Monday Memoir, Feb 21, 1961

Junior year at Mingus. Basically just more of the same. I didn't really 'hate'  school but often was bored and tired of it!

Feb 21, 1961

What a gloomy day this was. I got up and dressed though Mom said I could stay home in bed if I wished. I should have taken her up on that. School went rather quickly today, thank goodness. I wrote my application letter to ASU during study hall and read “Heart of the Desert.” It was a little corny and old fashioned but a nice book anyway. In art I splashed around with tempera paint and splashed some on my skirt. Thankfully it is washable. Boy was I ever glad when the final bell rang. I got a letter from Wayne. I’d almost given up on him but he decided he didn’t want to lose me I guess. After reading HofTD I didn’t feel very close to him and so it was rather hard for me to write to him, but I did. We had to do the chores via the pickup because of the weather. I felt rather ill and thought I might be getting Chicken Pox because I had a funny lump on my wrist but I later discarded the idea. I also began a letter to Jose. Mom finished typing my ASU application and we started talking. We talked until 11:30 and by then were very cold and tired. So much for today.

Not quite spring and the kind of weather that is still common in this transitional season where nice and dismal days mix and match. It sounds like this one was rainy. From the overall tone, I think maybe Dad was not there--possibly in the VA hospital over at Fort Whipple by Prescott. How we did the morning chores at the pasture I do not know. It seems odd that I could have stayed in bed. The animals had to be fed and tended twice every day, regardless.

I know at this time NAU was still ASC (Arizona State College) and ASU should have been Tempe. I do not recall that I ever applied to go there; well maybe as I know some of us did take a field trip down with Mrs Fitzgerald along in this general time period. So I am a bit vague here. I always intended to go to Flagstaff or the new college that opened in Prescott a bit later though.

The Heart of the Desert was basically a "romance" (the genre had not yet been named and identified so it was just "a novel") The author was Honore Willsie Morrow who was one of my more favored authors though out of date even then. I re-read several of her books as e-books not long ago and was a bit surprised how issues of the late 1800s like she wrote about are echoed or parallel some of our modern ones. History repeats itself perhaps 

I was still writing to Wayne, the rodeo cowboy from Washington whose place on my scale of 'special' pen pals shifted up and down fairly often. Right here on a 1-10, he was perhaps about a 6. Another pen pal, Jose, was much more relevant to the theme and style of that book, at least the person I believed him to be. That gives some context to my mention of writing letters to them both.

Did Charlie  Mike have chicken pox about this time? It seems like he may have. He actually had them twice--first as a grammar school student and then as an adult in 1973 when he was moving to Colorado with my husband, kids and me having moved in with us in Bisbee for awhile that summer. That time he was one sick puppy, too. I never had them that I know of but have had shingles which indicates I must have--so it may have been a very mild case.  I was sick a lot thru school though, always having a cold or rhinovirus, tonsillitis or strep throat.  

For Mom and me to talk that way hints that Dad was not home.  It wasn't too usual. At this point we were not close in a lot of ways--probably due to the emotional incest thing, I feel Dad played us against each other too much  so we tended to be competitive or almost adversaries to some degree. I also had mostly stopped confiding in her because things I said in confidence, or so I thought and intended, often came back to bite me in lectures and comments which proved she had told it all to Dad. Looking back I find that all sad because I therefore had almost nobody I could trust and openly discuss my problems with. I became very controlled and insular in most ways.

No, I would not go back and relive those later teenage years for all the gold in Africa and the jade in China! I am sure I brought a lot of it on myself but I was rarely happy and carefree. The next year during my final semester, life was mostly better but still not ideal. I suspect although most of my illnesses were not truly psychosomatic, my usual state of mind weakened my immune system so every bug that came along dug in on me. 

Pictures? I can't think of a one although too much plain text is dull! Bear with me this time, okay? Maybe I will just stick in a sunset! This is one from my friend Julie Carter that has an iconic feel. Contrary to most it also feels a bit melancholy to me.