Summer is coming.  In these pages, anyway.  Extended school year due to the March floods but, Summer is coming.  Scorching hot days, swimming, tennis, lazy days once school finally dismisses.  It’s strange to be at this point in 1936 as magical fluffy white flakes are pouring down outside my window and Christmas Carols are piped above my head on the work muzak machine all day long.  I don’t like it.  I want to be transcribing December right now.  I want to be reading and typing about cold days and her shopping for presents and listing the cards and candy she gets from boys.  It’s like that time I went to Florida with my mom for the holidays.  It was one of the worst Christmases.  It just wasn’t right.  It didn’t even make sense to this New England girl.  And I get carried away into the environment of these diary passages.  Perhaps it’s because she describes the weather so well, or because these are such snap shots of honest life.  I get lost in them a little bit.  I want to read about her ice skating at night with the flakes falling around her.

Therefore, my goal is to get through these months quickly so I can transcribe December before the holiday is over.  Yikes!  I don’t have a lot of time but I think it will make my holiday doubly lived.

Oh!  But I was still very excited to read June.  A tragedy struck.  More like a mortification, but when you are 18 and this happens to you, it feels like a tragedy.  I have been here and it sucks so bad:

Wednesday, June 19th, 1936
I was a flop.  Went up to the piano full of confidence, sat down, felt as if I were way above the piano, started to play and couldn’t remember a thing.  Started twice, and then asked the professor for my music.  Got through that somehow.  How will I face “Prof” tomorrow.  After I got through I leaned against the wall and bawled.

Reading this made my heart ache for her, she doesn’t write about crying often at all.  This was a grand embarrassment for her.  And it created a path for something wonderful to happen, as bad things usually do:

Jeanette came up and consoled me.  We became friends.  She said she was sorry about the lost time.

Yes!  Oh thank the gods of friendship.  Because that is the worst part, the lost time.  “We became friends.”  As simple as that.  But they seem to pick up where they left off and I’m glad.  Babu has told me she remembers that Jeanette eventually moves away.  I was really beginning to think Jeanette would leave the state and leave Babu’s life as unceremoniously.  Maybe it’s a fantasy, but this passage makes me feel that things do happen for a reason, even the bad things.

Maybe, even though this passage was written in June, it contains a Christmas Miracle after all.