Behold, I come; in the scroll of the book it is written of me (Psalm 40:7)

Yesterday began the summer of ablution for my childhood home before I abandon my father for Israel. We started with my old room because we plan to organize our garage sale efforts there. In the closet were boxes of stuff from my past that I had previously tried to toss but my mother rescued from the trash can: grade cards, drawings, love letters, and so on. Most of it I directed straight into a trash bag; I'm not really one for sentimentality. But I kept aside three things: my mother's bridal garter, a box of my and my brother's baby blankets, and four diaries from elementary and middle school. I plan to keep the first two for the remote possibility that I ever get married or adopt children (no, I have not changed my mind about a watermelon coming out of my womb). As an aspiring writer, I thought to keep the diaries for when they make this Mansfield split-level into a historic site, along the lines of that cat house in Key West. But then I read them.

Here are the only educational tidbits you'll uncover from three of the diaries: 1) Like many youngsters, I did not know the meaning of many words I used, "pervert" being the prime example, because I used it repeatedly to insult any third-grader who was making me mad on a given day (but I must say I used the word "seldom" correctly in first grade); 2) Like many adults, I did not know the difference between "your" and "you're," "through" and "throw," and "there" and "their" (bad, bad English teacher); and 3) Like many people, I attempted revisionist history, crossing out entire sections of my diary that I later found to be inaccurate and writing over words that drastically altered the sentence's meaning, as in "love" to "hate."

There was one great revelation for me. I had designated one diary to be more philosophical, eschewing the gossip-laden triteness of the other three. In one entry from sixth grade, I profess a complete and profound belief in God. I write that I don't let things worry me because I know God will take care of everything. What a doozy, eh? I wondered when my feelings had changed. I can't pinpoint it exactly, but by 10th grade someone had signed my yearbook: "See you in hell!" It must've been a crazy four years.

I feel unsettled by that entry, but another one from the same diary made me a little more proud. I write for three pages about how everybody's eyes might be physically different to the point that we literally see the world in drastically different ways. As an example, I use how another girl could think a boy was "hot" and I could not. I go on to say that these varied senses of sight mold our personalities (although in a lot less eloquent terms). I write that I must see a lot of things uglier than other people, which makes me "not very good at being caring." Now there's the ol' Kim we know and love, right?