Page 79 - Reading and Writing 6

Listen and Read

My Diary

Writing in a diary is a really strange experience for someone like me, not only because
I’ve never written anything before, but also because it seems to me that, later on,
neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the musings of a thirteen-year-old
schoolgirl. Oh well, it doesn’t matter. I feel like writing, and I have an even greater need
to get all kinds of things off my chest.

“Paper has more patience than people.” I thought of this saying on one of those
days when I was feeling a little depressed and was sitting at home with my chin
in my hands, bored and listless, wondering whether to stay in or go out. I finally
stayed where I was, brooding. Yes, paper does have more patience, and since I’m not
planning to let anyone else read this stiff-backed notebook grandly referred to as a
‘diary,’ unless I should ever find a real friend, it probably won’t make a bit of difference.
Now I’m back to the point that prompted me to keep a diary in the first place: I don’t
have a friend.

Let me put it more clearly since no one will believe that a thirteen-year-old girl is
completely alone in the world. And I’m not. I have loving parents and a sixteen-
year-old sister, and there are about thirty people I can call friends. I have a throng of
admirers who can’t keep their adoring eyes off me and who consider me their role
model in the classroom.

I have a family, loving aunts, and a good home. No, on the surface I seem to have
everything, except my one true friend. All I think about when I’m with friends is having
a good time. I can’t bring myself to talk about anything but ordinary everyday things.
We don’t seem to be able to get any closer, and that’s the problem. Maybe it’s my
fault that we don’t confide in each other. In any case, that’s just how things are, and,
unfortunately, they’re not liable to change. This is why I’ve started this diary.
To enhance the image of this long-awaited friend in my imagination, I don’t want to
jot down the facts in this diary in the way that most people would do, but I want the
diary to be my friend, and I’m going to call this friend Kitty. I'd be better starting off
with a brief description of myself.

My name is Anne. My father, the most adorable father I’ve ever seen, married my
mother when he was thirty-six, and she was twenty-five. My sister, Margot, was born in
Frankfurt am Main in Germany in 1926. I was born on 12 June 1929. I lived in Frankfurt
until I was four. My father immigrated to Holland in 1933, when he became the
Managing Director of the Dutch Opekta Company, which manufactures products used
in making jam.

My mother, Edith, went with him to Holland in September, while Margot and I were
sent to Aachen to stay with our grandmother. Margot went to Holland in December,
and I followed in February, which delighted Margot so much.
I started right away at the Montessori nursery school. I stayed there until I was six,
at which time I started first grade. In sixth grade, my teacher was Mrs Kuperus, the
principal. At the end of the year, we were both in tears as we said a heartbreaking
farewell because I had to transfer to a new school, one which Margot used to go to.
After 1940, things were not so good any more. The war started, and the Germans
arrived in Holland. Then, our freedom disappeared.
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