Chrolette Diary Entry

I was getting very excited for my husband, Henry, to return home after a few years, which felt like decades. He had left only two years after our marriage when I was 22 and he was 23. He decided to go into the army, and left fairly quickly because of the war we were in the middle of. He joined in the year of 1914, towards November. In the two years after our marriage, I had a little girl in November of 1913. We named her Charolette, the same name that was given to her father’s grandmother.
“Charolette Dear, please come to the kitchen.”
She was never old enough to meet her father and talk to him, but she was very fond of him when he would hold her. Charolette’s health fluctuated with the harsh Georgia winter, but ended up surviving.
“I wanted
to talk to you about your father. I think that you are old enough, just about to turn three. I just want to tell you what he was like.”
“Tell me, tell me!”
“Well, your father has dark hair, just like yours, about the color of chocolate.” “Tell me more!”
“I am, Charolette, you must be patient--” Mazie said with a few giggles. “He was tall, about two and a half times your height!” “Is he taller than you, Mama?”
“He was, by a small bit. He even has the same beautiful color of eyes that you do, a light and bright blue.” “Really? We are so much alike!”
“Yes Dear, you are, you remind me so much of him” Mazie was constantly reminded of her husband just by looking at her daughter every day. This might have been heartwarming at times, but others it was causing Mazie to become sad.
“That’s enough for today, I’ll tell you more later.”
“Awwwwww”
I spent most of my days caring for Charolette and thinking of how it must be for Henry.
The life that Charolette and I were living was probably so much better than his conditions were. We had everything we needed, a small home, one large bed, food for her and I, and a fireplace to keep us warm. Even though I was living well, I felt incomplete. I felt so alone, without Henry there. I tried my hardest to focus on now, but my mind was always going somewhere else. Days, weeks, had passed with the news that the war had been won. My Henry had still not returned home. A few more weeks, still nothing, still taking care of my sweet Charolette, and---the door rumbled. We were eating our lunch, at about five after twelve. I removed to napkin from my lap and walked to the door. I looked through the small hole in the wood, which revealed the portion of stones leading up to our doorway, and a tall man with dark hair--Henry. I had never swung open the door faster. He came in and sat at the table with us, and joined our meal. He spoke to Charolette, who was barely eating anything due to her asking so many questions. He always knew the answer to them, and they seemed to get along well together. “What were you gone for?” “Well, I was busy protecting you and
Mazie.” “How come you could be protecting us from so far away?” “I was stopping the um----bad guys----from getting here” “What were the bad guys going to do?” “They weren’t ever going to get here, but if they did, they would have tried to hurt us and our land, but we prevented all of that from happening, you see” “That’s quite neat! I never knew what you were ever doing surely over there” They continued with conversations that souded exactly like those, and I would chime in every once in a while. Most of our meals consisted of bread, potatoes, and other vegetables from our garden. We had been eating that for a long while, due to scarcity of some items. We still made it through, and the supplies like food and sugar steadily increased into what it used to be. I was very pleased with how much they had bonded, and how well they could repair their relationship, and ours, so quickly. Finally, we were a family again.