Lydia's Diary

This is the first pass at a story that has been in my head for years, a story triggered by an 11-month diary of a young girl from this time. This story was presented by Vermont Stage Company during its 2007 Winter Tales production. Feel free to add to this story by creating a "child Page." Choose Lydia's World as "parent" and include Keywords: group books

By Geoffrey Gevalt
YWP Editor

December 24, 1894. Barton, Vermont. Four below. Cloudy. Storm brewing.

My name is Lydia. I’m 18 years old and live in Barton at a small farm with four brothers. I write this by candle, near the edge of my bed. It’s been a month since the trouble, since I disobeyed Pa and went out riding with Nathaniel in his two-wheeled gig. It was a cold November day, and we was bundled up against the gray. I was supposed to be home doin’ chores. I knew that. But when Nathaniel had stopped by, I just went anyways.

I’d met Nathaniel in the summertime. I was home doin’ the floors. I’d been baking pies for two days using the early apples and Pa and Ma had gone to town with the boys to sell them. Had some eggs and butter and the last of the wool, too. I was to stay at home. I always stay at home it seems like. Pa says it ain’t right that no one else’s come to courtin’, says goin’ to town is like parading me around. So my only day out now is Sundays to church. Pa says at 18 I’m almost past marrying age.

But the day I met Nathaniel I looked up from the kitchen floor and saw the blur of three horses go blisterin’ by the window, in the yard. I got up and dropped the rags into the pail and grabbed an apple from the bowl and put it in my apron. I rushed outside and three mares -- two browns and a black – had found their way into the garden, leapt the little fence and were workin’ on the chard. Didn’t know whose they was but didn’t care. I knew Ma would be angry if they came home and found the garden all tore up so I rushed to them, figuring pretty quick which one I had to catch to get the others. It was the black one. She had that look in her eyes. When I went up to her I just stared strong and pulled the apple out and she saw it and before she knew what was happening I had her by the mane and was feeding her. She was mine.

I walked them out careful through the gate and there wasn’t too much damage. I put them in the barn and waited, back to scrubbin’ on the floor but keeping an eye on the window. He came up from the lower fields standing on a wagon, a work horse was pulling him along. He looked beautiful, like he had not a problem in the world and like he and the horse and the wagon were one, his long black hair fluttering back in the wind. Even from the window perch, it seemed, I could see his bright green eyes.

And they was electric when he came up close, still standing on the wagon and asked if, by chance, I’d seen his horses that got loose. I felt something inside like I hadn’t ever felt and he asked, polite like, but
I was tongue-tied. Not usually a problem, mind you, but I couldn’t find a way to get the words out at first and then they kind of burst out in a strange mixed up mess, and I felt my cheeks go hot and I knew I was blushin’.

He looked at the garden, hopped over the fence and worked with the rake as he talked, saying he was sorry and didn’t look like they’d done too much. When I got my composure, I finally told him I’d caught them and they was in the barn and he kind of stared at me like he didn’t believe, but there they were all standing at attention, waiting for him, having heard his voice.

He got the rope halters off the wagon and tied them together and said he had to leave and headed down the hill, slow, the horses following behind, tied to the wagon. Then, sudden like, he turned all the way around on the wagon and yelled to me, ‘Would you mind if I came calling some evening?”

He knew my answer even without my saying. And a few nights later he did. But Pa was none to happy about it. After he left, Pa said he didn’t like him, didn’t want him comin’ by again. He didn’t give a reason. Said he didn’t have to. Ma talked to me later, after I’d settled down. She said Nathaniel’s father had bought a cow a few years back. The cow died a few months later and he contended Pa owed him. Kept heckling Pa about it. No good had come from selling that cow anyways she said. The money went to seed that got drowned in the spring rains.

So when Pa found us sailing along in that gig, laughin’, all bundled up in a blanket, there was hell to pay. He made me get down and onto the back of his ride and my cheeks were so hot I thought they were on fire and I had to stay at the house, he said, at the house until he decided otherwise.

And so I sit here, down under the eaves near my bed, Christmas Eve, the candle burning low, so the younger boys don’t wake, down quiet so Ma and Pa don’t know what I’m doin’. Pa wouldn’t like it I know. He never favored book learnin’. Said it was a waste of time. But I write this anyway. And I’m thinking that maybe someday I’ll be able to climb out of this house, that I’ll be able to get on some two-wheeled gig …

Oh no, I hear Pa rustlin.’ I better get back to bed.

December 25, 1894. Barton, Vermont. Snowing outside. Been snowing all day.

We woke to a warm fire and a present for each of us around the table. Bacon on this day and biscuits and jam and eggs and even sweet rolls. We each took our turn opening the present, youngest first. I have four brothers, all younger. The youngest, Caleb, is 9. Pa carved him a beautiful wooden horse. Not sure when he found the time and certainly none of us saw him doin’ it. Sean is 10. Ma made him a pair of mittens; it was from the sheep’s wool and Ma set aside enough from market to make ‘em. Sean always loses his mittens; Pa would tell Ma not to replace them, that he needed to learn a lesson, but Ma always knit him another pair. We all laughed. Orion, 16, and the oldest of the boys, told him that maybe he could manage to hang onto this pair.

I had some sisters once, they were between me and the boys, but they all died. I barely knew them. My little package was wrapped in a piece of satin cloth. We got it a long time ago; Ma was going to make pillows but she never got to it so, over time, she cut small swatches off the bolt for this and that until finally she had only this square that she used each year to wrap things. It is pale blue and smooth to the feel on your cheek. The satin was around a rectangular box, felt like wood, and that’s exactly what it was. It is a beautiful brown box, maple sanded smooth and stained with a cover that lifts off. Inside was paper, real paper, and a new quill and a bottle of ink. I was amazed. I looked up at Pa and his eyes were welled up and I don’t think I’d ever seen him like that. I looked back down and the paper, must be 25 sheets of it, had an envelop on the top.

“Open it,” he says, and I do and inside was a note, scrawled like. I knew it was Pa’s writing but, truthfully, I don’t know how I knew that. And I knew they were a strain to write, not just the words, but the letters, too. And I knew from reading them that those words had come from many conversations I didn’t know about between him and Ma and I wondered how in the world, all the things to do around the house and farm, they had time for those conversations. And reading those few words, I could just see them, in the barn, or down by the smithy shed, Ma, apron on, standing hands crossed like she does, just starin’ at him as he poked around the fire with a metal rod, or as he swept out the stalls, or as he was up a ladder fixin a plank, and I could hear him arguing and trying to lay down the law, like he does, and her, this time, not givin’ in.

And I read those words, and I just felt my cheeks get hot and tears go down my cheeks.

“Dear daughter. I was wrong about Nathaniel. Have him call some evening. Merry Christmas.”

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