2 July 1631

I feel like I'm boiling in this heat sometimes. But it does mean I'm feeling something, so that's good, or so I suppose.

I don't feel much, really. Things are very…distant. Sometimes I don't even feel like I'm in my own body-I feel very disconnected from it. I try very hard to show my girls that I love them, because they're children and they need to be loved. But I don't feel much myself, not even when Meulin hugs me tight and tells me she loves me.

I take them to the creek most days. It's cooler there, and Nepeta likes to do the same things every day. Nepeta brings a book and Meulin just splashes in the creek, having a wonderful time just playing in the water.

I love them. I know that for sure now.

4 July 1631

Button is a good kitten, but every night she meows at me until I change into my nightdress and go to bed. And my daughters wake me up every morning. Between the three of them, I've been sleeping like a normal person.

I suppose that's good. Sleeping from sundown to sunset, just waking up at midnight or so to stoke the fire and have a cup of chamomile, seems like the sort of thing someone without persistent melancholy would do.

I've been drinking my tea lately. It seems to help.

7 July 1631

I wish it wasn't like this. I don't want to wake up and spend half an hour convincing myself to get out of bed so my girls don't worry. I don't want to be living not on hope or love or happiness but on the knowledge that they'll starve if I don't feed them. I hate that I can't just live like I ought to. I hate that the heavy numbness that consumes even my long-held grief refuses to let up enough for me to love my daughters like I should.

I love them more than I can say, almost like how I loved Luke, but I can't seem to feel it. If I can't feel it, I'll show it nonetheless, because at the very least they need to believe they are loved.

9 July 1631

I hit on one of the things Nepeta loves to talk about today. She loves to talk about plants. I found her a book on botany and she absolutely loved it. I did notice that while she doesn't like to garden, she likes to sit near the plants and examine them. Today she devoured the book I gave her and told me everything, overjoyed to have someone listen to her. I want to listen to her, and I want her to feel listened to. It's sort of what my love did, I think. He made people feel listened to.

Meulin's been less of a ball of energy lately, not so much that I'm worried but enough that I think she's getting better. She'll come find me when she has nightmares and she'll cry to me and I think it's good because I think she needs to feel sad.

I think sometimes I need to feel sad, too. If…it's terrifying to think it, but if my mother was wrong, I need to know what is right. I need to…I need to deal with this. I need to feel, I think.

I'd like to feel. I'd like to feel all the things I think I might have to, so I can move on with my life.

All that time, they were right. My love, my family, they were right.

I should've known. When did they ever steer me wrong?

12 July 1631

My daughters helped me cook dinner tonight. Meulin chopped vegetables and Nepeta helped me with the herbs. She's very sensitive to taste, and she likes things to be just right. Meulin's happy with anything, and I don't taste anything these days.

I like making dinner with them. It seems to be a good way to be closer with them. And when I eat with them, it feels like having a family again. It's…it's different, being the mother rather than the daughter, but it feels nice.

I love them. I think that's what you need to have a family.

14 July 1631

Today would be his thirty-sixth birthday. Luke would be twelve, and my love would be teaching him reading and writing and math, and I'd be coming home from work every day to see my son growing up and my love teaching him. Maybe my love or my son would be looking for a job, my love to support us and my son to find a life for himself. Sigmun and I would perhaps have more children, a daughter maybe, and we could teach her everything we'd teach Luke.

It would be nice.

17 July 1631

Meulin found the old drawings Simonn did of us, and she asked me about them.

"Who's this Mama?"

"Well, this is my old family. That's me, my love-my husband, our best friend, his fiancé, and our mother. And that…that is my baby."

"You had a baby?"

"Yes, I did."

"Where is she?"

"His name was Luke. He died when he was fourteen months old." I choked on it and I didn't want to cry in front of her but whenever I think of him the sadness just overwhelms me and I want to cry all over again.

"Oh," she said. "Sorry, Mama."

"Don't be sorry, little love. It's not your fault."

"I…I just mean I'm sorry you're sad."

"Thank you, little love."

"Um…you're welcome, Mama." She hugged me, and I hugged her back, and then she asked me for a story.

"Little love, I don't have many stories."

"But Mama! All the books have grownup stories. Don't you know any stories for children?"

