“Don’t you just want to throw the whole thing over? Wouldn’t that be so satisfying?” – Man to college-aged daughter, the note reads. In reference to a shelf of Depression glass. 27 February, 10am, Antique Mall in Verona, VA. Seeing as I was admiring the glassware on the shelf in question, I was amused and slightly nervous.
Why did I write it down? To remember it. When I read that quote, I’m reminded of a family visit to Pennsylvania and stopping at an antique mall before the final leg into town. It sparks a whole week’s worth of memories. That is the purpose, my purpose, in keeping a notebook.
I write to understand myself a bit more. This sounds impossibly self-involved, but hear me out. Teenage Elizabeth was not the same person as college-student Elizabeth. Notebooks written by teenage Elizabeth detail how it might be nice to keep a tiny apartment in my favorite cities and travel the world hopping from home to home. College-student Elizabeth, playing bass guitar in a band, wants to play music forever. The person who worked my first job is not the person I am today. Yes, they are all me, of course. None of them are me, though; the person penning these observations. Nevertheless, they’ve all informed and melded to create the Elizabeth writing today.
I review lessons learned, yes. I jot down funny things overheard, like, “We don’t need to fold our pajamas. We’re not that classy.”
Yes, I keep track of books read, movies or series watched. I scribble down quotes and odd things I notice on walks. I recently devoted several pages to detailing an afternoon my husband and I stood outside an hour watching two yellow-rumped warblers chasing and fighting (we think) one another, crashing through trees, onto the ground, and around shrubs. I explore my feelings on conversations or social tension. I keep track of routes taken on road trips and where we stop for the night. I record being both upset, and happy, and in between. I ignore the potential danger of others reading those pages, and put down what I think and why I think it. I try to write down important “news” events, like who won the presidential election or when someone significant dies.
Of course, what I really keep a notebook for is to remember; to recall how I viewed the world. I want to remember the kind of person I want to be, and to remember the dreams I had at fourteen, twenty-five, and fifty. I want to remember my fears. I want to remember my sense of humor; how what was maybe funny then isn’t now – or something which wasn’t funny that I can finally laugh about. I want to remember the moment I knew I’d marry my husband, and the day we married. I want to remember the imposed coziness of staying in our house for a year weathering a pandemic. I want to remember not having the things I have now, and desperately wanting them. I want to remember the labor I’ve put in – the long days where my head is spinning at four in the afternoon and all the work destined to happen that day has already been done.
A notebook is more than any one thing. It’s not entirely a journal, because I keep notes and practical things in there – phone numbers, addresses, errand lists. Nor is it entirely aimed at productivity. I record quotes and review my week. It’s not solely for essay ideas. It is, ultimately, a representation of me to me. It’s the record of how I view myself.
The human brain is a marvelous machine. It processes thousands of inputs of information simultaneously and in fractions of a second. It is not an excellent memory keeper, though. All that processing makes it too easy to rewrite memories, to recreate history in the light of what we think or feel today. It’s too easy to forget that you really were afraid or miserable then, even though you’ve made through that event. I keep a notebook to remember that what felt like all my friends losing their minds in rapid succession was really the struggle playing out between doing as they were told and forging their own paths early in our twenties. A notebook is the reminder that what you fear might be the end of the world is just Tuesday. Pretty soon, you’ll wonder why you ever thought the world was ending, and to remember, you’ll have to refer to the notebook. So it goes.
Time marches on, but the person enduring at the end isn’t the same one who began that journey. Keeping a notebook is the act of taking yourself along for the ride.
