But there is another reason. I last wrote a 'Memoir' entry on 7 November, 2010. I have several times thought that I had better go on with those - but each time have either done nothing or written something else.
What am I afraid of?
'Afraid' does, I think, account for my reluctance.
The accounts I had written up to, and including, the one mentioned above - 46 of them I discover! - have glossed over some pretty rough material. I have told of things that are decent enough to recount, or at worst the foibles of a young boy, and a very unrefined young boy, at that. Even during those events, and increasingly as I grew more mature, are quite a few that I am deeply ashamed of. I saw - and see - no reason to retail them to the world. They, at least, have no worldly consequences that derive from their history.
At the end of the 7 November 2010 memoir, I said that I met Edna. This certainly changed my life - and hers - in major ways, and has had very significant worldly consequences.
So ... I fear to go on. I will do so. My children - including my and Edna's daughter Katheleen - have asked for this. I trust they wish it to continue. But I fear:
- being rejected by them for my undeniable faults and failings
- angering them, by revealing things they do not wish revealed
Regarding the second - those who appear in these memoirs should be reassured that this will not be a lurid and gross chronicle of sins. Nonetheless, allusion will be made to things which both I and my loved ones will regret. I think, even so, that it is worthwhile putting down the events of those years, for they have shaped me, and they have certainly played a part in shaping each of those involved in the events.
All of which sounds fairly dismal, and I think it worth saying that there were things in those times that, given what I was capable of, show that I, at times, rose above my worst faults. There are things that I do not like recalling; there are things that I am confident point to better things ahead.
As I said, I met Edna. I do not remember the details of that meeting. I think that I was already acquainted with Harry Frank, and that he was the link between me and Edna. Edna is a reader of these notes, and so perhaps she can confirm that this is true. I think that Harry lived in the "House of Logy" where David, Lanny, Lee (I think), and I lived.
I am ashamed to say that I do not even know - perhaps never knew, which, no doubt, says a lot about me - what Edna was studying at the University - something in me says that she was studying psychology, but it is only a vague memory. Edna had been born in Northern Ireland - in Cookstown, I think. That may, indeed, have been one of the attractions she had for me. I have always had romantic feelings connected with Ireland - never, I trust, to be shattered by any actual experience of the country. Edna's speech was not Irish. Her family had come to San Francisco when she was - what? - five? six? Quite young, anyway.
And I was 19, and was attracted to Edna in the ways that 19-year olds are attracted to young women. It was a very short time - a matter of a few weeks at most, I think - before I had convinced Edna to marry me.
