Author: dianarenee

...a writer and poet who left the traditional Mennonite community of Lancaster, Pennsylvania and resides in Costa Rica.

March 20, 1980: A Pet Rock Named Neil

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Preparing for the August 2014 release of “When The Roll Is Called A Pyonder: Tales From A Mennonite Childhood”

March 20, 1980

Today after school I went out in the medow and followed 3 streams then one more that run from someone else’s property, that was 4 creeks running together like this. (map) Three of them made a small pond and part of it was swampy. I got a stone from the creek to be my pet rock. I named it Neil. It was very muddy! And when I steped close to the little pond to wash it off, I sunk in to the mud almost to my knee, I tried to pull it out, and I sat right down in the mud. I got up quickly and got my foot out, but then my other foot got stuck. I pulled it out and stood some plase else to wash off Neil.

March 23, 1980

Today I helped daddy in the chicken house. I made a secret hide out behind some hey bals, it’s neat! I menshind to daddy I wanted a pigin bad! So tonight daddy and I went pigin hunting. He got me one. When I went in to show Mommy daddy caught me two more two are gray-blue one is white with brown spots on it’s head and wings. I named the one gray-blue one Charcole and the white one I named Vanalla but I didn’t deside a name for the other gray-blue one.

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1976
Me with my kitten Cutie and Wanda with Andrew, hers piously named after the pastor at church.
Find out about Andrew’s (the kitty, not the pastor) grisly fate next month in “When the Roll Is Called a Pyonder.”

 

Read an preview of the When The Roll Is Called A Pyonder: Tales From A Mennonite Childhood at http://www.mennonitewriting.org/journal/6/2/when-roll-called-pyonder-preview/

More diary entries and a new old picture coming next week…

March 15, 1980: Sledding and A Secret Clubhouse

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Preparing for the August 2014 release of “When The Roll Is Called A Pyonder”, a memoir of a Mennonite early childhood

March 15, 1980

Today I went outside to play in the snow again it was a lot better sledding. I went down the hill got to the bottem hit the bump flew up in the air came down again hit another bump and smack right into a wire fence! Then I stopped.

March 16, 1980

This past week we had revivle meetings at our church. Roy Kizer was the Evanglist. Today I made Wanda a butten neckless for her birthday. We have a club Kristen and Emily and I, called a DYNAMITE club. We have a clubhouse in the barn and no one else can go there. I have 12 penpals.

March 17, 1980

Today I helped daddy in the chicken house. We wached Little House on the Praire Laura got a test on history but Nellie hadn’t given her the history book, she got mad and threw Nellie in the muddy water, they both got very muddy. Almonzo came and resqued Laura, Laura went to Almonzo’s house. Pa came and gave Almonzo two good punches.

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1976
Wanda and me monkeying around with our tired Daddy
in the farmhouse kitchen before the remodel.

 

Read an preview of the When The Roll Is Called A Pyonder at http://www.mennonitewriting.org/journal/6/2/when-roll-called-pyonder-preview/

More diary entries and a new old picture coming next week…

March 13 1980: Spring Snow

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Preparing for the August 2014 release of When The Roll Is Called A Pyonder, a memoir of a Mennonite early childhood

March 13, 1980

Today Karen Lonecker and I almost went crazy because we both like Neil so much we could have gone histarickel. I have two very voubul stamps they are of the summer olympicks with a swimmer in it we will be boycotting the Moscal summer olympicks.

March 14, 1980

Yesterday it snowed and today school was an hour late we almost didn’t make a few hills. Bus 17 was very late. We have our plege to the flag and our moment of silens a story a math and then spelling game all in the back of the room. We were aloud to work and eat where ever we wanted it was fun. Today I also played out in the snow.  I dug a tunel threw a big snowball, and wrote things in the snow. img0661976

Spring 1976:  Wanda, me and baby Yvonne in the doll crib. (We begged mom to let us put her in there!)

Read an preview of the When The Roll Is Called A Pyonder at http://www.mennonitewriting.org/journal/6/2/when-roll-called-pyonder-preview/

More diary entries and a new old picture coming next week…

The Notebook and First Excerpts

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Preparing for the August 2014 release of When The Roll Is Called A Pyonder, a memoir of a Mennonite early childhood

I kept the little red notebook that mom gave me on my night stand tucked under my Bible on the shelf below the lamp and the kleneex box.  I can’t say how I came to feel, at the age of nine, that it was important for me to record and remember the things that happened to me or how it was that I knew writing things down was a way of laying them down; of being able to clear my mind and heart for whatever the next day would bring.  But as you will see, I clearly knew all of that.  At nine I was bravely suffering the joyful misery of unrequited love for a boy named Neil in my second grade class. I loved animals, fishing, playing outside and going to school.

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I have attempted to leave the spelling as much in tact as auto-correct will allow.  Here is how we will begin:

March 10, 1980

Today I stayed home from school.  I was sick.  We watched Little House On the Praire.  Laura met Almanzo.  Nellie had her own restrant but she didn’t like to cook!

