18-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Monday, July 14, 1913: Didn’t feel very good today and did feel very miserable. I’m not really sick, but sick at heart over something else.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Why was Grandma sick at heart? What could have possibly happened?
Previous entries provided no clue that Grandma might be stressing over something—the preceding day she just wrote about the rainy weather and going to Sunday School. . . and two days before this entry she wrote about helping with the wheat harvest.
Mysteries of the past…
How true. . . we’ll never be able to figure out all of the interesting and intriguing details. 🙂
Poor Helena, she does sound very sad.
She does sound sad. . .
Hmmmm… Grandma certainly has an odd way of writing in her diary….you normally think of someone “telling all their secrets” in a diary – but not Grandma. Hopefully she’ll elaborate more in a future post…
Cryptic entries like this one make me wonder if Grandma worried that her mother or sister might occasionally sneak a peak at the diary contents.
Maybe something happened to the boy?
That’s what I thought, too.
Details, Helena, details.
I agree. . .more details, please!
She never could have thought that 100 years later we’d all be craving more details!
She’d definitely would be incredibly surprised–though I hope that she would be pleased in her quiet kind of way.
Oh man. She acts like somebody afraid of somebody else reading her diary! I can’t imagine why she would feel that way . . . .
I had similar thoughts. It makes me wonder if she thought that her mother or sister might occasionally be secretly reading the diary.
That’s what I am thinking. After all, how different could be then than now about something like that?!
18 and sick at heart? Boy troubles perhaps, unrequited love?
My thoughts, exactly. I can remember all of the drama and worries over unrequited love when I was that age.
Something’s going on with her. Wouldn’t you love to sit down and ask her about it?
It would be so much fun if we could chat about the diary.
Yes, wouldn’t you like to know what made her heart ache? Perhaps that is a lesson for those who keep a diary.
Interesting thought. . I wonder if Grandma would have been more or less likely to put these types of details into the diary if she could have somehow known that we’d be reading it a hundred years later.
Considering her subtle way of expressing things, I’d say “sick at heart” perhaps refers to a disappointment or fear of disappointment in a matter of love…?
That’s what I think, too.
I also think she is disappointed in love, maybe she likes someone and the feelings are not returned.
this is what I thought too…
It’s so hard a teen like someone and the feelings are not returned. Sometimes I’m glad that I’m no longer young.
I was also thinking about that little boy. Will tomorrow bring more and better news?
Check back tomorrow to find out. 🙂
I will do so;0)
Oh, poor thing! It’s interesting that she doesn’t provide any details about her heartache. I hope this sad spell didn’t last long for her.
It’s interesting how just a few words can effectively convey emotions across the years.
My first thought was maybe she’s stressed over growing up. I’m 18 and that’s what’s been on my friends’ minds and my mind lately…
You may be right. Since you’re about the same age she was when she wrote the diary entry, you probably have a good sense of how she felt. It’s interesting how some things like transportation and technology have really changed over the last hundred years, but how people feel at various stages of their lives really doesn’t change over time.