A ritual with jelly donuts

I've been keeping a journal since 1977 when I was fifteen. I have dusty shelves full of ragged spiral-bound notebooks. It's interesting to look up what I wrote in my readerless, analog blog.

Tomorrow, July 1, is the birthday of an old pony who (and I consciously write who instead of that as I've been taught to use for horses,because she's important to my life) I call "my oldest daughter." I thought I'd find that old journal and post what I'd written on July 1, 1984 when my mare Singer gave birth to a filly.

But I couldn't find that particular journal. And then I remembered I'd burned some of the notebooks. Not in a fit of rage. I'd chosen some carefully to light ablaze in a ritual.

It was around the time my (first) divorce became final. I'd left my farmer husband almost a year before; it was right around (possible on the day of) what would have been our tenth anniversary. I was thirty-two, living with my four-year-old. It was the same year I bewgan to cut free from Christian Science. I read books on codependence and the symbolic nature of relationships. I hadn't yet started therapy. And I itched for a ceremony to break with my marriage, that man and the manipulative and codependent farm family I was also divorcing.

I decided I'd burn some journals. Ones where I gushed my most lovesick thoughts, cried over the most embarassing moments, and tamped down my deepest wishes so that I could become more like the wife that man thought he wanted.

Etc.

But I wanted something else to excise from my life, a symbol that summed up those ten years and the two or three before we were married. I came up with a box of jelly donuts.

Hold on--I have my reasons. I needed to symbolize the crucially satiating nature of sweets in our lives. The ice cream we ate every in excess single night. The chocolate chip (or peanut butter or oatmeal) cookies and chocolate cakes I baked, ditto. Not to mention my homemade brownies and cinnamon rolls.

If anything, his parents were worse, with their ice cream, cookies, pies and donuts at the ready. Mine were equally guilty. (Where do you you think I learned how to bake--or eat, for that matter?) Dessert followed two meals a day, often with chocolate sauce and cream whipped by hand on top of the Heavenly Hash. I survived high school not by stealing slugs from bottle in a liquor cabinet, but by sitting down in plain sight to polish off half of a half-gallon of coffee ice cream right out of the carton.

This was normal for fifteen years of my life. And I didn't want it to be.

I marched into Dunkin Donuts and requested a dozen jelly or creme-filled. When asked about raspberry versus chocolate-cream-filled-with-icing-and-sprinkles I said, "The sweeter the better. But it doesn't matter. I'm not going to eat them."

The kid behind the counter finished my order in a hurry.

At home I got out the kerosene. Doused a small stack of journals topped with a cardboard donut carrier, the cherry on top of the burn barrel. And tossed in a match.

It was satisfying. It felt like the earth-changing ritual I craved. It was much better than words on the document that arrived soon after. Yeah, it was a little weird. But also exactly right. I've never felt the urge to do it again. Not (sigh) during my second divorce. And sometimes, like tonight, I'm mildly annoyed with myself. I'd like to see what I really wrote on the day of the birth of my gorgeous spotted filly. But only mildly annoyed.

Hell--what do people do who keep their journals on computers??