The Holbrook news., 1922-04-07
Which Explains Thinos
PREFACE

me Marie. Everybody else calls me Mary Marie. The rest of my name is Anderson.
 I'm thirteen years old. and I'm a cross-current and a contradiction. That is, Sarah says I'm that. (Sarah is my old nurse.) She says she read it once that the children of unlikes were al- ways cross-current and a contradic- ton. And my father and mother are unlikes, and I'm the children. That Is, I'm the child. I'm all there is. And now I'm going to be a bigger cross current and contradiction than ever, for I'm going to live half the time with Mother and the other half with Father. Mother will go to Boston to live, and Father will stay here-a divorce, you know.
 I'm terribly excited over 1t. None of the other girls have got divorce in their families, and always did like to be different. Besides. it ought to be awfully interesting. more so than just living along, common, with your father and mother in the same house all the time-especially if it's been anything like my house with my father and mother in it
 That's why I've decided to make book of it-that Is, it really will be book, only I shall have to call it diary, on account of Father. you know. Won't 1t be funny when don't have to do things on account of Father? And I won't, of course. the six months I'm living with Mother in Boston. But, oh, my.-the six months I'm living here with him-whew. But, then, l can stand it. l may even like it. some. Anyhow. it'll be different. And that's something.
 We'll, about making this into book. As I started to say. he wouldn't let me. I know he wouldn't. He says novels are silly waste of time. if not absolutely wicked. But, a dlary-oh, he loves diaries. He keeps one him self, and he told me it would he an eX- celient and instructive discipline for me to do it, too-set down the weather and what did every day.
 The weather and what l did every day, indeed, Lovely reading that would make. wouldn't it? Like this:
 "The sun shines this morning. l got up, ate my breakfast. went to school, came home, ate 9y dinner, played one hour over to Carrie Hey woods, practiced on the piano one hour, studied another hour. Talked with Mother upstairs in her room sbOut the sunset and the snow on the trees. Ate my supper. Was talked to by Father down in the library about i'm proving myself and taking care not to be light-hlinded and frivolous. Gle meant like Mother only he didn't say 1t right out loud. You don't have to say some things right out in plain words, you know) Then I went 10 bed"
 Just as if I was going to write my novel like thatl Not much am. But 1 shall call it diary. Oh, yes, l shall call 1t diary-till l take it to be printed. Then shall give it its true name-a novel. And I'm going to tell the printer that I've left it to him to make the spelling right, and put in all those tiresome little commas and periods and question marks that every body seems to make such fuss about. If write the story pact. can't be ex- pected to be bothered with looking up how words are spelt, every five min utes. nor fussing over putting in a whole lot of foolish little dots and dashes.
 As If anybody who was reading the story cared for that partl The stOry's the thing
 l love stories I've written lots of them for the girls, too-litlle short ones, I mean; not a long one like this Is going to be, of course. And it'll be so exciting to be living story in stead of reading it-only when you're living story you cant peek over to the back to see how it's all coming out shan't like that part. Still. it may be all the more exciting, after all, not to know what's coming.
 l like love stories the best. Fathers got-oh, lots of books in the library. and I've read stacks of them, even some of the stupid old histories and biographies. had to read them when there wasn't anything else to read But there weren't many love stories. Mothers got a few, though-lovely ones-and some books of poetry, on the little shelf in her room. But read all those ages ago.
 That's why I'm so thrilled over this new one-the one I'm living. mean. For of course this will be love story. Therell be my love story In two or three years, when l grow up, and while I'm waiting there's Fathers and Mothers.
 Nurse Sarah says that when you're divorced you're free just like you were before you were married. and that e6metimes they marry again. That made me think right away: what If Father or Mother, or both of them.