Going through boxes again, I came on my first diary. It dates from when I was six, and I can still remember being inspired to start writing when my mother gave me a metal box of index cards. Here are a few entries (text on the right in case you can’t read it):
Introducshin
This is My Diary
in every few years this will
seem silly.
c End
I was happy win I
wrote this I had a leaf and
put it in clas 1A, Oct. 5 1955 .
Meryl Barbara Natchez
Mary 4, 19457
last night I wrote a pome:
Spring is here now finly
xxx
I still remember how that poem started:
Spring is here now finally,
Spring is here to stay.
Spring will be here until
Summer comes our way…
There was a stanza for every season. What’s remarkable to me is that I was self-conscious from the first entry on, something that still plagues my writing. Also, I never could spell, and it’s been a very long time since I thought of myself as Meryl Barbara Natchez.