This journal was an assignment for a "women in literature" class; the professor directed us to read and respond to the text we were reading at the time.
In hindsight, I can see my beginning as a feminist and as an advocate for peace. I remembered a detail– I’d put effort into setting up Draft Counseling Center on campus, resurrected when the registration requirement resumed in 1980.
I wondered if children could write poetry on an LCD screen.
I wrote about my mother, who worked so hard in her first term at Community College. She received a D+ on her first term paper. Mom did her homework at the kitchen table. The phone rang, the dog scratched to go out, J asks where his jeans are and B returns from a liaison with her boyfriend. The phone rings again, and dad asks a monetary question. Mom thinks about what to have for dinner, about tomorrow's errands, the dog's vet appointment, and her mind drifts back to the empty page. Her letters are rushed, I observed and thought to myself that she deserved a desk and a room of her own.
During a discussion of the Sapphic meter, my Latin teacher asked the class what female poets were called. “They are poets,'' I replied and elaborated that it was there was no use in using a diminutive term for those of the female gender. My classmates thought I was radical.