a
date on that diary?”
I assured him that I did, noting that the diary seemed to
run from 1858-1888.
“I should probably do a bit more reading, to see if I can
find a married name. That might be all I need to figure out if
she has any connection to my family—or even to this house. I
suppose the trunk could have been left behind by a tenant…”
Dan said that he doubted a tenant would have moved such a
heavy piece into the attic. “Too much work to haul it up there if
it’s not your house.” But about my mysterious diarist he added,
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“I bet you’ll figure her out in the diary itself, or with some
help from the folks down at the County Courthouse.”
Alex agreed. “If she ever lived here in Delaware County,
they can help you find her.”
I had admit they were likely to be right; once the diary had
given me a more definitive name, county records would definitely
be a place to begin my search.
The three men left with my promise to share any discoveries
I made about the diarist’s identity—vowing they would ask around
and do the same—and I set about getting the house ready for
tomorrow’s furniture delivery. The sheets and towels I’d bought
yesterday still needed to be washed before I could put them to
use, and I wanted to get the curtains hung in the upstairs
bedroom as well. Once all that was accomplished, I planned to sit
down for a while with the diary while I waited for the cable guy
coming to link me up with the outside world. If I was going to
start doing research on the Amish, looking for a possible book
subject, it was essential that I had an internet connection. The
book on the history of the local Amish communities I’d picked up
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in town yesterday was interesting, but it was too basic to give
me much of what I needed. I had a few hours before the
appointment time. Hopefully that would give me a chance to
discover a bit more about the diarist’s identity.
With the rental furniture moved out of the way, and the
sheets and towels tumbling in the dryer, I sat on the couch to
wait. The diary volumes were still stacked on the table in front
of me. I had planned to skim through them one at a time to
discover the writer’s connection to either Iowa or this house,
and possibly a married name I might use to look her up in the
record books. I had enough research experience to know that a
woman was rarely discovered in historical records without the
name of either a husband or father to identify her—particularly
before the twentieth century. So, for the moment, all I was
looking for was a name. The rest could wait.
But what actually happened was entirely different.
Once I’d opened the book and begun to read, Emmie’s story
sucked me right in. I can’t say that I was carried away by
amazing writing; most of her prose was commonplace at best. Yet,
her voice was so strong it was hard to resist. Just as I had
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noticed the first time picked it up, her diary entries presented
an image of a romantic and idealistic young girl determined to
make something of herself. She was an industrious and talented
seamstress. She wanted to be a writer and seeded her diary with
poems she had written, as well as ink sketches and building plans
drafted in the margins. She talked about books she had read,
naming several novels, but none I’d ever heard of. At one point,
she even mentioned an opportunity offered her by a local
merchant, a chance to move to New York City to train as an artist
with his sponsorship. Her mother nixed the idea immediately,
leading Emmie to note with apparent resignation, “I will stay at
home a while yet,—though I am sure I will regret it.”
She spoke of young men (older ones, too!) who—on nearly
every page—professed their undying affection and desire to marry
her. Yet she seemed unmoved by it all, declaring time and again
that she would marry only for love. More than once I laughed out
loud, muttering to myself that she must have read just a few too
many novels. She just had to be making some of this stuff up—no
one is that irresistible. Yet, at the same time I felt sorry for
her; she was confined within a society that demanded things from
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her that she had no desire to do. Actions that kept her from
doing what she wanted.
I certainly didn’t envy her lack of choice.
I picked up the second volume, dated June 1860, and
discovered that Emmie was still unmarried, but also still talking
about various men who wanted to marry her. She noted one in
particular—in an entry dated June 3rd—who she clearly liked,
calling him “a kind, intelligent and virtuous young man,” yet
she also claimed he possessed a trait she saw as his fatal flaw,
that “he likes and drinks intoxicating drink.” She had written
several times in the previous volume about her belief in the
Temperance movement, and clearly a man who drank was beyond
consideration as potential husband material. She went on to note
“I have vowed never to marry the best man that lives if he is
addicted to strong drink, & with the help of God may I keep that
promise.”
By my calculations, Emmie was now 22 years old, and from
what I knew of the traditions of her day, her “advancing” age
would have put her in danger of being considered a spinster if
she didn’t marry before too much more time passed. However, it
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became obvious from her writings that she wasn’t willing to
settle for just any marriage partner. As long as the choice was
hers, she knew what she wanted. Emmie discussed pressures from
her family, though—from her mother’s comments about her unmarried
state, to an uncle who wanted her to come and work for his family
in November 1860, who “said so much, I cried.” Yet just six
months later, on June 26, 1861 she wrote that she was “at home
perhaps for the last time for I am (if no preventing providence)
going to start for Iowa…My folks feel bad to have me go.”
