~a column by Colleen O’Brien
In the process of cleaning out a house, I find myself spending way too much time reading through old diaries. They are irresistible in their revelations.
Even though I was only 21 in the first diary I peruse, as I read today I am surprised at my naiveté. I forget how really uninformed, innocent and wet behind the ears a barely adult girl was 50 years ago. Transplanting myself to California as a new bride, I was agog at just about everything, starting with the first woman I saw when I stepped off the plane. In my diary I wrote: “California is so exciting!!!” [lots of exclamation points going on in this journal] “The first woman I saw had on capris with high heels!!! AND dangly earrings!!!!!!”
In the Iowa I had just left in that year of 1964, women did not accessorize capris (pedal pushers) with high heels, let alone dangly earrings. To discover that some of the rules that had been drilled into me did not apply in California, at least at the airport, left me speechless. I wore a suit, gloves, nylons, girdle — I was 5’7″ and weighed 112 lbs., so why I had to have a girdle on is mysterious — but up to that moment I had not questioned dress codes; or my mother. As I walked across the tarmac barely able to acknowledge palm trees because of the stilettos and pierced ears, I was calculating: what other rules did not apply? I wasn’t sure what rules I was eager to step away from. I just knew that I was close to finding out.
In this almost childish diary, I wrote a lot about freedom. At the time of my awakening to the big world, I didn’t question these endless paragraphs reporting on my newfound unshackling — no adult telling me what to do. (It wasn’t just parents I was escaping, it was Catholic girls college, somewhat akin to a nicely appointed prison.) But I did go on and on: “I walked to the library alone! I didn’t see one soul I knew! I bet the libe’s a mile from our apartment!! I feel like someone I don’t know. I am so free. Jim’s out to sea for two days, I am alone in a big city! I can’t believe it all feels so natural, so good!!! I got my library card and sat on a hill under a palm tree with my book (The Name of the Rose, Umberto Ecco; I wonder if Dad’s read this?). I couldn’t read, however. How can one read when one is soooo busy being happy with complete freedom, anonymity, adventure?”
Going to the libe. Wow.
As we explored our new town, I ran into countless examples of broken rules — females smoking in public (an absolute NO decreed by the nuns at college); females smoking while walking, inside or out (ditto); wearing halter tops beyond the backyard (Mom); wearing muumuus to the store. (Mom had actually cautioned me against this because she had seen it in California four years prior; it was still going on when I got there.) In our apartment building, a pretty but cheaply constructed place full of sailors and their young wives, life was a cross between a soap opera (loud shouting matches, something I’d never heard) and a primer (the couple next door to us, Texans, taking a bath together: lots of splashing and squealing and giggling).
It was all too wonderful; and re-reading after half a century is as eye opening to this 70-something as it was to that 20-something. But in a different way: we were young once. I had forgotten. And it was fun.
I look forward to the next diary to see who that girl was as she grew.
