The diary

When Rick was preparing The Nest (the studio where I lived until I married) for guests, he found my old diaries from high school.

Nothing in them would foretell of later writing success. Trying to read my writing is like working with a medieval manuscript. The diary is a five year one, but I turned it into two.

At random I opened to July 15 1954. It read "Dad hit mum at the club. She is going to file for separation and custody. In the afternoon we went to the club."

I have no memory of my father being violent. I do remember constant fighting and being forced to choose sides.

On July 16 I wrote, "Mummy went to see a lawyer. Dad came home. Afternoon we rode on a toy train and after played mini golf."

 After that there is little mention of the divorce or my father. I remember being one of three children in seventh grade whose parents were divorced. The other two were twins. Although I wrote nothing about it, I played on the sympathy of the teachers. It worked for a while.

Life took on a new normal, a better normal.

Only as an adult was I able to develop a relationship, a good one, with my father and began to understand what I had ignored as a child.