Tag: Memoir

Truth and Facts

Today I read a moving blog post about a friendship. The author wrote about her friend with the truth of memory, not necessarily the facts.  Raising the Dead ‹ BREVITY’s Nonfiction Blog ‹ Reader — WordPress.com.  I read another insightful blog post about current political turmoil in France. Out My Window ‹ Reader — WordPress.com. Somehow those two posts melded, although completely different in intent, and made me think about my reality and my memories.

To me facts are incontrovertible, they may be proven false later, but they are the concrete reality that can be proven at this point in time. Facts are objective, the absolute of what we know now through all our senses. Truth is subjective. It is the reality of facts filtered through our experience. We are all human and, as humans, subject to our own prejudices and emotional knowledge. Truth is facts of the heart, our day-to-day understanding of what is going on around us. As memoir writers it is important, on your journey to the truth, not to let facts be stumbling stones. While facts may be important they are not the sum total of the experience or the lessons you learn along the way.

I have a friend, a brilliant sculptor, who exhibits regularly at art shows around the country. I’ve watched her, in an hour or two, turn big lumps of clay into miniature animals – wolves, horses – so realistic that you expect them to move toward you at any moment. A magical experience. Many years ago, I traveled with her to an art exhibition in Montana that included her work. During our time there meeting artists and enjoying the art world, we had an on-and-off weeklong discussion on religion. What is the soul, what is spirit, can God be proven, etc? The discussion continued as we packed up and left Great Falls. I was driving her van. Somewhere along the highway, we passed a gas station where a large dog was sitting close to the edge of the road. We are both dog lovers.

I interrupted our discussion with “What kind of dog was that?” as we zoomed by.

“Dog?” she replied, “What dog?”

“The one we just passed,” I answered.

“We didn’t pass a dog, we just went by a Circle K,” she said.

“Ah, you didn’t see the dog, but it was there.”

“You’re making it up to change the subject.”

At the next turnable place, I maneuvered the van across lanes of the lightly traveled highway in a most illegal U-turn and headed to the gas station possibly five miles back, hoping the dog hadn’t been run over or run away. Sure enough, the dog was still sitting by the road.

“There,” says I, “that dog.”

“Oh, I guess I didn’t see it. It looks like a shepherd mix to me.”

“And that was my point,” I said returning to our discussion about belief. “Your reality is that the dog didn’t exist because you didn’t experience it.  Your truth is different from my truth. My truth could be based on an illusion or on my five senses, but it is my truth. It is what I know to be true and the same goes for you. Had I not turned the van around, we would have totally different memories of the same experience.”

What would my essay be today if the dog left, disappearing around the side of the building or into its owner’s car? It would be of a dog I swear I saw but then disappeared and her story would be of a crazy friend who made a U-turn in the middle of a highway to show her a phantom dog. Both would be true.

I write fiction primarily. Fiction contains elements of a writer’s truth. To my many memoir writing friends I want to say, write YOUR truth. There are no video or audio recordings of your day-to-day activities or relationships and the memories they engender. Your memory IS the recording and it IS filtered through your experience. Write what is in your heart because that is the truth and that is more important and much more interesting than all the facts listed in order as years evolve. Don’t let the fears of others block your truth. They cannot convey your story and should not arbitrate it. They are bit players, you are the star. What you learned is of value to those who are not able to express their story in words. Your truth may inspire or may help someone, even in your family, understand their world better. Write your story as it is for you. Don’t wait to let someone else tell it because it will then only be your story filtered through their experience, their story of you. Be Brave.

Our book Telling Tales and Sharing Secrets includes essays from each author’s truth as well as fiction short stories and poetry.

The Blessings of Grandparents

I read a post, Nostalgia, by Cerebralintrovert yesterday (https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/134502934) and it happened to coincide with a short piece I recently wrote and presented at our library writers’ forum about my great-grandparents, Nellie Mae Hutchison and James Uriah Kasenberg. Children who have good memories of their grandparents are very lucky indeed in these days of scattered fractured families. I am very fortunate to have known all four grandparents well, plus three of my great-grandparents. Of course, I wish I had asked more questions of those wonderful people about their lives. All were born before the 20th century dawned, ordinary lives in extraordinary times including the aftermath of the civil war and reconstruction, two world wars, a worldwide depression, the 19th amendment, and consequential inventions such as the telephone, automobile, airplane, electricity in homes, typewriter, and camera.  Things we take for granted impacted their lives in new ways. I’m sure they had inciteful words to offer beyond, “don’t get too close to the creek when it’s runnin’ hard” or, “the dust will still be there tomorrow, so go have fun today” or, “good manners don’t cost a thing and are a gift you can give everyone.”

I spent many Sundays, holidays, and celebrations at the Kasenberg home in Wichita Kansas. We were blessed with a close family that even included some ex-wives of my great-uncle Jim (a crowd in itself). When I became an adult and tried sorting out the relationship of the grownups in our “family”, I discovered some were not really related. They were neighbors or church friends of my grandparents. They all rated the name Aunt or Uncle because they were always around at family gatherings.

