I love him no more with his arm around me than I do at his feet.
Sometimes he is so affectionate; sometimes passionate; sometimes very passive but I'm perfectly sure that he always loves and always will love me.
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It is odd how love can change, be different without being less. Last week we had one great common interest. We were very close; nearer one than we may ever be again. Sunday and yesterday John was rather cold and distant though ever gentle and I believe I admire and respect him more when he keeps me at a distance than when his is more familiar with me.
I love him no more with his arm around me than I do at his feet. Sometimes he is so affectionate; sometimes passionate; sometimes very passive but I'm perfectly sure that he always loves and always will love me.
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Like a man! Today he came back for more. Yesterday he had dinner at my home. Today I had dinner at his home. Dear God, when will we have dinner in our home?
Tonight I sat on the floor by his chair. I wish he had in some way acknowledged the fact that I was there. No matter how he treats me, what he says or does to me, there is a deep sort of pleasure in being near him, in serving him, in watching him. He has never been anything but gentle to me. It is a funny world. There isn't a good reason why a person like me should be here. I've tried to rectify my ugly disposition but it's useless. The more I like people the more I seem to hurt them. I almost worship John. I love him, admire him, respect him, fear him. Why should a man like John bother with me. I have a damnably long and disgusting tongue - always saying things to hurt; or complaining.
Mentally I'm about fifteen instead of twenty-one. Physically I'm a (?) number. Too thin, hips too wide, no breasts to matter. My face is usually in a knot. I'm already showing lines in my forehead and at the corners of my mouth - from continually frowning. I'm always discontented. One evening in about every two or three weeks is perfect, I feel as though I'm in heaven. Then my life is drab, cheerless, and monotonous again. It must be my fault. I'm usually in a morbid frame of mind. That's why I hate myself. Mr. Pember says it is not true that "we are what we are" but that "we are what we would become." Well - maybe he's right but how in this complicated world do we know what we "would become"? He says I have complained all evening. I suppose I have complained about everyone and everything around me when it is really I myself who is suffering. My hip, my knee, my right shoulder, my ear - my whole right side is aching and I dare not tell because I don't want to worry him.
The incident of a week ago tonight brought us so very close for several days that now that the tenseness is over my life seems perfectly empty and useless. We should have married last Monday as he suggested. There will never be another time like that. We will never be so close again. That was the time. It will never mean to us what it would have meant the early part of last week. Now it will be several years away, if ever. Year of love means years of suffering. I left out Thursday.
I often find it interesting to trace my thoughts. A moment ago I recalled an incident in my school life - the writing of an argumentation in which I contradicted Mr. Emerson's "Two may talk and one may hear but three may not take part in a conversation of the most sincere and searching sort." How did I happen to remember that for the first time in five or six years? As usual, it began with John. I love him. How can love be blind? I thought. I recalled Dr. Morgan calling the originator of that statement a fool. Dr. Morgan is a thinker. From that came the recollection of "The Art of Thinking" and Dimnet's idea of thinkingless Americans. "If there are 16 Americans in a room there will be 8 topics of conversation." I pictured 8 sincere discussion and consequently remembered Mr. Emerson. One of them is wrong - who is it? When I was sixteen I said it was Emerson but now I don't know. No matter what comes of it we can only thank God. If nothing else has - this has constantly revealed the real John to me. He is worrying only because he thinks I worry. He took a big step tonight in my interest.
"This has brought us closer than anything else," he said. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind of his love for me, that he will be the best kind of husband and that all I have to do is trust him and love him. I have fought against every step he has taken only to find that he was right and I learned my lesson. I can trust him implicitly. I always enjoy an evening conversation with Elizabeth. She is an interesting and intelligent girl.
Elizabeth thinks she knows me. How little she does know! I may have something to worry about - but I didn't expect to have to get out of bed - ever - for such a disturbance. A bomb has just exploded on the front steps of a neighbor's home. Why should anyone take revenge on a man's wife and family? It is awful. God protect them. This morning I felt a little nervous and uncomfortable but this evening I feel fine once more.
John is the sweetest person there is and will make the world's most thoughtful husband. There are thousand and thousands of women who would give anything they have for a man like Johnnie for a husband. I'm waiting, patiently I hope, for March tenth. "Homemaking is more than the business of housekeeping." Mrs. Thomas A. Edison John's family have been wonderful to me. They seem sincere in their attitude toward me. Last evening I recorded nothing in my diary. It was one of those evenings that could not be forgotten if it would.
John is too good for his own good. He sent me a telegram - "Pretty maiden, most divine, Will you be my Valentine?" Besides that he brought me a box - a beautiful red and gold heart shaped box - of Marquetland crystalized fruit and bon bons. Last night I could not sleep. I'll crawl in now and make another attempt. I am a morbid minded pessimistic fool - but I can't find anything about which to be optimistic. This house is dilapidated and cheerless. Mother and Dad are not well and will never be. John's parents are old and ill and John himself is poor. What a future I have to look forward to. It will take John ten years to save $500.
Some day impatience will get the best of us and we will marry quietly, and I will never have an engagement ring. He is too good and too generous to save money. I've wasted an entire evening sitting on this bed trying to write a poem. What a fool I've turned out to be. |
ContextThis is the journal of Virginia Lee Scott, my grandmother, written when she was seventeen and first dating my grandfather, John Arnold Wilson. It's a dairy published by Media Drug Stores and includes space for two entries per day, with facts about the era printed at the bottom, which I have included in italics. Following, 1928, is the journal of John Arnold Wilson, my grandfather, at age nineteen and in love with my grandmother, followed by my grandmother's journal in 1931. Archives
April 2018
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