More Thoughts on Anne Frank and Writing

8-13-10

   I am out on our back deck at dusk.  Sprinklers are just finishing up their cycle.  A clear line is drawn on the horizon, accentuated by the dark black below with a few house lights and an orange creamy color above that blends so seamlessly into a light blue that I can’t tell where the orange ends and the blue begins.

   It’s Friday and we’ve begun the new school year.  No children yet, but we’ve had our first staff meeting...
a training on Lexia (a computer reading program that monitors student improvement and teaches skills simultaneously), a training for the newly adopted literacy program (reading, writing, and spelling combined), and the “pep assembly” for the entire district.  I have also had some time in my classroom getting it ready.  Belinda was awarded her certificate for twenty years of teaching today.  Last year, I received mine.  I look back, knowing I have taught that many years, remembering the faces and the names of all of my students, and not knowing how I have arrived.  A fog of disbelief surrounds me.  It’s similar to when Zen died, but without the tragic twist.  How did that happen?  Am I really at where I am at today?

   The reserve battery power message just came up. The bugs are hovering around my legs and arms.  The orange cream color has become a narrow strip now; it’s surrendering to the blue, and it’s sinking into the black.  Then the rest of the blue will turn black.  I am headed inside before the black wins, before my screen turns black, and before the blue surrenders too.

   I finished The Diary of Anne Frank, and I am now into Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Story of a Part-Time Indian, but I want to mention the effect Anne’s diary has had on me.  First, I am mourning her death.  I knew she died, and I knew she died young, but I did not know how, and I purposely waited until I finished her diary before I read the afterword to find out.  I spent 332 pages getting to know this young girl, her innermost thoughts, her hopes and dreams, her fears, and the details of her day to day happenings in their secret annex. Then abruptly on p. 334, “The typhus epidemic that broke out in the winter of 1944-1945, as a result of the horrendous hygienic conditions, killed thousands of prisoners, including Margot and, a few days later, Anne.  She must have died in late February or early March.  The bodies of both girls were probably dumped in Bergen-Belsen’s mass graves.”

   Margot was Anne’s older sister.  What a waste!  What a shame!  Ironically, I saw a picture of Anne Frank today during the “pep assembly” for our district.  She was featured in a video for volunteer.org called “The Power of One” during our superintendent’s talk.  B nudged me when we saw her since I had been talking to her about Anne and reading some of the excerpts out loud to her.

   What Anne writes on Wednesday, April 5, 1944 really made me pause.  It’s a library book, so I did not dog-ear the page, but if it was mine, I would have.  Instead I just memorized the page number.  This is what she wrote…

   “I finally realized that I must do my schoolwork to keep from being ignorant, to get on in life, to become a journalist, because that’s what I want!  I know I can write. A few of my stories are good, my descriptions of the Secret Annex are humorous, much of my diary is vivid and alive, but… it remains to be seen whether I really have talent.

   ‘Eva’s Dream’ is my best fairy tale, and the odd thing is that I don’t have the faintest idea where it came from.  Parts of ‘Cady’s Life’ are also good, but as a whole it’s nothing special.  I’m my best and harshest critic.  I know what’s good and what isn’t.  Unless you write yourself, you can’t know how wonderful it is; I always used to bemoan the fact that I couldn’t draw, but now I’m overjoyed that at least I can write.  And if I don’t have the talent to write books or newspaper articles, I can always write for myself.  But I want to achieve more than that.   I can’t imagine having to live like Mother, Mrs. van Daan and all the women who go about their work and are then forgotten.  I need to have something besides a husband and children to devote myself to!   I don’t want to have lived in vain like most people, even those I’ve never met.  I want to go on living even after my death!  And that’s why I’m so grateful to God for having given me this gift, which I can used to develop myself and to express all that’s inside me!

   When I write I can shake off all my cares.  My sorrow disappears, my spirits are revived!  But, and that’s a big question, will I ever be able to write something great, will I ever become a journalist or a writer? 

   I hope so, oh, I hope so very much, because writing allows me to record everything, all my thoughts, my ideals, and fantasies.”

    Okay, those two lines really stand out: 1. “I want to achieve more than that.” and 2. “I want to go on living even after my death!” 

   You did it, Anne.  Those lines sound prophetic now.  I get it.  I can make that connection, and that’s one of the many wonderful things that Anne is talking about when it comes to writing.  A teenage girl can connect with a forty-three year old man more than fifty years after her death.  I am not Anne, but I feel the same way she did.  I wrote much the same thing before I read that passage when I talked about my own journal, and how I will continue to write for myself unless something miraculous happens, unless… well, I hope I don’t die, but I hope my writing is read by more than just me… and my three followers on blogspot.com. 

   I need to go.  I am picking up Danielle at one of her baby-sitting jobs out in Crouch Mesa.  It’s 10:55 PM, and the parents are coming home around 11:30.  She finally got to baby-sit McKenna and Desiree from St. Joseph’s.  I got to hold McKenna (she let me) before B and I left. 

Until next time…