My Lovely Baby

She has red cheeks

Long eyelashes

Beautiful eyes, a cute nose

She likes company

She smiles

She is so cute

Her mouth is lovely

She went to sleep until three o’clock

She does not like cereal or Similac

She only wants to suck my breast

Her *** like you

She likes to kick when I change her diaper

She is a good girl

**** quiet like my personality

I thank you God to give me

I like her to eat more but she doesn’t want to

She cries when she is hungry

When I give her a bath she is so happy

Only when I’m tired ****

I give a bath each day

She likes banana apple sauce

Likes to play with daddy

When daddy says “Choo Choo, what’s the matter?”

     She always smiles

She looks around, she is very curious

She likes to be held

January 3, 1983

(by Libby; transcribed by David)

Simone at Three Months

you gingerly probe my hand

like an archeological find

cooing sweetly with more variety

you are beginning to understand

becoming a member of human kind

strong Simone, you have doubled your weight

found a secret of smiling each day

held upon my knee, your mouth agape with wonder

following mom’s path to take you

feed and bathe and change you

you were asleep when mom got stung

so you wondered why a bottle

the first of your weaning

those painful in-betweenings

changes growing till you regulate your own throttle

but still a rattle lays blind in your palm

held now a jack-in-the-box up and down

yet you quiet at the shape you will assume

surely you will stand and walk before soon

there many mansions reveal many rooms

what do you feel as you pry my fingers

what can you make of we amateur singers

the staring at light knowing its brilliance

what fills you with glee when we are seen

***** places like visions of kings and queens

November 25, 1982

Introduction: My Journals

When it comes to written work, nothing can equal the attention I have paid to writing a daily journal. Though many of the volumes have been lost or stolen, the topics and details of the years of my life beginning in 1970 when I was 16 years old are amazing in their depth. I am not Anais Nin mind you, and there is little intrigue or pornography in the pages, but there is much evidence of predilection to creative writing and my career as a teacher. 

In the entry from March 6, 1987, there is a notation: "This  26th page of 1987 journal equals my total entries of 1986!" I should say that with an average of 40 lines per page, 11 words per line, in an 8"by 6" unlined bound book, the content more or less equals that of a standard 7" by 5" paperback. The entry from this date details my page output from previous years' journal writing:

1979 - over 200
1980 - 128
1981 - 72
1982 - 42
1983 - 21
1984 - 58
1985 - 42
1986 - 26
1987 - 116

With this introduction, I begin to transcribe key pages of my journals, the journals that still exist.