"I…I suppose I do," I said. "Alright, come on, I can tell you and your sister a story."

So I made up a story about a princess who learns how to use a sword from her best friend, a knight, and defeats the dragon that has been stalking her kingdom since she was a little girl. She becomes a wise and just queen, and when she dies her people are well cared for and safe.

I'm not sure where exactly it came from, but there's no chance I'll get out of telling more. The looks in their eyes when I told that story told me that they will want many, many more.

19 July 1631

I've been telling them stories about my life except different, about moments where there can be princess and knights and happily ever after. And like my love said, sometimes I'm the knight and he's the princess, and sometimes he's the knight and I'm the princess, and sometimes we're both the knight, and sometimes we're both the princess. That's how it should be.

I think my daughters like the stories, and I think Nepeta likes the romance. She leans forward when I mention two of my little characters getting married, or being in love.

I'll have to teach them things, about being married and having a woman's body. I'm not looking forward to it. I don't know what I'll say or how to say it, and I certainly don't know much about sleeping with men-I only ever slept with one. I just hope I can tell them so they don't come running up to me terrified of their own bodies.

I remember when that happened to Eleanor. I don't want it to happen to them.

22 July 1631

I have to do something for their birthdays. Nepeta was born on August fifth, and Meulin on August fifteenth. I want to celebrate their birthdays so they feel loved here, loved and cared for in all the ways children should.

I could bake a cake. Last time I tried that it went poorly (I still can't believe Dolora ate it), but I'm much older now and a better cook. I make my own bread-I'm sure I can make a cake.

25 July 1631

Today Meulin asked me when my birthday was, and I told her August twenty-second. She was surprised, and then promptly declared us an August family, since we were all born that month. She told me it ought to be birthday month. I couldn't help but laugh, because she was so happy about it, and I told her of course, we'd all celebrate our birthdays in August.

I'm not sure what I'll do for mine. I'm not sure I deserve a birthday.

No, I can't think that way anymore. Everything my mother said to me, she was wrong. She was wrong. She was wrong. She was wrong. She was wrong.

27 July 1631

I don't want to be selfish but I need to write about it here. I can't stop feeling and thinking all these things about my mother, and I need to write it all down.

I know she was wrong. She hurt me, and she was wrong. I spent a long time thinking I was being punished for doing something wrong but I didn't. I was not her ideal daughter but that doesn't mean she had the right to do what she did to me. She was angry with the world and took it out on me, and that wasn't fair.

And I don't know what to think of any of that. She was wrong, but I don't know…if I know that she was wrong, then I acknowledge that she never wanted me; she only wanted what I could be. I lived through everything believing that no matter how much she hated me, I was taken in wanted. But…she never loved me, or wanted me. She only wanted what I could be.

No one wanted me.

30 July 1631

I've been thinking about it more, and…I think Dolora wanted me. She said she wanted children, she wanted a daughter. My birth mother and my mother, neither of them wanted me, but Dolora…she loved me no matter who I was, and she took care of me, and she was kind to me.

Someone wanted me, then. Someone was to me what I need to be for my daughters.

3 August 1631

I suppose I know it's selfish of me to think about this so much, but this is my journal-I can write what I please here. I won't be selfish in my life, with my children, but I need to write about it.

Dolora loved me, and she wanted me. My mother did neither, and she…she was wrong. She was wrong. It was wrong of her hit me and call me those names and do things she knew would hurt me. It was wrong. She was wrong. All that time I thought I was being punished, she was the one in the wrong.

I don't know what to do. I've spent my whole life seeing the world as if my mother was right and I was wrong, and now all that's turned on its head. If that's not how the world is, then…I suppose all those terrible things, Luke and the children I never had and losing my whole family…maybe I didn't do anything deserve all that. Maybe it was just bad luck and bad people. Maybe I didn't do anything.

No, that's absurd. Not being able to have children-that's not just bad luck. And even if my mother was wrong, I was still a bad daughter. I deserve these bad things that have happened to me. There's no question of that.

Right?

5 August 1631

Today was Nepeta's eighth birthday. I made us baked apples and her favorite stew (no celery, of course), and I gave her all sorts of supplies for needlepoint so she can continue to do that, since she likes it so much. Meulin took her hand gently and said happy birthday, and as I understand it that was like giving her sister the biggest hug she could, since Nepeta doesn't like to be touched.

