THE DIARY OF A YOUNG GIRL : THE DEFINITIVE EDITION ... - Fidele

I can't, I simply can't forget that dream of Peter's cheek, when everything was so
good! Does he have the same longing? Is he just too shy to say he loves me? Why
does he want me near him so much? Oh, why doesn't he say something?
I've got to stop, I've got to be calm. I'll try to be strong again, and if I'm
patient, the rest will follow. But -- and this is the worst part -- I seem to be
chasing him. I'm always the one who has to go upstairs; he never comes to me. But
that's because of the rooms, and he understands why I object. Oh, I'm sure he
understands more than I think .
Yours, Anne M. Frank
MONDAY, APRIL 3, 1944
My dearest Kitty,
Contrary to my usual practice, I'm going to write you a detailed description of
the food situation, since it's become a matter of some difficulty and importance,
not only here in the Annex, but in all of Holland, all of Europe and even beyond.
In the twenty-one months we've lived here, we've been through a good many "food
cycles" -- you'll understand what that means in a moment. A "food cycle" is a
period in which we have only one particular dish or type of vegetable to eat. For
a long time we ate nothing but endive. Endive with sand, endive without sand,
endive with mashed potatoes, endive-and-mashed potato casserole. Then it was
spinach, followed by kohlrabi, salsify, cucumbers, tomatoes, sauerkraut, etc.,
etc.
It's not much fun when you have to eat, say, sauer- kraut every day for lunch and
dinner, but when you're hungry enough, you do a lot of things. Now, however, we're
going through the most delightful period so far, because there are no vegetables
at all.
Our weekly lunch menu consists of brown beans, split-pea soup, potatoes with
dumplings, potato kugel and, by the grace of God, turnip greens or rotten carrots,
and then it's back to brown beans. Because of the bread shortage, we eat potatoes
at every meal, starting with breakfast, but then we fry them a little. To make
soup we use brown beans, navy beans, potatoes, packages of vege- table soup,
packages of chicken soup and packages of bean soup. There are brown beans in
everything, including the bread. For dinner we always have potatoes with imitation
gravy and -- thank goodness we've still got it -- beet salad. I must tell you
about the dumplings. We make them with government-issue flour, water and yeast.
They're so gluey and tough that it feels as if you had rocks in your stomach, but
oh well!
The high point is our weekly slice of liverwurst, and the jam on our unbuttered
bread. But we're still alive, and much of the time it still tastes good too!
Yours, Anne M. Frank
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 5, 1944
My dearest Kitty,
For a long time now I didn't know why I was bothering to do any schoolwork. The
end of the war still seemed so far away, so unreal, like a fairy tale. If the war
isn't over by September, I won't go back to school, since I don't want to be two
years behind.