Looking For Martin Eden: The Diaries of a Romantic Girl

By Roberta Wirth-Feeney

Physicists tell us that the past and future exist at the same time as the present. They are simply found in different parts of the universe's four-dimensional fabric called space-time. The author, utilizing her journals from the time she was ten, imagines traveling around in space-time.

Her baby boomer generation was the first generation where women on a large scale did the near-impossible juggling act of raising children while working outside the home. She travels in space-time to tell the story of her struggle to obtain a college education and a career while raising three children as a single mother. It is a story of liberation, spiritual epiphany, and how her hero, Jack London, shaped her life. Jack London, in his semibiography, Martin Eden, influenced not only her quest for adventure but also the professor she fell in love with.

He seemed familiar to her, with his unkempt curls, deep-set eyes, and his poor-boy, blue-collar upbringing. He was Martin Eden in the flesh. "I really want to be a writer," he told the class and, then, with a laugh, added, "I already have the drinking part down."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: May 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9798887313634

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Chapter 1: Childhood in the '60s in the Shadow of Notre Dame

Chapter 2: Our Family Moves to Minnesota

Chapter 3: High School Puppy Love

Chapter 4: The Professor

Chapter 5: Tess of the d'Urbervilles Redux

Chapter 6: Individuation and Liberation

Chapter 7: Spiritual Awakening

Chapter 8: Afterward

References

About the Author

cover.jpg

Looking For Martin Eden

The Diaries of a Romantic Girl

Roberta Wirth-Feeney

Copyright © 2023 Roberta Wirth-Feeney

All rights reserved

First Edition

Fulton Books

Meadville, PA

Published by Fulton Books 2023

ISBN 979-8-88731-362-7 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88731-363-4 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

For my parents, who always had my back.

Certain names have been changed to protect the innocent.

The experiences you had a year ago or ten years ago are just as real as the experiences you're having now, but they're just inaccessible because you are now in a different part of space-time.

—Bradford Skow (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Upon time and space are written the thoughts, the deeds, the activities of an entity. Hence, as it has been often called, the record is God's book of remembrance.

—Edgar Cayce

There is no true division between past and future. There is, rather, a single existence.

—Albert Einstein

Chapter 1

Childhood in the '60s in the Shadow of Notre Dame

Physicists tell us that the past and future exist at the same time as the present but in a different part of the universe's four-dimensional fabric called space-time. Space-time is the fourth dimension, with the other dimensions being height, width, and depth. Once the day is over, it doesn't disappear. It's all still there, even your past lives, if you believe in reincarnation.

I recently read through the fifty-some journals I've kept more or less regularly throughout my life. Reading the writings of when I was ten, sixteen, or twenty was a way I could move in space-time, moving back to a different section of the block-universe, the four-dimensional universe, to shine a light on experiences and thoughts I had long ago. I was the observer of my life's events, having a life review while still alive. I was often pulling off the scabs of healed wounds, feeling guilt and remorse for behavior long ago.

All I had to do to access the events of my life, which exist simultaneously yet don't allow revision, is to open the large cardboard box next to my nightstand and pick up a chronologically stacked black-speckled composition notebook with the year written on the cover.

The following selected entries are descriptive of my childhood, teen years, and young adulthood, with paradigm shifts away from caring about my parents' relationship to living independently and self-sufficiently, albeit unconventionally. I wanted adventure, romance, and a career. I never wanted to be married or continue to live in the town where I graduated from high school, within two miles of my parents.

When I was ten, I wrote a diary on lined notebook paper for the month of July 1967. The Vietnam War was raging; and protests on college campuses against the war and the draft, in particular, were occurring throughout the country. Amid all the riots, protests, sit-ins, and mutilations in the jungles of Vietnam shown nightly on the news, children were growing up in a small Indiana town known for the football team of its Catholic College. In the shadow of Notre Dame, obedient and well-cared-for children, whose generation came to be called the baby boomers, were relatively safe and untouched by the turbulent chaos surrounding them. And so, in reading my first diary, I begin to move around in the four-dimensional block of space-time and peer, as an observer and as the subject, into the events of my life.

July 3, 1967

Today I was awakened in the middle of a neat dream. I was dreaming that my best friend and next-door neighbor, Jan, and I took a bus alone to St. Paul, Minnesota, to visit my grandparents. They live within walking distance of Como Lake, a pretty little lake where you can go on boats and paddle around. There is a zoo and an enormous greenhouse filled with flowers and ferns next to the lake. I visit my grandparents every year when Dad and Mom drive my two sisters and me there in our station wagon, but in my dream, Jan and I were traveling alone.

I didn't go to church today after I read the Sunday comics. I fed our three poodles. Mother is in the poodle business and breeds and sells poodles. She trims them too.

