18-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Tuesday, September 30, 1913: These days have come and gone. They ground me working on my job.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Grandma–
You work so hard on the farm—husking corn, digging potatoes, rolling fields in preparation for planting wheat—the list could go on and on.
I know that your life working on the family farm is fairly typical of the lives of many young unmarried women a hundred years ago. . . so I assume that your life just feels normal to you.
But . . .sometimes I wonder if your current jobs and tasks are fully utilizing your knowledge and skills.
Exactly one year before you wrote this entry, you were a high school senior and wrote:
Our class had a meeting this evening after school. I had the misfortune to be elected secretary. But better, or rather it suits me better to have been that, than president or treasurer would have suited me.
You always write in such a matter of fact way. I hope you feel good about what you are doing—and that you think that your work suits you well.
.
Your comments on this entry are perfect… You have to wonder if Grandma was getting anxious to be doing something else with her life…
Thank you! I’m glad you liked them.
Helena needs something big and good to happen!
I agree!
I think she was feeling restless and ready for the rest of her life to begin. Or maybe I’m just remembering how I felt around that age.
I think we all felt that way when we were young. 🙂
Did you ever know your grandmother? What was she like?
My grandmother used to work on a farm but she always read the paper, and read poetry, and kept up with politics etc So she was quite well-read as well as being practical. So there were these two sides.
Yes, my grandmother and grandfather lived in a small bungelow on my uncle’s nearby farm when I was young. I generally saw her once or twice a week. My memory is that she seemed very old, but was kind. You might enjoy reading a post I did last summer where I talk at little about about what she was like when she was older.
Thanks for the link.
I wonder if she felt much pressure from society to get married or to find a job or if she was welcome to stay at home?
I don’t know about her specifically, but my general sense is that many women back then felt some pressure to get married. I’m less certain about the job. I think that her parents probably wanted her to be a teacher, but when she didn’t get a teaching job they may have preferred that she work on the family farm rather than taking a job in a factory or store in a nearby town.
So hard to get into your Grandma’s mind 100 years later, but I find myself hoping she will experience some wild adventure to record in her diary.
One thing that I’ve learned from doing this diary is that Grandma had occasional adventures–interspersed with many days that were fairly routine. I guess that’s probably similar to many of our lives. 🙂