March 11, 1980

Today I went to school for the first time in a week and a day.  We are studying Niagra.  I like Neil.  My teacher is Mrs. Mentzer, sometimes she is nice.  I sit in the back row in school.  My reading book is Lippencot 3:1.  My best friend is Karen.  In school I sit next to Cory Gibble.

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My sister Wanda and I, about 1975 wearing dresses mom made for us.
Anyone else remember rick-rack?

More entries coming next week…

The Red Diary Project

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Starting Next Week…

Join me in exploring the brittle pages of my first diaries.  Meet the rambunctious little girl you will meet and learn to love in When The Roll Is Called A Pyonder.

Each week, beginning in July and continuing through September, I will post some excerpts from the diary I begin at the end of When The Roll Is Called A Pyonder and include a picture of myself that would have been taken during the time the book is set.

 

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My Grandpa Brubaker reading to me in  the farm house kitchen.

When I Grow Up (from “When The Roll Is Called A Pyonder”

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(Release date: August 19, 2014 by eLectio Publishing)

I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. I can’t decide. I don’t want to be a mommy like Mommy and I can’t be a farmer like Daddy because I’m a girl. I think maybe I’ll be a rock collector. I like rocks. I like to play in the lane and pick out pretty stones and bring them inside.

Then I see a circus on TV and I know what I want to be. I want to be an acrobat. I want to hang upside down on a flying trapeze and flip through the air. That must be the most fun thing in the world. I practice doing somersaults and standing on my head.

* * * * *

Read a longer excerpt from the book at http://www.mennonitewriting.org/journal/6/2/when-roll-called-pyonder-preview/   and leave your comments.

Doña Paula, Retratos de la Abuela (Retrato 1 de 3): Telarañas

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“Las telarañas, allí déjelas,” dice don Chico y doña Paula no las toca. Las mira mal y mata las arañas cuando las alcanza, cuando don Chico se duerme en su silla en el corredor. “Déjelas pobres arañitas,” dice don Chico sin abrir los ojos, “que ellas comen los zancudos.”

Y tiene la razón. Las telarañas tejidas sobre la cabeza y en las esquinas de los cuartos son como una manta blanca que atrapa maleantes pequeños, ladrones de la sangre.

En la noche se escuchan cuando para la lluvia en el techo de zinc bajo las hojas anchas de la selva de palma y caimito. Como un coro de ángeles malvados, la nube de zancudos canta justamente al otro lado de los mosquiteros.

“Déjelas telarañas,” insiste don Chico y ella no toca la vela pesada y polvorienta. Abajo, la manda a Quica a sacarle un brillo cegador a los pisos y no deja entrar ni los perros ni los pollos para ensuciar.

Se sientan juntos en el corredor para tomar el café de las dos en el bochorno de la tormenta que se aproxima; comen el pan dulce que mandó la hija que se llame La Negra. Discuten amablemente sobre cuanto lloverá este año y con trapos baten los zancudos que bailan alrededor de los tobillos, dando cosquillas.

Backdrop / Paisajes

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Let me paint a few colors onto the backdrop/paisajes:

In my heart and I am a writer but I have an 8-5 day job at a clinic. It’s alright.  No, no soy ni doctora ni enfermera.  That’s all I’m saying about it because at clinics, confidentiality is huge.  I have a husband who loves and supports me but I don’t mean financially.

I live in a little town that I do not love, in the country where I was born and raised. I graduated from college a long time ago and then moved to the jungle for a good while. I once thought I would go to grad school and perhaps someday I will but, honestly, if I had the money for grad school, I’d use it to leave the country again. I was happy in the jungle. Mi alma estaba en paz, una paz que ahora recuerdo pero me esquiva. Now I am simply homesick. Before any of that happened, I was a Mennonite girl on a farm in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. It is important that you know these things about me para que comprendas si me eschuchas hablar sola.

In a few months, my first real book will be released and so all around that quiet core of sadness, I am wildly delighted! I always stubbornly believed, against all evidence, that someday this would happen, and how I love it when I turn out to be right. No es todo el tiempo. I have so many thoughts, feelings, doubts and questions around releasing a book and I have recently discovered mountains of writing, days’ worth of blogged reading material, on the subject. Y la verdad es que todo me suena igual and I would rather say something original.  Tal vez me gusta ser un poco reclusa; ya me acostumbré.

Everybody says your blog posts should offer something, help somebody get what they want. Yo no tengo nada. I can only offer a window to a different world; mine. I can offer a hand you could grab onto. I can offer stories and pictures of things you might recognize as somehow almost your own. Puedo ofrecer una voz que habla, una que se puede escuchar para comprobar que no estás solo.  I can always tell the truth.

A New Stepmother Story

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i want a new story
where the stepmother
is good
where the mirror
is just a mirror and
she was never all
that fair anyway

i want a story
where the little girl
falls asleep in
her arms (i can
tell you one myself)
and the brothers
grow into men who
pick her up off the floor and
twirl her in squealing circles
when she walks through
the door

i want a story
where the stepmother
sees the girl turning
into a woman and
tells her about tampons
takes her to the mall
buys her blue jeans
listens to her secrets
promises not to tell
and doesn’t

i want a new story
(may I have a fair chance?)
where a finger prick brings
band-aids and the good stepmother
herself kisses
sleeping beauty