From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
A lot of ladies were here when I got home from school today. Older ladies! So I took my sewing to the parlor and sat on my little stool behind the piano. I love to hear the ladies talk when they forget that I am in the room. It is so different than when they remember. Mrs. Leon said that her husband doesn’t give her any peace at night and Mrs. Fox said she was lucky that it was only at night. Then after a while they all went into the dining room for a Kafe Klatch and then we had some homemade tarts and strudel from the bakery and lots of cookies That’s when they noticed me and made a fuss about nothing. I have always to promise Aunt Tillie or Grandmother that I won’t spoil my appetite for dinner and then I eat just what I like anyhow, as they are so busy with their friends they don’t really watch me and if I have a dress on with a pocket in it, I can slip in a few cookies and have a party with Sherry in my room after dinner.
In Hilda’s entry today, we again see how she devoloped a voice that at times seems very advanced for her age. In a house full of adults, she was often in the background soaking up every word being said. She may not have understood everything, but sensed when things being said (or unsaid) were important.
Her comments remind me of a summer I worked at a pre-school. One very confident 3-year old stood with her hands on her hips and responded to something she didn’t like by asserting: “That’s a bunch of baloney!” Even in 1978, that was an out-dated phrase, but it flowed easily from her mouth, obviously something she heard in her house on a regular basis. I am currently reading Vivian Gornick’s “Fierce Attachments, a memoir about her complicated relationship with her mother. She says: “Sometimes I think I was born saying, ‘That’s ridiculous.’ Gornick says it in response to just about any situation. As a mature adult, she runs into an old friend who hadn’t seen her since she was 13 who asks if she still says it. She does.