Mother's Diaries

Diary of Amy Matthews, age 14

Jan

Dear Diary,

I hope I don’t offend starting out like this but, this feels strange. I mean I’ve only heard of people keeping diaries. It seems like something so old though that I never imagined keeping one myself. My family is cleaning out my late grandmother’s house and I found in my mom’s “teenage things” this hardcover journal with shining monarch butterflies. On God, it screamed the Y2K vibe that’s so viral right now! Totally on fleek! I showed it to her, she remembers getting it but never wrote in it so she let me have it. Yay!!!!  

Yeah, I’m grateful she let me keep it but I’m also intrigued. We like never get along. She can’t stand how I talk sometimes, saying things like “on God”, “bussin”, GOAT, and “on fleek”, so I’m perplexed she didn’t go off like she normally does for saying calling it on fleek (It's a compliment after all). I don’t want to question it though. We have enough going on without one of our spats. She’s letting me take this plastic tote of her stuff too. 

Some of it looks interesting. I know diaries tend to have like salacious secrets inside them. So I tried thumbing through one of Mom’s other journals. But she wrote in some old squiggly font that I can’t read. 

“It’s cursive,” she said, not terribly worried that I might make out her writing. We’ll see about that...

Feb.

Dear Diary,

I’ve started to learn more about cursive. It's a writing style that joins a lot of the letters together, which is the challenging thing I find about it because all I know is how to print. It's said to have good mental benefits though. Writing in cursive has this boujee feel to it, like using this writing is smooth and elegant when you take your time. I wonder why we don’t use it more? I’ve told my friends about it and they’re pretty amazed. Everyone is asking for their name or something written in it. It's been fun practice actually!

Since I still can’t quite read Mom’s diaries yet, I’ve gone through some of her other teen things, like an original iPod! it came out when she was eighteen! Going further back, she saved some BOP and CosmoGirl magazines and movies with a set of young, blonde twins--any relation to the Scarlett Witch actress?; a raggedy Beanie Baby cat--it's still pretty cute; concert ticket stubs to Michael Jackson and Backstreet Boys concerts. I’m really tempted to do a TikTok reveal or something. Though it almost doesn’t feel right to call it an aesthetic when there is real nineteen hundreds and Y2K stuff! 

Mar

Dear Diary,

Shoot...so I got distracted from learning cursive. We’re starting a unit in history class on the millennial time period. The teacher, Mr. Roberts, wants to begin it with creative presentations of things our millennial family or friends grew up with. This was the perfect opportunity to “reveal” my mom’s stuff!  My friend, Noah, showed off CDs and cassette tapes his family owned. They still had working music players that played them! Apparently they’re called boomboxes. Riley recorded her mom talking about this store called Blockbuster, which was supposedly the thing before Netflix, Hulu, and all the streaming today. You got a plastic membership card to use them (which her mom still had). Then Harper walked through some of the fashion magazines her mom kept. Hers were Seventeen. But now I feel like the millennial stuff is everywhere I look now! Myself and several of us posted these presentations to our social media too and now historical/millennial/nostalgia content is the majority of my feed because algorithms.

And I can see why we started out with fun presentations; the era actually seems mid and cheugy. I mean, for one thing, some of Mom’s life happened before the Internet was commonplace--hence all the journaling and fashion magazines, I suppose. More than that though, the nineties and two-thousands dealt with its wars, terrorism, and genocide, little progress for LGBT rights, an AIDS epidemic, societies in other counties collapsed. I think I’d rather learn more about cursive...The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 

Apr

OMG! The Spring Formal is nineties-themed! 

For all the buggin’ stuff that happened in society during the millennial era, I forgot that the “aesthetic” is hella phat! Or in Gen Alpha terms, its sick or dope. Mr. Roberts has been ending most of the lessons by sharing nineties slang and other pop culture stuff with us. I have been so tempted to tell my mom to talk to the hand! It would be a real buzzkill if she grounded me from the formal though so I hope things don’t get too harsh between us anytime soon. 

Wish I could show you, Diary, how fly this event is going to be! I may have to do what my mom might have done. While I’m still trying to decipher the cursive code in my mom’s diaries, I have found several physical pictures in some of them. Some taped or glued, some loose, some may have taped or glued but fallen out of place. She has photos from like proms or formals or something, but she has a lot more just of friends or random things. Apparently they did selfies back then too. 

