Some Of My Things Part 7

The Diary

June 13, 1985

  “Last Monday Peter could take me to Gaby while he went to BYU. The three girls were with us, so we had a nice time with Gaby and her children. We all went to the library, ten blocks and eight blocks back. We had Eiscreme on the way home. We were all tired when we came home and rested, listening to tapes. Gaby showed us all the toys she bought for the nursery school. On the way home to Salt Lake we went eating chicken and some stuff. We all rested for a half hour and then they went home to Bountiful.”

This is an entry from Marta Betterman Titze’s diary. Marta is my mother, Peter, my brother, and my nick name is Gaby. In 1985, Marta had been in the United States thirty years. She spoke fairly good English, with an accent, and used English in her diary. I think this was a conscious decision to make her story readable by her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

The diary is worn, held together with tape on the spine and a lock on the side. It’s likely that the diary was once locked and the key was missing so the strap was cut. Inside the pages are printed with one page per day but my mother ignored that and wrote the date of entry on an empty page. There are later dates towards the back which makes the chronological order difficult to understand. 

One reason that this diary is so special to me is the account of the ordinary day to day occurrences. Marta’s life was somewhat lonely as my father passed away in 1977 from lung cancer. Her life centered on taking care of her home and garden which she did with care and thoroughness. As I read the entries I see that she recorded the visits by her family in detail. Her children came, they brought her grandchildren and often went on a drive and picked up food to bring back. She wrote about what each grandchild liked to do and what they liked to eat. She made comments about their lives and homes but was fair in her assessments. 

Writing a life story and using a diary was a common pursuit for both my parents. I feel very lucky to have writings by both of them which I read often to encourage me through hard times and to give me perspective in my own story. In my mother’s life story she wrote about being alone with her three boys during World War II while my father was on the Russian front. One story about my brother was especially poignant. While just five years old he had an injury to his eye from an unexploded grenade which was found outside by neighbor kids. His face was bleeding and my mother frantically sought medical assistance which was not to be found. She carefully washed his face and knew with horror that his right eye was blind. She carried a burden of guilt all of her life because she couldn’t prevent the injury.

An example of how her writings gave me perspective while looking at my own life were the stories of her traveling across the United States to spend time with each child and grandchildren. She traveled  to Virginia, California, Seattle and Montana. Each visit was made with happy anticipation and always she gladly went back home. As I started traveling across the United States to see my children I always remembered her attitude and her willingness to travel alone on long flights. Her diary reminded me to walk and play with my grandchildren. These were things she did very well and I learned that my grandchildren liked when I came to see them and when I walked around their neighborhood. They also like to play board games and liked to do art projects with me. Marta taught me well through her own words and through her example.

Kent, Washington November 9, 1984

   I am here in Gaby’s home since yesterday. Goetz and Sigrid brought me to the airport and Gaby and her family picked me up in Seattle. That little baby girl is lovely. We were food shopping, all of us because they were out of school. Gaby bought food for almost $100 dollars. It looked like a parade, the baby in the cart and two carts of food. But they behaved not too bad. We had sunshine today and did go for a walk, and even yesterday when I came here the weather was better than in Salt Lake. The children have to help a lot in the house, but they don’t like it much.