children and memories

My children are all grown. . . and it happened much faster than it seemed like it would when I was in the middle of it. But last night one of my daughters sent me an email that brought a lot of memories back. Of the silly things they said and did. Of the sibling rivalries. Of the imaginations they had. We had three girls and three boys. The girls were in the middle, so they shared a bedroom for most of their lives. If I ever wondered what they talked about for so long after they went to bed.  .  . well, I guess now I have an idea.

What follows is an entry of my middle daughter's journal--the one she said covered the years when she was 12-15--and what she emailed me last night.  The sister she refers to in the entry is about 18 months younger, so she would have been 11-13 at the time. Also, my daughter informs me that she did "clean up" the punctuation and spelling (which she says was so bad that it's embarrassing to see now) but kept the text the same.

One night I was scared because I read this scary book.  I asked Julie to tell me a happy story and guess what she told me (it didn't help much!)? 

"There is a bear who calls himself Berry Bear and cons people into going into his cave.  Then his true nature comes out.  He is really a monster-bear named Menacing Max.  One day he got a girl named Jenny to come into his cave.  There were all these goblins and trolls.  They were going to kill her.  One guy she met was named Muzua.  He was bald with one hair sticking straight up.  It was white.  He had no eyebrows or eyelashes.  he had black eyes and pointy ears.  To kill her they put her in the middle of the monsters.  Then a huge eyeball with a little tail came slithering out.  It was called the Killer Eyeball.  Before it could kill her, white balls came and killed all the monsters except Muzua, Menacing Max, and the killer eyeball.  The white balls turned into people.  They told her that Muzua was really her father, who Menacing Max caught and turned into a monster many years ago because he had a tidbit of evil in him." 

That was where we stopped.  She didn't finish it so it would be mysterious.  It didn't help much. 

 Julie says she will make a sequel, called 'Menacing Max Comes Back.'"