May

Dear Diary,

millennial era notes for history final

Dates of the millennial period: 1980 - 2009

Which 90’s style tribe are you: preppy princess

U.S. presidents of the time and significant points in their terms:

•  Ronald Reagan 1981-1989: “Reaganomics”, established MLK Day, War on Drugs, worked to end Cold War
• George H.W. Bush 1989-1993: invasion of Panama, Gulf War/Operation Desert Storm
• Bill Clinton 1993-2001: held a “Third Way” political philosophy, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”,  Clinton–Lewinsky scandal, impeachment
• George Bush 2001-2009: 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, No Child Left Behind

Which 90’s “it girl” are you: Jennifer Anniston

Which iconic 90’s smell matches your personality: Calvin Klein CK One

Other people and terms

• Globalization- the process of interaction and integration among people, companies, and governments worldwide
• Dot Com Boom- a surge in nineties World Wide Web industries that collapsed in the 2000’s 
• Steve Jobs- founder of Apple Inc.
• Bill Gates- co-founder of Microsoft
• Sandra Day O’Connor- first woman supreme court justice, appointed by Regan
• Condaleezza Rice- first African-American woman secretary of state, appointed by GW Bush
• Osama Bin Laden- founder of Al Qaeda, the terrorist network responsible for 9/11 attacks
• NAFTA- North American Free Trade Agreement
• Nancy Pelosi- first female speaker of the house following 2006 elections
• Saddam Hussein- dictator of Iraq; attempted invasion of Iran and Kuwait, leading to Gulf War and other U.S. interventions
• Mikhail Gorbachev- Soviet and Russian politician in the 1980s who worked with Reagan to end Cold War. Gorbachev enacted policies including glasnost and perestroika to restructure Russia’s social and economic order after communism was disbanded
• Y2K scare- widespread fear about computer errors related to the formatting and storage of calendar data for dates in and after the year 2000.

What famous 90’s movie character you: Belle from Beauty and the Beast

What 1990’s TV Show do you belong in: Beverly Hills, 90210

While studying for my history final, my friends and I found these nineties-themed personality quizzes! Mr. Roberts said some of the fun pop culture-related material could be included for extra credit so I could argue the quizzes are helping me study too...

June

Dear Diary, 

On God! Mom just basically ruined my summer! I keep bugging her about letting me shop at Sephora and going to Summerfest next month but she keeps saying, “You should get a job! So you can pay for these things yourself!” My friends are going without any problems! She’s totally unfair! 

Besides, I’m only fourteen! Most places won’t hire below sixteen, so I don’t know what she expects me to do! Or so I thought...apparently, she’s been talking to the neighbors, and the Saunders family two houses down are looking for summer help with their kids. Six to eight hours a day with her tykes for ten bucks an hour almost everyday. The cheapest makeup brush set alone is fifty dollars and that's just the store-brand! I can barely support a skincare routine, let alone go to Summerfest, on that! Not to mention, there goes any time I hoped to have in trying to read her diaries. 

 I got lectured about being grateful and helpful. Supposedly, the Saunders are in a bind and can’t afford regular summer daycare right now. They don’t ask for much and this arrangement will go a long way for them in getting things back in order for themselves. Then I’m grounded for a month for having an attitude with her. I can’t go anywhere else but the Saunders house and my screen time is limited to a few hours a day while I’m at home, “which is a little more than I deserve,” Mom tagged onto the discussion, “You should start thinking more beyond yourself.”

July

Dear Diary,

The Saunders kids have been a handful but they’re my littlest best friends now! They’re twins, Olivia and Liam. I start the day with them around eight; they’re somewhere between having breakfast, getting the kids ready for the day, and leaving for work themselves. I jump in where I can and make sure they follow their parents' rules, like only an hour of “fun” screen time a day, take a nap after lunch, stuff like that. They’ll turn five in time for Kindergarten this fall, so a lot of what we do for the rest of the day is supposed to help them get ready for school, like alphabet and number puzzles, flashcards, reading books, coloring,or sometimes doing worksheets. 

I’m not going to lie, a lot of it felt dumb at first but I didn’t want to hurt any feelings. But then I started noticing how proud and excited they’d be, when all by themselves, they’d recognize a number or letter, make a correct match, or write their names. I started feeling happy for them too! I really want to support them some more, so I started finding and printing off the internet free coloring sheets and worksheets they could do. 

Even after a month, I’m impressed with the chunk of change I’ve made while babysitting! I’m feeling torn over what to do with it though. On one hand, I have enough to cover a skincare kit or cheap seats at the next Taylor Swift concert. I could buy myself some things for school next month, maybe a new outfit, makeup, or a new Bento lunchbox.