It started out with Cuddles, a miniature white poodle Mom bought when I was in first grade. My older sister, Ellen, bought a silver poodle named Sherry, and my younger sister kept Fran, the son of Cuddles. Soon the house was filled with barking dogs and people coming to breed their dogs with Fran, get their poodle trimmed, or buy a puppy.

I sat in bed drawing and practicing my violin for half an hour. It looked like rain, so Mom told Ellen and Cindy to get out of our backyard pool.

Roberta, help me put the cover on the pool. It's going to rain.

I helped Mom put the cover on and ran to roll up the car windows. The temperature was only sixty-seven degrees. The wind started to blow hard.

After it rained, there was a beautiful rainbow. The rest of the evening, I ate peanut butter sandwiches and watched television. Tomorrow, Jayne Mansfield is going to be buried. Some people came over to breed their dogs with Fran. I went into my bedroom to read my new book, Treasure Island. Jan called me at 9:45 p.m., but Dad told her I was asleep. I went to bed at 10:00 p.m.

The next day, I called Jan and asked what she wanted last night. Are you going to the Fourth of July parade?

Boy, that's why you called? No, it's for babies.

I hung up. After lunch, I went on my bike to Tarkington School for Lifetime Sports Camp. The sport I'm taking now is golf. Golf is lots of fun. Mom wants to cut my hair. She doesn't cut my bangs straight, so I think I have the right to say no. I put curlers in it every night, and the curls make it look thicker. I'm the only one in my family with blond hair. Tomorrow is the Fourth of July and Mom's birthday. We don't even have a present for her. We don't even have a cake.

July 4, 1967

Dad woke me up at 9:15 a.m., and by 9:30 a.m., I was washed and dressed. I played ping-pong with Ellen on our ping-pong table in the family room. Dad came in the front door with a present after all—a hair dryer. He also bought sparklers and a flare. Mr. Hendrix invited us over to their house for a cookout. Dad works with Mr. Hendrix, and Mom is friends with Mrs. Hendrix. They have seven kids.

We stayed there for six hours. The Hendrixes have a pond in their yard with fish in it too. They have a bridge in their backyard over the pond that's fun to climb on.

Mr. Hendrix cooked hamburgers, and after we ate, we roasted marshmallows. I had four helpings of watermelon. Ellen said she'd wash the dishes. I dried them. Ellen started crying after Mr. Hendrix said she didn't wash dishes well enough. He picked up a fork she had just washed and looked closely at it. It still had potato salad on it.

You call this washed?

He was just teasing, but Ellen started crying. I didn't know what to say. We stopped doing the dishes and went into their living room and sat next to Mom on the couch. We left about ten minutes later. When we got home, we lit the sparklers. The flare lasted twenty minutes. My sweater has two small holes in it from the sparklers. Jan and her parents joined us with their sparklers.

Dad brought out his rifle and shot blanks into the air. I went into the house and brought out my violin. I played The Star-Spangled Banner. I don't know how I'm going to go to sleep tonight with firecrackers going off. I went to bed at 10:15 p.m. It was pretty cold today.

July 5, 1967

I got up at 8:55 a.m. Mom cut my hair this morning. At first, I cried and thought I was never going to show my hair again, but after I thought it over, I changed my attitude. It does look better now. Jan saw my hair and said she wants to cut her hair now.

Mom drove Ellen and me to Adams High School for orchestra class at 11:30 a.m. Our conductor, Mr. Lewis, didn't notice that I got my hair cut. Jan and I were going to bike to our school, Booth Tarkington, for a lifetime sports lesson when Ellen told us there wasn't any golf today. Somebody had stolen all the clubs.

Mom took Ellen to the beauty parlor to have her hair cut. Jan and I went along. Ellen got to sit in a swivel chair in front of a large mirror while the beautician washed, cut, and dried her hair. Ellen has a cute bob.

July 6, 1967

I went to orchestra class at 11:30 a.m. We played a few new songs. Tomorrow we're having spot checks. Jan got her hair cut like mine. Jan and I went across Hickory Road to visit the horse, Rusty. We hoped that we could ride him. There was a really nice boy riding him, and he showed us some tricks Rusty could do. When we left, he said, It was nice talking to you, and smiled.

July 7, 1967

I played my violin this morning for half an hour. Mom drove Ellen and me to Adams High School for orchestra. We had spot checks and I got the first chair. Boy, am I happy. I went to Lifetime Sports at 3:30 p.m. The golf clubs were returned, so we had golf today. Jan and I walked home from Booth Tarkington. When we were alone on the cinder path next to the field and no one was around, we sucked our thumbs. Of course, we're too old to suck our thumbs. Jan's dad put bad-tasting medicine on Jan's thumb to get her to stop, but she washed it off. After supper, I went outside and rode my bike with Ellen and Jan.

Dad is so happy working on his ship, the Cutty Sark. Our television went on the blink and doesn't work anymore, so Dad bought a model ship to make instead of watching TV. I have to go to Jan's house now to watch Batman.

July 9,