Nepeta informed me that now that she's eight she wants to go into the village with her sister sometimes. I told her she never has to, but if she likes to, she can go with Meulin as long as the two of them stay together and they're back early.

I worry about them. The village is normally safe during the day, especially if it's sunny, and apparently her friends there have parents who watch them. Anyways, most of the village adults will watch out for two little girls.

But I worry.

7 August 1631

I took my daughters to the river today and showed them how to swim, just a little but enough that they could have fun. I'd like them to learn. I always loved swimming as a child and I hope they will too.

Meulin has been having fewer nightmares, but I still wake up late (I wake up late) to her quiet tears. Every time, I hold her close and tell her that it's going to be okay, she's safe with me, and it's going to be alright. I tell her she's wonderful and brilliant and kind and beautiful and important, and that she matters. Eventually I'll carry her back to her room and tuck her in and sit with her until she falls asleep again. She deserves it.

Nepeta doesn't have nightmares, or she doesn't seem to. But she'll make up stories and they'll be about things like being hungry or being lonely. And I think…I think she doesn't like herself. I want to teach them both to love themselves. I have to tell Nepeta everything I tell Meulin and vice versa-I need to tell Meulin I'm proud of her and I need to tell Nepeta she's brilliant and important. I need them to know these things, things I didn't know as a child (and still don't know now, I think. I'm not exactly important).

I have to raise them to love themselves. I can't die. The emptiness and sadness ache deep down inside and everything I've ever believed is topsy-turvy and I just want to be with my family again, but I can't die now. I need to raise them, because no one else will.

10 August 1631

I just want to be with them again. I woke up this morning feeling so desperately, terribly lonely. I just want to come home from work and smell Dolora cooking dinner, see Simonn reading on the couch sipping tea, hear Sigmun mixing medicines at the table. I just want to be part of that family again. I want there to be someone to catch me when I fall, because I fall every time because I'm never good enough, and I know they were lying to me when they tell me I'm everything I need to be but it was so nice to hear. I just want that again.

It's never going to be that way again. I have to catch my daughters if they fall, tell them they're everything they need to be and they are good enough. I don't know how I can possibly do this alone.

12 August 1631

Nepeta finished a lovely needlepoint today and she asked me if I'd put it up in the library. So I told her of course and put it on the wall with the other miscellaneous art we have. I want her to know I'm proud of her. She deserves that.

Meulin's birthday is in a few days. I'll have to make something for her.

15 August 1631

I made a strudel for Meulin, mostly because I found the old recipe in a German recipe book from when I was younger. It was quite good, actually, which is rare for me. (Well, my daughters think it's good, but they are children.) She's twelve, now. They're getting older!

My own birthday is in about a week. I'll be thirty-six. I'm getting old myself, really. I'll be forty before long, and Dolora was forty-three when everything ended. I wonder what I'll do when my children grow up, when Nepeta is eighteen or twenty and is married. They won't need me anymore, and I don't know if I'll have a reason to stay alive if I'm not needed.

But then, perhaps they'll live in this home and I'll take care of their children, my grandchildren, until I'm sixty years old and die.

17 August 1631

My mother was wrong. I remind myself of this every day because if I don't keep thinking it to myself, I'll forget and think again that she was right. I need to believe that she was wrong. I don't know what I did wrong to deserve the things that happened to me, but I know it wasn't my mother.

I suppose if my mother was wrong, and Dolora was right, then I have to raise these children like Dolora raised me. I planned to do so already, really, but this just affirms it. I'll never hit them. I'll never call them those awful names. I'll teach them how words can hurt and how to be kind, and more than that, how to believe in the kindness of others and the world. My love believed with all his heart that people were good and kind above all else, and I want them to believe that, too.

I don't believe the world is a cruel place. I believe there are cruel people in it, but I believe that people are mostly good and have good intentions. I want them to believe this, too, because I think the people who are cruel are the ones who believe the world is cruel, and so by being cruel they are just living in the world. And I believe with all my heart that that's wrong.

