The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Hummingbird: Messages from My Ancestors by Diana Raab

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                               Finding My Grandma’s Journal

    Our most treasured family heirlooms are our sweet memories.
    The past is not dead. It is not even past.
                                                                                     ~ William Faulkner

   Two months before my forty-third birthday, my mother,
who’d been widowed for more than a decade, came for a
weekend visit to our home north of Montreal. When she
visited from New York, she always brought with her a
nostalgic item that had belonged to my father or one of my
grandparents. Because my mother lived in the past, she
frequently spoke about the way things used to be. She had
difficulty keeping up with the changing times. She refused
to learn how to use a computer, so she was asked to resign
from her job as a medical receptionist in the hospital where
she’d worked for twenty-five years. By that time, she was
seventy-five years old.
   Mother was the opposite of a hoarder. With her own
sense of discretion, she tossed away anything that didn’t
personally serve her. She usually did this without asking
anybody in the household if they wanted any of such items.
For example, in 1976, when I moved out of the house to go
to college, I was devastated when I learned that Mother
had thrown away all my childhood journals, which were
stored in a big plastic box in my closet.

                                                ***

   Before dinner on the night of my mother’s arrival in
Montreal, without saying anything or acknowledging their
presence, she peeked into the playroom off the kitchen
where my three kids were playing. She had never much
liked children, nor did she know how to connect with
them. I suppose that’s why she left my care to my
grandmother.
   She came into the kitchen and lifted her small, blue
suitcase onto one of the six contemporary, black-leather
chairs at the table. She pulled something out and yelled to
no one in particular, “Here, I brought this for you.”
I stood at the counter, my back to her with my hands
submerged in a bowl of chopped meat. I suspected she was
speaking to me, so I turned around as she flung a plastic
sheath filled with papers across the glass table.
   “This is your grandmother’s,” she said.
What she’d tossed so unceremoniously was Grandma’s
journal. It wasn’t a bound book or a notebook but fifty
pages of single-spaced, typed pages laden with strikeovers,
awkward syntax, and numerous grammatical errors. I
washed my hands, walked over to the table, and collected
the pages. As I flipped through them, a sudden strong
memory overtook me: the day my grandmother taught me
how to type on her Remington typewriter when I was eight
years old. I wondered if it had been the same typewriter
that she’d used to type this journal.
“Have a seat on this chair,” Grandma had said, pointing
to her vanity chair. “I’m going to teach you how to type.
This is a handy skill for a girl to have. Plus, you never
know what kind of stories you’ll want to tell one day.”
With her blonde hair in bouffant style and her bright red
lipstick framing the space between her two front teeth, she
stood behind me, smiling radiantly in the mirror. She took
my right hand and positioned it on the second row of keys
from the bottom, carefully placing one finger on each letter.
With my left hand, she repeated the same gesture.
“This is the position your fingers should be in. When
you become a good typist, you won’t even have to look at
the letters while you’re typing. Okay, dear, let’s see if we
can type your name.”

                                                ***

    Suddenly, after receiving her journal, I was reunited
with her for the first time since she’d died more than thirty
years earlier. It felt both eerie and exciting. Her voice once
again filled the gap of the loneliness born out of being an
only child and being raised by a mother with narcissistic
tendencies who really did not understand me nor know
how to bring out the best in me.

                                                 ***

   Over the years, I have often pulled out Grandma’s
journal to reread it. My intention has been to absorb herr life.
sensibilities and understand who she was and what she
endured. I also wanted to understand her sense of torment
and what led to her depression and subsequent suicide. I
knew that certain psychological traits can be genetic. While
we do have control over our lives, genetics is an important
factor that can determine whether, when facing life’s
setbacks, we feel grateful or doomed. I thought it was
critical for me to know everything I could about my
grandmother’s mental health, hoping it would help me
navigate my own journey. Even though her story was sad,
reading it grounded me and brought me closer to her. Her
words empowered me. They also served as a reminder of
my huge sense of loss and abandonment when she died.
Until receiving the journal, I had no idea that Grandma
was a journal keeper as I am. Sometimes when we study
and get to know our ancestors, we make fascinating
discoveries. Perhaps journaling is in my DNA. For years, it
has been my savior.



Reflections / Writing Prompts

What were some of the challenges that your parents
and/or grandparents faced?

Do you have an artifact or item that reminds you of
an ancestor?

What passions have you carried with you since
childhood?

Did a grandparent have a talent or passion that they
shared with you?

Is there a memorable story that a parent or
grandparent shared about their own childhood?

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