Journals

I have been journaling for more than a dozen years and have many journals accumulated. I began mostly to keep my thoughts and dreams and day to day occurrances. It got to be a chore instead of a pleasure. I began to edit the sad or bad parts of my life out of the journals and it bcame more and more difficult to write in them. Soon, I started writing in special or family favorite recipes because I knew I would not lose them if they were here. Then there were the magazines I could not bear to throw away because of a picture I loved or an idea I wanted to try. There were the wonderful, inspiring or funny quotes that came into my email or the stickers that came in junk mail. I began to clip and throw these items in a basket. Every time I go visit my sister, Cathy, I take a journal with me. She spends time going through each one, sometimes writing down some of the same things I did. A few visits ago (long after she also started keeping her own), she asked me to tell my daughter that if anything were to happen to me, she would get one of my journals. That was when I realized, although my journals are different, they are who I am.