Now I knew that she’d left Michigan for Iowa in 1861. Was
this her Uncle’s house? Had she married once she’d come out here?
I skipped to the end of the volume in my hand and started to work
my way backward through it.
I didn’t have to read far before I found, in July 1862, a
reference to a man named James, along with a veiled hint that she
would have a new life and a new home as of October 1st.
Scrambling for the next volume, I opened it to October 1st and
discovered that Emily had already married by then, and on that
very date she was moving with her new husband, James Gillespie,
to her in-laws’ home.
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With his name, I had a way to find her.
A few hours later, laundry done and folded, cable and
internet installed, and dinner in the oven, I opened my laptop
and started a search for Emily. Not really knowing who she was, I
thought I’d just google her name and see what turned up. Aside
from a few Emily Gillespie’s registered on Facebook or living in
Florida, there was little to find—until I’d scrolled to the
bottom of the page. There, on a website for Iowa cemeteries, I
found a link, leading to an Emily Gillespie in a list of people
buried in the Oakland Cemetery in Manchester, all of whose names
began with “G.”
My heart began to race as I clicked on the link and scrolled
down the list: Gale…Garlick…Gibbons…Gifford… until finally I
found Gillespies about halfway down the page. There were six
listed—one of whom was Emily E., recognized as “wife of James.”
Her birth was logged as 1838—the same year as the Emily of the
diary—and the date of her death as March 24, 1888. Reaching for
the final volume of the diary to corroborate whether I’d found
the “right” Emily Gillespie, I opened to the last pages, and
discovered an entry written in what appeared to be a labored hand
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March 11th, 1888- …It seems sometimes unbearable to
endure such pain, that my work is nearly done, yet
there is a presentiment to stay yet longer.
Beneath this entry was another—clearly transcribed by someone
else— in a younger, stronger hand noting the date of Emilys’
death as March 24, 1888. Along with that notation, I found what
seemed to be a hand-written will, going on for several pages.
This document specified which of her possessions should go to her
son Henry and which to her daughter Sarah, before it became a
narrative telling a tale of her husband James’ deteriorating
mental state over the course of their marriage. Beginning with a
recitation regarding a bout with the “blues” James suffered less
than two weeks after their wedding, his “spells,” as she called
them, it laid out a story of increasing marital strife over the
years of their marriage, and a growing litany of verbal and
mental abuses for herself and her children, worsening until James
was threatening suicide, terrifying Emily, and trying to kill his
own son.
I sat back in my chair, overwhelmed with sadness that this
woman who died in such intense physical and emotional pain was
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the same one who just thirty years earlier longed for a loving
marriage, happy home, and a life of personal fulfillment. Her
idealistic outlook that had come across so intensely through the
early pages of her diary had somehow been exchanged for a
situation that must have been seemed unendurable. I wanted to
cry.
While she poured out her heart over the sorrows that defined
her last days of life, contained within the final pages of her
own life story, I began to get an idea. Rather than spending my
summer scouring the internet hoping to stumble across a story
about some plucky Amish woman, why couldn’t I work with the woman
whose life story had practically fallen into my lap? Surely,
within this diary covering thirty years of a life, there would be
more than enough material for a book. Maybe she’d never been a
Tudor queen or done anything that most people would consider
heroic, but didn’t every life hold a story? If I set about a
systematic study of her own narrative, written by her own hand, I
was sure to find her story within. And even if it wasn’t a big
enough story for a book, it would be such great practice for me.
Besides, I’d written novels like this before—with much less
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material to work with. This would be a great project to help me
find my way back into the world I’d left behind me when Jack
died.
Jack.
He’d told me my story lay just down the road, waiting for me
—I only needed to be patient and it would appear.
I think it just did.
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Chapter Five
We're all made of stories. When they finally put us underground, the
stories are what will go on. Not forever, perhaps, but for a time. It's a kind
of immortality, I suppose, bounded by limits, it's true, but then so's
everything.”
― Charles de Lint
The property manager stopped by, right after the furniture
was delivered, to see how I was settling in and to ask whether I
had given any more thought to selling the farm. I told him I
hadn’t had much time to think about it, and turned the
conversation to the farm’s prior tenants, wondering whether that
trunk could have been left behind by any of them. After looking
over my find, now polished and gleaming in the corner of the
living room, he agreed with Alex and Dan.
“They’re absolutely right,” he said. “It’s just too big.
Anyone who wasn’t planning to stay here long term wouldn’t bother
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to carry it up those stairs. Whoever left it up there planned to
be here a long time.”