Two of my bonus cousins were the daughters of my dad’s best high school friend. My grandparents lived next door to their grandparents in the little town of Anson, Kansas. I called their grandmother, Grandma Meyers, but as a child was never clear how she was MY grandmother too. (She made the BEST egg salad sandwiches.) Later in life, those two “cousins” became step-cousins when my dad’s sister, Nina Maurine, married their father, Mervin. Nina Maurine and Mervin had been an item in their country high school. But Nina Maurine fell madly in love and married a handsome local farmer (a Clark Gable lookalike) and became a rural housewife with three sons.  Mervin went on to college, married, had two daughters, and became a successful businessman. Decades passed. Mervin’s wife died. A few years later after Nina Maurine’s husband died, Mervin asked her out. The rest, as they say, is history. The old flame rekindled when they were in their 70s.

Oh, the stories I have about my family are priceless and were generously passed along to me. I’m very sure every family is endowed with stories and wisdom of generations, but we don’t seem obliged to pass them along. In other cultures, in distant times, before writing became universal, a designated person was told the family stories and given the assignment of orally passing them to the next generation. I mourn the loss of that cultural tradition. I applaud all biographers and memoir writers who strive to keep the links between generations alive. I’ve committed to telling my grandson our family stories as part of his birthright.

Where I Am From

In this hurly-burly of year-end and holidays, it is nice to take a breath and reflect. Who am I now? With each year and the myriad of experiences it brings, it is good to assess the changes that may have been of consequence. Births, deaths, marriages, jobs, illness can all impact our sense of self. What is at your core and how was it created?

As Sally posted on Wednesday, I also admire Amanda Le Rougetel’s blog What’s My Story from her blogsite, https://fiveyearsawriter.blogspot.com/. I did not rise to Amanda’s challenge to make my story in sixty-five words or less. However, it is a great way to describe yourself by encapsulating your experiences in a short poem. In light of Sally’s post “Who Am I”, I was reminded of a prompt Beth Alvarado gave us in a 2013 writing group.  Write a poem that describes where you are from. (I know, I know – don’t end a sentence with a preposition – cardinal error). In 1998 George Ella Lyon, a Kentucky poet, wrote a book titled Where I Am From that was used as a model in teaching memoir writing. Clues to who you are come directly from your roots and experiences. Those memories are touchstones that reconnect me deeply back to myself in chaotic times, physical or emotional. Each stanza describes places that formed my view of the world, places where I was at home or where I lived tenuously until I could move on, ending in Tucson where I belong. I was born in Kansas, spent summers over many years with grandparents in Colorado, lived forty years in Western Washington, and finally settled in the Southwest that combines the sunshine of Kansas, the mountains of Colorado, and the extraordinary high desert skies. These short phrases packed with images, smells, and sounds tell my story.

Where I Am From

I am from the traveling wind, wide blue skies, and waving wheat

Great-grandma’s raw onions by the supper plate

Great-grandpa’s coffee can spittoon beside his rocker

Refrigerator on the back porch and dirt fruit cellar

Fireflies on summer nights

I am from the deep dark earth, mountain highs

Fishing at Estes Park

Honeysuckle, snapdragons, and putting up the beans

A ringer on the washing machine

Cold fried chicken and white bread with butter and sugar

I am from endless gray skies,

Armies of black-green sentinel firs reaching to the clouds

City of a thousand cultures mingled like succulent odors of stew

The drizzle of cold, the smell of mold

Wind in the sails, islands in the fog

I am from the knife-edged mountain peaks with hidden crevices

That rise from the desert floor

Coyotes howling, javelina prowling

The soul-filling smell of the creosote bush after summer monsoons

The endless blue of sky and translucent flower of prickly pear

This is one of the poems published in our book, Telling Tales and Sharing Secrets; Chapter 4, page 285. I sincerely hope you are creating happy memories with family and friends during this holiday season.

Too Many Questions?

It’s hot enough to melt the metal handle on my purse, even if placed in the shade. That might be an exaggeration, but it borders on the truth. It’s July and my husband and I are staying with our son and his family in Hot Springs, South Dakota in an Airbnb apartment on the uppermost floor. We’ve hit the jackpot because it has air-conditioning in each window and the extra luxury of ceiling fans. My husband and son are golfing in the hundred-degree scorcher, Chloe’s mom is napping on the couch and I’m coloring with Chloe, our five-year-old granddaughter. The fan whips cool air above our heads. She tells me she can’t color with her best friend, Olivia at daycare. I ask her why? She tells me because they fight, but Olivia always apologizes. I ask Chloe if she apologizes to Olivia. Silence. I try again as we both color on the same picture. “Grandma,” she says, “stop asking questions!” I smile to myself.

I’ve been accused of the same crime before. Asking so many questions. Where do you live? What’s your dog’s name? What breed is she? Where did you go on your trip? Why did they move there? Did you work there long? It’s just I love peoples’ stories and a good memoir delights me almost more than peanut butter chocolate crust cheesecake with homemade whipped cream. 

Some writers struggle with writing a memoir. They wonder, Is it ho-hum? Is it self-indulgent? I’ve wondered about mine. Who in the world wants to read about me merrily driving a John Deere tractor, singing a Beach Boy’s song at the top of my lungs while plowing a field, then making a turn too wide and ripping out a barb-wired fence at the end of the field? Surely, others have done that. Who would care to read it? It’s that doubt that leaves my manuscript tucked away in a file for over twenty years. I know I need to muffle my critic’s voice inside, dust the manuscript off and believe my story is worth sharing with others.