But on the other hand, I think of Oliva and Liam everytime I see something ages four-to-six years old now! Looking for their coloring pages has gravitated towards looking at coloring books which somehow led to looking at toys and games for them. I’m getting tempted to shop for them! Their birthday is next month, but I feel like they deserve a little more than printables...what to do? I can’t even think about cursive and Mom’s diaries right now.

Aug.

Dear Diary,

I had the perfect idea! For Liam’s and Olivia’s birthday, I bought them family passes to the children’s STEM exhibit at the museum! They called me the best kindergarten babysitter-teacher ever! Aww! Both their parents and mine thought it was a thoughtful gift as well. 

It’s felt like forever since Mom has been happy with anything I do! For being in her good graces again, I’m starting to wonder if I should just leave alone any of the salacious secrets that may or may not be in her diaries? Doing that has still been put on the back burner between this little museum trip (they invited me to come along) and starting school this month. For still trying to think beyond myself, I think it wouldn’t be totally respectful of me to pry for any dirt on her, even if Mom doesn’t seem to care. I’d be embarrassed now if she read some of the things I’ve written about her earlier. So would she feel the same if I read embarrassing things about her? She didn’t have social media like I do when she was a teenager, so her diary was one of few places she could express herself--good, bad, and ugly. And a diary seems so much easier to keep to yourself, unlike social media posts. 

But reading her diaries has been like my New Year’s resolution! I learned cursive for that express purpose! Shouldn’t I see this through? 

Sept.

Dear Diary,

My fifteenth birthday was this month so Mom and I put together a bussin’ party! I wanted a millennial theme and she really got into it! Everybody dressed for the theme, of course. Mom and I spent some time looking on the internet for outfit inspiration and shopping together. We decorated the house with bright balloons, hanging swirls, and table centerpieces that all had either I heart the 90’s, back to the 90’s, or some kind of retro image of the decade. I tried working on a playlist--Spotify has too many nineties themed ones!--until I thought about the NOW That’s What I Call Music CD collection Mom had in her things from Grandma’s. There were some pretty awesome bops! For one of our party activities, Mom taught us this game she played called M.A.S.H. The idea was to list several options of a particular category and your future is predicted like which crush you’d marry, how many kids you’d have or what job you’d have, and of course, whether you’d live in a mansion, apartment, shack, or house. I’m going to marry Harry Styles, have eight kids, be a kindergarten teacher, and live in a house in New York City! All that was really fun to do!  

Oct. 

Dear Diary,

Here we go again...I can’t decide between going as Cher Horowitz or one of the Spice Girls for Halloween. Mom would prefer I went as something a little more moderate, but I’ve seen her pictures dressed as Britney Spears in 1999! 

Nov 

Dear Diary,

I’ve had such a busy fall that I thought I’d finally have a chance to read Mom’s diaries over Thanksgiving break. Though in the spirit of the season and “thinking beyond myself”, Mom and I volunteered at local shelters and soup kitchens. 

Dec.

Dear Diary,

There’s a lot of things I can’t believe right now! I can’t believe that:

• It's the end of the year
• I kept a diary for a year
• I learned to read and write cursive--and I write with it very well now!
• I learned all about the millennial era
• I got a job and earned some money this summer. I’ve still been babysitting Liam and Olivia on days or weekends they need me. 
•  And I finally read Mom’s diaries!

There’s actually nothing terribly salacious but I haven’t been disappointed either. There were plenty of big yikes stuff but even I’m glad there wasn’t as much social media where it could all be seen! The majority of the time, she seems a lot like me: getting frustrated with her parents, getting in trouble, thinking about makeup, fashion, boys...Oh! Mom’s crushes as a teenager! I found them in her yearbooks and they were totally dope! Sometimes she worried about things going on in the world too, like school shootings, both World Trade Center bombings, and the Y2K scare. Something else interesting I found is that Mom’s own grandmother often fussed at her for using her slang--thanks again to Mr. Roberts for teaching it to us, btw. I guess I see where she gets it now. 

Mom is starting to seem pretty alright now! Even she had to learn what she’s teaching me now about thinking beyond myself. I hope I’m doing it as well as she does now.  She was proud that I had an idea to fill an Angel Tree gift! And I couldn’t not shop for the twins; I got them some Melissa & Doug sticker sets! They loved them!

I felt like giving her something special too. I started with a mug decorated with photos of us from my birthday this year. It didn’t feel like enough, so I got her a card. In the card, I added a note (in cursive), “Thanks for this year, Mom! I heart you like I heart the nineties!”  It's a bit cheesy I know, but I could tell it meant a lot to her.