My Journal’s journey

As we enter a new year, most of us want to forget the last two years,  Many of us will try to do so – – a few of us will have to remember. We’re journalists.  By that I mean that  we keep  a daily journal of events.  I have kept a journal every day for the last 50 years and periodically before that.

Those of us who keep a journal or a diary feel obligated to remember what happens each day and then piece it together to create an overview of history.  To us, a journal or a diary is a living appendage like a brain, which documents activities that help us remember.  Our journal is as important to us as our heart.

Recently, on a trip back from Arizona, I lost my current journal.  I was writing in it on the plane and when I got off it wasn’t in my carry-on.  I became frantic, tried to get back on the plane to look for it, was assured that airplane staff would look for it and given  other assurances that it would turn up.  The last two years of my life were documented in that book and I had lost it.  I had lost my life.   I filed a lost item report with the airline and headed home.

I couldn’t sleep.  I was worried that those two years were lost.  I got up at 4 am and headed to my computer to file a report on my Facebook Page.   I even considered offering a reward.

When I got on, the first thing I saw on my Facebook page was “Did you leave something on the plane?”  The name of the person who posted it was Nancy Bonafede.  I was ecstatic.  It looked like my journal had been found.

I looked up Nancy Bonafede on Google and came up with the person living in Sedro Woolley.  No contact information but there was a Bonafede Construction Company – – and it had a phone number.

At one minute after 8 am I called.   When they answered I said , “I lost my journal on the plane.”  A female voice responded “I have your journal.”  She had found it under the seat in front of her, had Googled my name and looked me up.

She and her husband were vacationing at the Grand Canyon.  Nancy mailed the journal back to me from there and I received it four days later.  I kept track by its tracking number as it went to Los Angeles and Portland before getting here.

My journal had taken its own trip.  My journal had experienced being left, being found, and traveling to the Grand Canyon and then home.  My journal should have a kept a journal of its own.  But, even though I think of it as a living thing – it’s not.  It doesn’t have the capacity to remember – – only humans do.

And, even when we don’t want to remember the time of the Great Pandemic, we have to.  It’s our responsibility to help people remember.  Keeping a journal and sharing the observations it contains is one way to understand and place events in context.