As he headed back to his car, I told him I’d let him know my
decision about the farm as soon as I made up my mind—and thanked
him again for sending over furniture so the house wasn’t
completely empty when I’d arrived. He promised to send a van to
pick up whatever furniture I didn’t need within the next few
days.
I was again taken aback at how friendly and helpful my
neighbors had been; remembering that once or twice, on my way in
or out of the driveway, others had waved as they drove by on
their way up the road. Once things were feeling more settled
around here, I hoped to meet the rest of the neighborhood. If
they were even half as friendly as Alex, this would be a great
place to live.
Foremost on my mind, though, was my hope to discover more
about Emily and her connection to the farm. Alex, stopping by the
next day (“just to check up on you”), actually recognized the
name Gillespie. He told me that when he was a boy there had been
a local man—“a pretty eccentric old guy, as I remember”—named
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Henry Gillespie. Alex knew that he was a local, having grown up
on a farm in the area, but that was the extent of his knowledge.
When he’d first met him, he was pretty sure he had lived in town
with his sister, “a schoolteacher, if I remember right.” Again,
he suggested I check out the name in county records if I wanted
to discover whether she had any connection to my farm.
Standing out by Alex’s truck as he was getting ready to
leave, I pushed my sunglasses up into my hair like a headband,
and swiped at the perspiration puddled on my cheeks. Remembering
my earlier discovery, I said, “I searched for Emily Gillespie’s
name on the internet the other day—and found her. She’s buried
right here in town. In the Oakland Cemetery.” Squinting up at
him, I asked, “Do you know it?”
“Oakland? I sure do. My folks are buried there.” He paused
for a moment, jingling the keys in his pocket. “Hey, have you got
a few minutes? I could take you out there right now. I know the
guy who works in the office. I’ll bet he could help us find the
gravesite.”
“Now?”
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I’d been planning to head down to the County Courthouse, but
how could I pass up the chance to learn a bit more about Emily?
Maybe I could get Alex to drive by the building after we left the
cemetery, though, so I’d know where to find it.
“Give me a minute to grab my purse and my notebook, and I’ll
be ready.”
Already headed back to the house, I turned and smiled.
“Thanks Alex. I really appreciate all your help.”
Not five minutes later, we were headed toward town.
Alex assured me we’d be there in less than ten minutes, and
he’d even drive me by the county courthouse on Main Street on our
way. “It’s just a few blocks off Franklin on our way to the
cemetery. Practically on the way.”
As we drove through town, I was struck again by the vision
of small town Americana that practically oozed from Manchester’s
every pore. The Delaware County courthouse, its stone and brick
edifice and steeple-like clock tower, was surrounded by huge
purple-leafed shade trees, and looked more like a miniature
castle or Victorian hotel than a government building. Situated as
it was in a park-like setting on the edge of the mostly
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Italianate architecture of the downtown area, the whole area gave
off more of a vibe of “theme park attraction” than it did a real-
live town. That feeling continued along the wide tree-lined
streets and sidewalks rolling through the residential areas,
presenting a welcoming atmosphere that made me wish I could just
stay here forever.
I could almost hear Jack’s voice asking if we’d landed on
the set of a Hallmark movie.
My reveries ended as we pulled up in front of the cemetery
office. Checking my notebook to be sure I had Emily’s death date,
I stepped out of the almost-glacial confines of Alex’s truck into
the sweltering parking lot and followed him quickly through the
office door, before I had a chance to melt.
A blast of cold air from the air conditioner hit me square
in the face, an icy gust strong enough to blow my hair straight
back from my forehead, but the minute I moved out of the way, the
temperature climbed about 10 degrees. Clamminess seemed to crowd
the rest of the room, so I moved back into the gale. It was
definitely a scorcher today.
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The office was small and stark—a desk, two folding chairs
placed around a table in the middle of the room, dingy white
walls, and blinds at the only window. It reminded me more of the
office at an automotive garage than what I expected the office of
a cemetery would look like. After a moment, the manager—Steven,
according to a badge pinned to his shirt—came out of a back room,
smiling and greeting Alex with a handshake. After Alex introduced
me and I explained our purpose, Steven returned to the back room,
reappearing several minutes later with two large volumes.
“What’s that name again?” he asked as he flipped open the
first of the books.
“Gillespie. Emily Gillespie.
He searched through the book, explaining that names of the
deceased listed alphabetically, so she should be easy to find.
While he looked, I wandered toward what looked to be a floor plan
of the cemetery, with names written in small boxes, like states
on a map. But after several minutes of searching I still hadn’t
found any Gillespies there—and apparently neither had Steven.
