The Together Years

Prologue

A memory is yours alone, but if that memory contains a story that is not told, it is lost. Having said that, this is not a memoir. The years written about are not my memories of what happened. This is a compilation of actual journals that I kept when my children were first growing up in their world of siblings and parents, friends and places, incidents both good and bad. The voices in these journals are all young voices, including mine, and I promised myself that I would not edit what was written all those years ago. One of the reasons I started journaling in the first place was because I knew so little about my own mother, who died when I was only eight. Once I became a young mother myself, it occurred to me that if something were to happen to me, my children would not remember me or know anything of who I was as they grew up – none of my joys or problems, my frustrations or delights, my anxieties or hopes for them. And because I knew I couldn’t remember it all, I tried to write some of it in a journal. I sometimes felt as if my own personality was being lost, or overlooked, and as I wrote about the days and the children and our lives together, it gave me a chance to assess it all, to see myself in the roles I had to fulfill. I wanted to record the ordinary moments before they were lost, and I wanted my children to know me as a person, not just as their mother. I thought they might also learn something of themselves as children. In my heart of hearts I knew that raising my children was the most important thing I would ever do and I wanted so much to do it right. I knew how lucky I was to be in the midst of them as their world expanded and I could see and be part of that. It has taken me a lifetime of carting these journals around before I have finally gotten them into book form. Here they are as they were written all those years ago – unedited – a story of those first years together.

The author Iris Krasnow in her 1997 book, Surrendering to Motherhood: Losing Your Mind, Finding Your Soul, has one suggestion: “Be there . . . to see it and hear it all.” She also advises, “We must lavish those we love with our time while we have them.”