1942 - A Good Year For Marriage

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A few years after my father's death in January 2000, my brother found a diary of my mother's which dad had looked after in the 17 years since her death. My brother photocopied the diary for me. It was written in a soft-covered exercise book called "The Croxley Manuscript Book" and she had inscribed, in bold letters, "1942" on the top left hand edge of the cover. At the bottom right there was space for name and subject. She had written "N. Smith" in her beautiful handwriting and printed "DIARY : PRIVATE" underneath.

Paging through the daily entries felt a bit like prying into the life of someone I knew, yet did not know; it felt a bit rude; how would she feel if she knew I was reading her diary? I wonder if she ever peeked into my diaries? It was a long time since she'd died, and at least sixty years since she had written these notes, and it definitely didn't feel right. But each entry was so enchanting, written in her familiar script, I just couldn't stop.

In 1942 my mother was 23, turning 24 that June. A lot of her friends, and also friends of her siblings, were off in the army or navy or airforce, fighting for Great Britain in World War ll. She was a teacher at SACS Preparatory School (that's Elementary School in US English) and seemed to spend all her free time going to the movies which she called "flicks", or going to dances with groups of friends, always on the lookout for "Mr Right".

Mum knew my father then because she spent weekends with his parents. But she doesn't say how she met him or if she was in a relationship with him, or even if she aspired to be in one. And he doesn't appear in the diary until March. In the meantime, in the months leading up to his arrival, she is on the brink of despair. She received a letter from a sweetheart who told her not to wait for her. And now she is really "on the shelf." She is "doomed."

And then one day in March she writes an ecstatic entry about a letter from my dad who is in the airforce. He wrote to say he would be getting a weekend off soon, and would visit. She writes "I wish I knew how he felt about me. I'd marry him tomorrow if he asked me?"

My dad visits the next month. He declares his love for her and by the end of June they have announced their engagement. They marry on November 21st 1942 and live happily ever after.

Well, I seem to have skipped over the diary from April until November - perhaps there will be more in the next blog.

But, the diary and the year 1942 really circles back to when I met Tim in Cape Town in 1996, 54 years later. One evening we compared family notes and I learned that Tim's parents were married on the same day in 1942 that my mum and dad married. How about that for coincidence?

Perhaps it was destiny and we were meant to meet and marry, even though it took us til our fifties to get there!