Every beginning is easy
“When I finally have time, I’ll write the work of my life,” the tax inspector said.
Twenty years later, a week after her retirement reception, she finally sits in front of her own screen. The venom is in the words that just won’t come. The tax returns, assessments and appeals keep haunting the caverns of her decades-long conditioned tax brain. For three long days, disconsolately, the empty screen stares at her from her desk. The sneaky blinking of the cursor is starting to get on her nerves. She’s already starting to long for the safety of the tax office, for the nurturing routine of checking tax returns, imposing assessments and preparing legal cases.
On day four, during a tea party, when they get fed up with the tea and have made way for a healthy glass of port, the friend from her long-gone girlhood breaks her impasse. “Do you remember,” the friend asks, “that we used to keep a diary?” She remembers it all too well.
Once on an evil day, her mother's curiosity had won out over her discretion. Compared to the seventeen-years-old fantasies in her diary, the Decameron was just as innocent as a Bert and Ernie bedtime story, while the revolution of the sixties and seventies had largely passed her mother. With a mental collapse imminent, Mama had tightened the screws. From now on, homework in the living room and home at 11 o'clock on Saturday evenings. Working for the Tax and Customs Administration had been an obvious choice. Salary at eighteen. Time to leave, Mom... Studying, housekeeping and her career had stored her diary deep down into her mental backroom. She would have had to start over anyway. She had not been able to save her notebook from the garbage container.
Her friend is still writing. Her diary has been moved to the computer. With a solid password. After all, her husband doesn’t need to know everything. Every time he tries to read it, she gets a beep on her phone. He seems to have given up lately. The sweetheart. “Just start,” says the friend. “Every beginning is easy. Just like in the old days. A quarter of an hour is enough. Arranging my paperwork, I just say. Or writing to my sister. Which is right, as I dedicate my diary to her.”
That evening, her writer’s block is over. The words come naturally. Her diary has been reopened. For now, the little things of the day. But she has only just begun, she now knows. Fifty unwritten years cry out to be immortalized. Fortunately, her husband likes fishing. You should do that more often, honey…