“Nope, nothing here,” he said. “What year did she die?”
I checked my notebook to be sure. “1888. March 24th.”
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“Hmm… that’d be in the older section of the cemetery. Let me
grab the other book.” Retreating again to the back room once
again, Steven returned with a slightly tattered volume, larger
and undeniably older than the other two. “This one should tell us
what we want to know.”
He leafed through the book, looking for the name and date
I’d supplied, finally turning to a page that listed several
Gillespies—“Hiram, Adaline, Lafayette, Lorindia, Clarra, Henry,
Sarah, James…and Emily.” He looked up and said, “That must be it.
1888, right?” When I nodded, he said, “Yep. That’s her then.”
Flipping open a second book, he searched out the the
location of all of the Gillespies (“Must be the whole family
there.”), before turning to the map. Ruffling through the pages,
he stopped at the third one. Running his fingers across it and
muttering “Gillespie” repeatedly under his breath, he finally
pointed out a row of plots—directly behind the mausoleum.
“They’re about two rows back. Should be easy enough to spot. Your
Emily is at the end of the line.”
Bracing myself for the furnace I knew waited outside the
door, I once again shook Steven’s hand, thanking him for his
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help. Alex waved his goodbye, already headed toward the truck.
“Too hot to walk. Hop in. I can park right by the grave.”
He didn’t have to say it twice.
Parking alongside the imposing white building Steven had
called the mausoleum, we climbed out and began our search. The
older sections of the cemetery weren’t exactly laid out on a
grid, but it didn’t take too long to find the Gillespies. This
part of the cemetery was full of white oak trees, their silver-
backed leaves shading the ground all around, and thankfully,
lowering the temperature a bit, while unveiling a hint of
dappling sunlight. Heavy air, quiet and damp, enveloped me like a
blanket, its musty scent filling my nostrils as I searched for
the rows of Gillespies Steven had assured us was here.
Laid out in uneven rows, the headstones ran in a jagged line
from a couple of Platts on one end to a single Patterson memorial
on the other. Although the first names on the Patterson stone
weren’t familiar to me, my heart skipped a beat nonetheless; it
seemed like just one more connection between Emily and my family.
Pushing back the familiar sadness that curled around the edges of
my consciousness, considerations of all of the cemetery visits
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I’d made over the years with my ever-shrinking family, I tried to
force my focus onto the headstones in front of me today. To
finding Emily’s name among this sea of those who had gone before.
Then abruptly, there she was—Emily Hawley Gillespie—just as
Steven had said. A large granite stone, etched with the names of
Emily and her husband James, stood at the end of the line of
Gillespies, all with death dates between 1854 and 1955. Except
for James, Henry and Sarah, all the rest had died in the 19th
century. Sarah, with the most recent date, must have arranged for
all of the headstones since they all had the same simple design—
name, birth and death dates, with a cross and crown motif. But,
looking up and down the nearby rows, I wondered what had happened
to Sarah’s husband. Her name was etched as Sarah Gillespie
Huftalen, so she had obviously married at some point, but there
were no Huftalens nearby that I could see. A mystery for another
day, I guess.
I walked slowly down the line, reading each of the markers,
wondering about their connection to Emily. In-laws? Cousins? Alex
stayed with me until we found Emily, but then left me alone with
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my thoughts, telling me he was going to pay his respects to his
parents.
This section of the cemetery was full of tall granite
markers and white oak trees, their silver-backed leaves shading
the ground, and thankfully, lowering the temperature a bit. A
hint of dappling sunlight splashed the grass, filtered through
the branches canopied overhead. The air, thick and damp,
enveloped me like a blanket, its musty scent filling my nostrils,
just as memories of another cemetery filled my mind.
Instead of the clamminess of July, that late-January morning
was shrouded in an icy fog. Heavy and impenetrable, it hung like
a curtain so thick I could barely see a stand of trees less than
thirty feet away. Quiet as a tomb…the air so still it was as if
the rest of the world had ceased even to breathe. I could see the
people around me—my family and friends, Jacks’ colleagues—all of
them huddling together for warmth… for comfort. They had come to
honor Jack, to support me and the girls, to wrap us in their love
in the face of his choking absence. Yet I felt none of that. All
I felt was trapped. Caught like a fly in a web of confusion, yet
compressed to a crystalline clarity—this isolated moment burned 172
into my memory like ice. While the pastor spoke of eternity, I
wondered—oddly—which direction Jack’s headstone would face.
“If you need anything, call us,” they all said after the
service. Hugging me. Pleading with me. “Anything we can do. Any
time.”
It wasn’t that I didn’t believe them. Nevertheless, I had
never felt so utterly alone.
