WITHDRAWAL

For more than a year now one of my absolute favorite things has been to read installments of Erin's kid diary — a chronicle of her life from age 12 through her early college years.

And now that pleasure has come to an end. She posted the last entry yesterday.

Already I feel a big gaping hole where a daily amusement used to be. I wonder how long I'll automatically click on my "Kid Erin" link, only to realize as the page is loading that there will be nothing new there — no new crushes, no new travails, no new happiness, no new heartache, no new forks in the road that most girls travel from boy crazy to crazy boy.

I think those of us who have enjoyed the sticker-and-doodle-laden tableaux of her youth should encourage her to start another diary — to record in equal measure the wonders and commonplaces of her young adulthood and make it available in her dotage, like a Madame de Sevigny of central Kansas, a Pepys of the prairie.

We should at the very least thank her. She'd enjoy a toast, I'm sure, even though the attention would embarrass her.

So here's my little offering: Thanks for sharing the Awkward Years, Erin. It's been a treat to get a window into your past — and the past of others who were inspired to share by the example of your frankness. Mostly when we make friends with other adults all we ever know about their "life before" is a trickle of info here and there, mostly self-serving, mostly ill-remembered. We never get real-time accounts of the sort that enable us to say things like "Remember when you cried in the bathroom because Isrrael wouldn't dance with you?" and to almost feel that we were there.