Catharine's Diary

After my mother, Catharine Mortensen, nee Snyder, died on March 31, 2008, I discovered her diaries among her things. For a time, she was a compulsive diarist, keeping daily logs continually from January, 1936 through May, 1956 when she abruptly stopped. So meticulous was she about making entries that she even had my father do them while she was in the hospital giving birth to both of her sons—her second, my brother Harold, was born by C-section which, in 1940, necessitated an especially long hospital stay. Prior to that series, however, she kept only one diary, her first, for the year 1919. It was the 1919 diary that especially interested me —although I eventually expect to read through them all—for two reasons. First, because 1919 was the year she turned 10; the age my grandchildren (her great grand children) were at the time of her death. The second, because it was during this year that her father, Leonard, suffered some sort of mental breakdown that caused the family to commit him to an asylum, a story that was never fully explained. So it was that, after reading through the diary of a 10-year old growing up in Pine Grove, under Overlook Mountain, in New York’s Catskill Mountains, I decided to try, as best I could, to transcribe this diary and tell her story for succeeding generations of her family. In addition I made her a promise. At one point during her early nineties she said to me “When I’m gone, you will forget about me.” I promised her that was not going to happen. What follows is part of keeping that promise.