Pulling my thoughts back to the present, I sensed I was
somehow no longer alone. Stooping down, I picked up a branch of
silvered oak leaves from the ground at my feet, and held it tight
like a talisman. I gazed at the headstone there in front of me,
and marveled at the change that had come over me these last days.
Emily was a stranger to me, yet since the day I found her diary
she had become a significant presence in my life. For days I had
pored over her private thoughts, viewing the image of herself
she’d left behind. I still had no idea who she was, or whether
there was any connection between her and my family, but somehow I
felt, in some small way at least, that I knew her—or at least, I
was getting to know her. I had barely dented the thirty years of
her diary, but I’d certainly seen some of the stresses she’d 173
faced—the pressure to marry before she grew “too old,” the burden
of poverty and hard work. I’d seen the idealistic young woman
she’d been at twenty juxtaposed against the sad and pain-ridden
woman she’d become by the time of her death. In that moment,
standing there before her grave, I knew that more than anything I
wanted to discover who she’d been, what she wanted out of her
life—and what had kept her from getting it. She’d had a story to
tell, and she told it to the best of her ability for thirty
years.
Right there in front of her grave, I made a vow. “I’ll do my
best Emily. Just tell me what you want me to say…show me how you
want to be remembered.” Picking up a small branch that had fallen
from an overhanging oak, I laid it at the base of her tombstone,
whispering, “I won’t let you down … I promise,” before turning
back toward the truck.
Deep in thought about the commitment I’d just made to
someone I’d never even met, I heard the crunch of footsteps along
the gravel path and looked up to see Alex walking back toward me.
“Did you find what you were looking for?” he asked.
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Did I? Well, I had found a story so compelling that I
promised a woman who’d been dead for over 125 years that I’d tell
it—and I did it standing at the grave of a stranger.
With a wry smile, I looked him in eye and said, “I think I
did—and so much more.” I paused for a moment, not used to sharing
my private thoughts with people I barely knew—at least not face
to face. “I can’t really explain why I needed to find her. I’m
not sure I understand it myself. But as soon as I found that
diary I knew my future was bound up with it somehow. And since I
can’t meet its author face-to-face, coming here seemed to be the
next best thing.”
I didn’t know how, but I felt that Alex understood that I
was working through something as I spoke. He listened intently,
encouraging me to keep talking without saying a word. Jack would
have done that, too—if only he’d been there.
I looked up from where I’d been scuffing at the gravel with
my toe, meeting Alex’ eyes again before I spoke. “My husband
died two and a half years ago…and ever since… I can’t write.” His
faded blue eyes seemed to brim with understanding, but he still
didn’t speak.
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“Have you ever lost anyone?”
Somehow, as soon as I asked the question I knew the answer.
Not only were his parents buried here, I was sure there was
someone else. Someone he loved.
“My wife left when the boys were in high school, so I know
what it’s like to suddenly find yourself alone. But that’s a
different kind of pain.”
He paused as if gathering his courage to speak. “Five years
ago, Dan lost his wife to cancer. It was a long, slow death—the
end of a life not nearly long enough. Lindy was the love of his
life. The sweetest woman who ever lived—and he and the boys were
devastated by their loss. Me, too…I couldn’t have loved her more
if she’d been my own daughter.” He fell silent, as if anguish had
once more taken away the words.
But I understood that. That fathomless ache had stolen my
words away, too, and had yet to give them back. “I’m so sorry,
Alex. How awful that must have been for you all.” For all my
experience with my own personal agony, I was at a loss for how to
offer him comfort. To say I understood seemed so trite. Every
loss is unique, just as is every person. For over two years I had
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mourned not only the loss of my husband, but the forfeit of those
last priceless moments of a shared life. When Jack died, he was
alone, a thousand miles from home—and he was gone forever before
I had the chance to say goodbye. Dan’s wife had lingered, dying
slowly and probably painfully. Likely, he’d had the chance to say
the goodbyes I longed for, but in the end death stole his love
away just as it had mine. Was his pain any less for having the
words? Somehow, I doubted it.
But words were my stock-in-trade, and to me they held such
importance. Was the fact that I’d never been able to share those
final words with Jack behind my writer’s block? I had no idea.
But the words had gone and I had no idea how to get them back.
We drove the few minutes back to the farm in silence. Just
as he turned the truck down my driveway, Alex spoke at last. “You
should talk to Dan. It’s been a rough road for him, but he’s
pulled through it. If anyone can understand what you’re going
through…well, he will.”
I thanked him for his concern—and for taking me out to the
cemetery to see Emily’s grave. “It’s given me a lot to think
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