Tuesday Slice: The words we leave behind

Last week's prompt on Two Writing Teachers referred to the National Day on Writing, asking us to reflect on why we write.  I'm a seat-of-the-pants writer, so I didn't check the prompt before posting, but my friend Fran Haley did.  She wrote a beautiful piece on her reasons for writing; take a moment to read it here.

Fran's piece prompted two writing memories--one old, and one from two weekends past.

Many years ago, my parents were cleaning out their garage and came across some old school papers of mine.  In the box, they found journals from my early teen years.  I had a rough time at both of my middle schools--the one stateside because I was smart and the only military BRAT in class; and the one overseas, where I just didn't fit in yet.  Luckily, I had teachers who encouraged journaling in class, and I was able to vent a lot of frustration and sadness in those pages.  My despair went so far as to chronicle thoughts of suicide, which I quickly dismissed (also in writing) because of the hurt it would cause my parents, who were in no way responsible for my depression.

My parents read the journal when they discovered it, and were shocked by those passages.  They had no idea of my feelings back then.  I was able to put on a brave front simply because I could "write it out".

Fast forward several decades.  Now it's my husband who's cleaning up our son's high school papers while he's away at college.  My husband hands me a piece of paper from the pile--a math worksheet.  I look puzzled, so he tells me to turn it over.  Our son had journaled on the back--a passage about feeling overwhelmed by homework and AP classes and SATs.  He decided to take a break on our neighborhood hike-and-bike. As he watched some sunbathing turtles in the creek, he was able to decompress and feel like a kid again.

We saved his story, as my parents had saved my journals.  Reading about our son's anxiety, I wished I had ready access to my middle school writing back then.  If I had let my children read about my adolescent struggles, maybe they could have navigated those years a little more easily.

Perhaps it's time to start gathering our family's words, to pass on to the next generation.