April 17
1965, 1989, 1998, undated
1965
Happy Easter. It snowed! We got about 1/2" - just enough to make it look like winter again. I went to K's house. Her cousin was there. He's a hood, but a lot of fun. Luckily (?) he think's I'm a creep because I wear baggy pants. Ho Ho - he should talk.
I saw "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte" with Bette Davis. It was scary and bloody, but good. I never could have seen it alone. Good night (?)
1989 (Applying to be Assistant Dean for Student Affairs in my college)
Why am I doing this?
I have achieved what I set out to do in costume research.
The next research direction that interests me is more interdisciplinary. Would be more compatible with a post at the college level.
Need for a broader experience, after 13 years in the same department.
I really enjoy focusing on undergraduates; I would have accepted a similar position at Va Tech.
No interest in department chair position. I don’t think I am cut out for it.
Comment 2024
#1 is so funny!
#2 is true; I had mentioned my interest in other aspects of popular/material culture and my chair responded, “We hired you to do costume history.”
#5 Was absolutely true, but I ended up being Chair of the Titanic anyway, a few years later.
1998
It was a long drive, and very lively, with 5 boisterous teenagers sharing the car. But we arrived, they were dropped off safely and I have settled into my home for the next 36 hours. I simple but very comfortable hotel room with a king-sized bed. I have unpacked, set up my altar, bathed, and eaten a late meal of brie and breadsticks. I am beginning to feel tired, and need to relax.
My intention is to examine this unique and interesting moment between daughterhood and motherhood, and having lost one role and being close to relinquishing the other. What can I learn from this experience? Where will it take me next?
Comment 2023
At the beginning of the month, I pulled out all of the journals that had entries for April. There are nine of them. Only one had an entry for April 17, which is apparently now usually a “writing” day for me. That single entry, from 1998, is the preface for a long meditation on my life as a daughter and as the mother of a daughter. It’s too long to include here, considering took an entire day to write, section by section.
It was a Friday night when I wrote the first part. My daughter and four friends were heading to a youth “con”, or lock-in, at a UU church in Allentown, Pennsylvania. I volunteered to drive and decided to stay in a nearby hotel and pick them up on Sunday. It was an opportunity to take a break from - well, everything - and craft a solitary retreat where I could focus on the changes taking place in my life. My mother had died the year before; my daughter was a year away from high school graduation. It felt like one of those rare liminal times where every once-stable detail was being transformed, and the future was a complete unknown.
So I brought candles, meditation music and an assortment of snacks and locked myself in a hotel room from check-in to late afternoon the next day. The housekeeping staff was probably uneasy with the all-day “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door. People do terrible things in hotel rooms, I later learned. All day Saturday I read, meditated, and wrote. I cried at times. Finally, I was done, and I took a nap and a shower and went to the restaurant for dinner.
Sunday morning, I checked out of the hotel, drove to the church, and drove home with five sleeping teenagers.
Stuck in a file, semi-dated.