20 August 1631

The garden looks beautiful. Meulin helps me maintain it and it looks so lovely. It will never be as lovely as when Dolora kept it, but I try. Meulin will sit with me and pull weeds and thin carrots and all that. It will be a good harvest, I think.

Oh, goodness. I haven't fed anyone but myself in years. How can I feed them both over the winter? I'll have to hunt. I don't know how much, but I don't know if I have enough energy for it. I hope I can feed the two of them and myself over the winter. I don't know what I'll do if I can't.

22 August 1631

My little girls remembered my birthday. Meulin gave me this handful of flowers she picked from the clearing in front of the house and she hugged me and told me happy birthday. She asked how old I was, and when I told her thirty-six, she said, "You're so old!"

I laughed, and said, "Little love, I'm not so old yet."

"Yes you are!" she said. "You're gonna be…um…forty-four when I get married!"

"When are you getting married, then?" I asked.

"When I'm twenty."

"Oh? And to whom?"

"I don't know. He's gonna be really handsome, though, and also smart. He's gotta be smart like me, or I won't marry him."

I almost laughed aloud. "Well, little love, I hope you love him very much."

"Why should I love him?"

"Well, it's more fun that way," I said. "I was happy when I was married to my love."

"Where's your husband?" she asked.

"He passed away, little love. A long time ago."

"Oh," she said, looking down. "Sorry."

"Oh, don't worry about it, little love. Most of my family is dead. But I have two little daughters right now and that's all I need." I kissed her forehead and she smiled a little. "I just want you to be happy."

"How do I find someone I love?" she asked.

"Well, a lot of the time it'll be a friend of yours who you realize one day is beautiful and wonderful and everything you want in a man, and you'll start seeing each other, and then after a while you'll realize you want to be married to them. Or, that's how it happened for everyone I know anyways."

She wrinkled her nose. "I don't wanna marry Mituna and he's the only boy I know!"

"You might want to marry a girl, little love."

"What?"

"Women can love other women, and men can love other men, and there's nothing wrong with that, little love-not even if they want to be married."

"Oh," she said. "Okay." Then, "What about you?"

"I only ever loved my love," I said. "But women are very pretty, little love, and my mother-in-law-Dolora, my love's mother-she loved women. A woman named Rose."

She frowned. "I still don't wanna marry Latula."

"Then don't, little love. You have a lot of time. You don't even have to get married if you don't want to."

"Oh," she said. "Really?"

"Yes," I said. "I didn't plan on getting married before I met my husband."

She looked confused. "But…that's what my old mother told me."

"Sometimes adults can be wrong," I said. "If you don't want to get married, don't."

"Well, if I do get married, he's-or she's-gonna be really smart," she said. "And really nice."

"As long as they make you happy," I said, and she grinned.

"They will!" she said. "Can we go to the river?"

"Of course, little love. Go get your sister."

So I took them to the creek and we played until it was late.

25 August 1631

Meulin met another little one in the village today, named Horuss. It seems Patrik. And Nepeta went with her today, and so met Horuss's brother Equius. She took a liking to Equius, apparently, and said she wants to go into town with Meulin every time if she can spend time with Equius. So, against perhaps better judgement, I told her she could invite Equius back here and they could play here. If he's her age, he's much too young to recognize me. Nepeta seems to like him, and that's what counts, anyways. She ought to have friends.

Well, I suppose I'll just get them some water and snacks if they ask. I'm sure they'll have fun on their own, and as long as they're happy, I won't worry.

Or, I will try not to, at any rate.

27 August 1631

Meulin asked me if she could bring her friends to our home, too, and I told her alright. Apparently she does want to spend time in the village, but she also wants to show off the library and garden to her friends, and play in the clearings and by the creek.

She'll have fun. They both will. I don't want them to rely too much on me, anyways. Having someone else to talk to will be good for them, so that when I go or when they grow up, they'll have someone else to be there for them.

30 August 1631

I took my little girls to the river again today and we all swam, and Meulin asked me for more stories, and so I told her some. She also asked some questions about my life before the two of them, and so I told her some without telling her too much. I did not tell her about March 1614 or my miscarriages or much else, really, just the happy things. Just the good times in our family.

I'll tell them the hard things someday, when they're ready-when they're old enough. But right now, they're children, and I think ought to be treated as such.