Lost and found: A journal story

By Debra Illingworth Greene (August 2010)

Like she has every day since she was a child, Suzanne Gaulocher was recording her feelings in a journal during an especially eventful nine-month period in her life. When the journal was lost, she was devastated.

It was the year 2000, and Suzanne was living in Singapore, getting field experience for her master’s degree in anthropology. A single mom, Suzanne had brought along her five-year-old son, Ryley.

She started a new journal soon after arriving in Singapore. “I was being exposed to so much, so I was writing a lot,” she says.

On top of experiencing a new culture, Suzanne received word while in Singapore that a childhood friend had been in a terrible car accident. The friend was in a coma, and her young son was killed, “so I was journaling a lot about that,” Suzanne says.

Soon after the accident, Suzanne’s partner, Stefan, who had stayed behind in Corvallis, Ore., came for a visit. While he was there, the couple became engaged. “I remember so clearly being in a market eating mango cake by a fountain and we made it official at that moment,” she says. During Stefan’s visit, “the three of us traveled through Australia for two weeks and I was writing in the journal all the time.”

“After Stefan left I got really sad,” Suzanne recalls. “I think I was having culture shock and I was having headaches, probably from the MSG in the food. I was worried and having anxiety about the headaches. I was writing, writing, writing.”

When her friend started to come out of the coma, she asked for Suzanne. “I took it really seriously that someone was asking for me in a coma. Plus, I was anxious to be with Stefan and plan our wedding.” Suzanne left Singapore early – after five months rather than the six she had planned.

After getting back to the states, Suzanne and Ryley, along with Stefan, went to California to visit family. “My aunt snapped a photo of Stefan and me, and I put it in my journal.”

Just two weeks before the wedding, Suzanne found out she was pregnant – news that was, of course, recorded in the journal.  “The last entry of my journal was what I was going to say to Stefan at our wedding,” Suzanne says. “So basically, I wrote the vows, we got married, went on our honeymoon to Vancouver Island, and had my journal with me the whole time but didn’t write in it.”

After their honeymoon, the couple went to Portland to meet up with Stefan’s parents and Ryley at the circus. “Everything we had for our honeymoon was in our truck, and while we were at the circus it was broken into,” Suzanne explains. “Some things were taken – not our camera, but some of our bags. A lot of our clothes and my journal were in one of the bags that were taken.”

“I was devastated that they took that journal. I felt so violated,” she says. “This was a journal written in Singapore, traveling, single parenting, getting engaged and Blakes’ death.”

Suzanne didn’t expect she’d ever see the journal again, so she bought a new one, recording her thoughts about the lost journal.

But a woman in Portland noticed the journal on the ground next to a building on her way to work. “It was a pile of stuff — some of Ryley’s clothes and my journal. After seeing it for several days she decided to gather everything. She read my journal from cover to cover. She said she read it twice, all the way through,” Suzanne says.

“She got really interested in finding me. She didn’t know my last name, but she knew Ryley’s name, knew I was a student, and knew what I looked like. She knew I’d been a single mother. But she got the school wrong – she thought I was at the University of Oregon, but I was really at Oregon State University. She called the anthropology department at the University of Oregon and they had never heard of me.”

“She knew enough details to do some investigative work, but she got frustrated when she couldn’t find me at the university,” Suzanne continues. “So she called a reporter at the main newspaper in Eugene. And he ended up really intrigued with the story. He thought if he could publish a story I would read it and be reunited with my journal. But by chance they noticed the unusual spelling of Ryley’s name, so they found his birth announcement and my last name.”

The reporter called Suzanne late one evening. “It’s weird to receive a phone call that late, so I was leery when I answered the phone. He told me the story of the woman who found the journal and gave me her contact information. I couldn’t believe it. I was so happy. It felt like a miracle.”

Suzanne called the women the next morning. “I want to be an open person so it didn’t feel weird at all that she read it,” Suzanne says. “I was so flattered that this woman wouldn’t read it just once, but twice.”

“Ryley and I drove to her house in Portland,” Suzanne says. “We had coffee and cookies. She wanted to keep in touch with me because she knew me intimately. I liked her but didn’t know anything about her. So we didn’t keep in touch.”

“That was it. I ended up not finishing the journal. It felt like it was done even though I don’t believe in leaving pages blank.”

But she had started a new journal, and has completed many more since. “I’ve always written,” says Suzanne, who now lives in Madison, Wis. “I write like I breathe. I just have to. I almost always have my journal with me. I carry it in my backpack. I pretty much write every single day, even if it’s just someone else’s quote. It feels like a need. If I didn’t do it I would feel like there was a void in my life.”

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The Journal Scrapbook: A Home for Ephemera

By Debra Illingworth Greene (July 2010)

“Ephemera” is the new word at our house. It wasn’t part of our vocabulary until recently, but we learned it is the perfect definition for what regularly litters my daughter’s bedroom. Receipts, movie ticket stubs, strips of silly photos from the photo booth at the mall – all were scattered over the top of the dresser, her desk.

But now they have a home. My daughter found inspiration at Anthology, a creative haven in downtown Madison, Wis. (read more about Anthology here). Co-owner Laura Komai has documented several vacations with homemade journals. For a trip to San Francisco, Laura used the cover of a travel map and her own inserted pages. The book is filled with ephemera, photos and bits of paper containing her writing. After Lilian saw Laura’s journals, she had to make one. Afterall, Laura’s books are works of art filled with personal mementos – irresistible to a sentimental artist like my daughter.

Lilian, age 12, decided that her homemade journal would need tabs, so a $3 drugstore address book became the base of the book. A table of contents lists what is found behind each tab – with no regard to alphabetical order. A-B houses “Pictures of Lily.” C-D is where movie tickets get glued. E-F is titled “Random receipts.” And so on. Other sections include Lilian’s sketches, photos of her friends and her fledgling stamp collection. The last several tabs in the book are yet unclaimed, so there is room for more sections when the mood strikes. The original address book pages are covered with scrapbook paper before the items to display are added.

Says Lilian: “It’s a book of memories. I made it because I wanted to keep track of some of the things I do daily. It’s like a journal, but kind of a scrapbook.” And it is uniquely hers.

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The Daily Journal

One of the more popular types of journaling is the daily journal. What did you do each day? What did you think? Feel? Plan? Forget? What kind of weather did you have? How did someone else make you happy? Let you down? What are you reading? Watching? What are your goals? Dreams? Obstacles?
Write it all down here.

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Journaling Your Way Out of Writer’s Block

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