Diana Trilling
FROM AN AUTUMN JOURNAL
October 8
Here it is October 8, three weeks have already elapsed
since I meant to start this journal. What an augury, and how little
sympathy I shall have from editors and friends when I explain the
cause of the delays and interruptions which are bound to dog me.
One child and four years old, not a baby! Is he sick? No, his health
is fine. Doesn't he go to school? Yes, he started this year. Then why
haven't I the time to work?
If
I undertake to be circumstantial and
answer that school didn't start until the end of September, that he
stays in school for only the morning hours, that the first week he
was kept but an hour each day, that the week after that he caught
cold, that the week after that week I had to spend my mornings
doing his winter shopping, I begin to sound implausible even to my–
self. Yet this is of course what child-rearing is in both its vexing
and its pleasurable aspects-a reconciliation to the reality of the
implausible. . . .
October 9
Probably this journal will not be very truthful. I mean, it will
not tell the whole truth, much as the idea of an unmitigated honesty
attracts me. What journal planned for publication ever does, and
what journal which is faithfully kept is not designed with an eye to
its readers? Myself, I arranged for the publication of these pages
long before writing a word of them. The form is merely a device for
writing about some of the small matters of everyday life with which,
otherwise, I have no way of dealing....
October 10
Last night I went out to register. The polling place was
jammed, I stood on line an hour and a half. But it was fun to
try to hear people's answers to the questions, especially their ages
