Medora, 1916
(Saturday, January 1 1916) The first day of the New Year – May 1916 accomplish more than 1915 did in building my character! Though I feel far better satisfied with the past year than the one before, and thus may the years continue, each one more perfect than the last until I find everlasting peace. A complication of affairs is keeping me at home this next week from school and in those extra seven days I want to help my dear family as much as possible. There is so much to do in a household of eight which my little frail mother can not manage.
I was twelve when I came across Medora’s diary. It was 1947 — my seventh-grade year — and my mother and I were living here in Oysterville with my grandparents. I had been ill and, for reasons long forgotten, I was ensconced in the north upstairs bedroom, rather than in my own small room overlooking the church.
1912 – The Espy Children (Dale, Willard, Edwin, Mona, Suzita, Medora)
In fit of boredom, I rummaged through the drawer in the old library table at the foot of the bed. It held a treasure trove of ‘bits and pieces’ – Papa’s magnifying glass, my grandmother’s long unused buttonhook, and way back in the corner, Medora’s last diary. I read the few entries with a mixture of awe and dismay.
Medora, my mother’s oldest sister, had died suddenly a few days after her seventeenth birthday. That much I knew. And that my middle name was in her honor. But this diary from long ago was the first real kinship I had felt with her. That she was only a few years older than I when she wrote the entries made the connection all the stronger.
I was full of questions and, although my mother was more than willing to share what she knew of Medora, her own memories were hazy. “I thought of her as a fairy princess,” my mother told me. “I had just turned four when she died…”
Medora’s Locket
My grandmother was more forthcoming. She showed me some of Medora’s keepsakes – her locket (which I was given on my sixteenth birthday) and the yearbooks from Portland Academy where she was a student. But, though it had been many years since Medora’s death, even I, a callow twelve-year-old, understood not to ask too many questions.
On Monday, January 3, 1916, Medora wrote her final diary entry: My seventeenth birthday. Why I am really becoming a young lady! I shall live this year cheerfully without any sentimental attachment awaiting my prince, and preparing for him. If in all the long years he never comes, I have lots to do for others.
Two weeks later, Medora died in her sleep. A cerebral hemorrhage the doctors said. The family who knew her never completely recovered and, for those of us who came after, there is always a bittersweet ache associated with her name and with the first days of each new year.
Sydney, this is amazingly touching. I have your book about Medora, and so I must have read that diary entry, but the way you have presented it here, wrapped in love and memories, is just remarkable. I often think that you don’t realize just how good a writer you are — so I’ll say it again here. And send you and Nyel a gigantic hug and warmest wishes for nothing but good news in the new year.