"Yes. I'd forgotten that. I remember wondering what she wrote about all the time."
"You didn't peek?" Karen said with a smile. I kept my fingers crossed.
"Of course not! You have to trust your child if they're going to learn to trust you, and your judgment." Karen smiled, satisfied with my mother's answer.
It was nearly an hour before my mother's mind began to drift, the longest by far of our recent visits. We excused ourselves and left after hugs and kisses. Karen promised to return soon. My mother turned to me.
"You're very fortunate, Sarah. You have a perfect daughter, just as I was blessed. Raise her just like I raised you." On the way out, the head nurse said my mother was the most lucid she'd seen her in months. I was more ashamed than ever for abandoning her for so many years and vowed to remedy that in the months and years ahead.
Karen's mood on the ride home ranged from ecstatic to pensive as she reviewed the afternoon conversation. She sought even more details on what my mother related but stayed away from the subject of punishment. I wondered if her personal fixation on having done something bad kept her from the subject. Instead, she seemed consumed with diaries.
"If you still had your diary, would you let me read it?"
I tried to recall details of what I recorded so long ago. Some of the later entries would need explanation but I couldn't remember penning anything I'd be ashamed to share. Everything I entered was true. I told Karen as much. "I think we'd have a good laugh together, especially when you read the parts I wrote when I was your age."
"I wish you still had it. It would be fun reading all about you and Grandma and Aunt Suzie when you were growing up. What did you do with your diaries?"
I remembered the day clearly. "I burned all of them," I answered.
"Why?"
"That's personal."
Karen thought a moment. "Honesty. I'm invoking our honesty pact."
I'd promised. I was uneasy where my answer might take us, but I forged ahead anyway. "Okay, but you'll owe me. I burnt all my diaries after I found out my husband had read them."
"He did that?"
"Yes. Then he lied about it so I had a little bon fire in my backyard."
"So he wouldn't read the rest of them?"
"It didn't matter. The diaries weren't mine anymore."
"You must have been really mad. Did that make you stop loving him?"
"No." I didn't tell my inquisitive passenger that I'd stop loving Doug far earlier than that unpleasant episode.