Mini Memoir Moment #3: Writing about the relatives

Marcia Moston

If you shake your family tree, you may be surprised at the nuts that fall out. People—both present and past—in your life are a rich source for your personal stories. Even if you are writing a straight genealogical account, try to find an incident, a particular characteristic, gesture, habit, or saying that captures some essence of a person and contributes to the heart, as well as the fact, of your story.

My father gave each of us kids a copy of his research into his family tree. I confess, many of the details were just that to me—long ago names with no meaningful point of contact other than we shared a bit of blood. But then I came upon a news clipping about one of those relatives and suddenly “real” people stepped off the page.

Turns out over a hundred years ago, some relatives—a poor, landless family—made their living ferrying firewood and goods in their canal boat around Lake Champlain. When they were caught in a terrible storm, they tried to take shelter at the nearest dock, but the caretaker refused to let them. He untied their boat, which subsequently crashed. They sued the millionaire owner and won. The case Ploof vs. Putnam is still used by law students today. Heartless as the caretaker was, he did have a reason for wanting to protect the owner’s property: the Ploofs were known as “Pirates of Lake Champlain” with a reputation of stealing from summer cottages up and down the lake.

Pirate thieves. Now that puts some life into an otherwise static name and face in a book. Although we are natural storytellers, so often when we put pen to pad, we write some dry, fact-filled piece which is about as interesting as an insurance contract. Here are a few suggestions and examples how to enliven the people who populate your stories:

1. Follow a general statement with a specific image or action: In describing himself, Bob Goff writes:

“I am always in a hurry. I put my socks on two at a time.”

 He later re-emphasizes this characteristic with an anecdote about impatiently waiting for a slow moving rental car attendant who Goff had seen “glaciers move faster than.”—Love Does

2. Use dialogue to reveal character. Look at how much we glean about Mary Karr’s mother and Mary’s childhood from this passage in The Liars' Club:

Not long before my mother died, the tile guy redoing her kitchen pried from the wall a tile with an unlikely round hole in it. He sat back on his knees and held the tile up so the sun through aged yellow curtains seemed to pierce the hole like a laser. He winked at my sister Lecia and me before turning to my gray-haired mother, now bent over her copy of Marcus Aurelius and a bowl of sinus-opening chili, and he quipped, “Now Miss Karr, this looks like a bullet hole.”

Lecia didn’t miss a beat, saying, “Mother, isn’t that where you shot at daddy?”

And Mother squinted up, slid her glasses down her patrician-looking nose and said, very blasé, “No, that’s where I shot at Larry.” She wheeled to point at another wall, adding, “Over there’s where I shot at your daddy.”

3. Choose descriptive elements that both paint a picture and contribute to character, as Rhoda Janzen does in her memoir The Mennonite in a Little Black Dress.

My mother, unlike my father, is not classically handsome. But she does enjoy good health. She is as buoyant as a lark on a summer’s morn. Nothing gets this woman down. She is the kind of mother who, when we were growing up, came singing into our bedrooms at 6:00 a.m., tunefully urging us to rise and shine and give God the glory, glory. And this was on Saturday. Upbeat she is. Glamorous she is not.

Besides being born Mennonite, which is usually its own beauty strike, my mother has no neck. When we were growing up, our mother’s head, sprouting directly from her shoulders like a friendly lettuce, became something of a family focus. We’d take every opportunity to thrust hats and baseball caps upon her, which made us all shriek with unconscionable laughter. Mom would laugh good-naturedly, but if we got too out of hand, she’d predict that our Loewen genes would eventually assert themselves.

But be careful what you write:

On her deathbed, Pat Conroy’s mother reportedly told him she found it hard to relax while dying because she knew he’d write down every word she said. (He did—Beach Music) Our stories naturally involve others—some living, some long gone. So what can or should we say about them?

Well, first, if it’s true, not some fabricated slant intended to hurt someone’s reputation, then you may be safe in what you say. Without getting into libel legalities here, I think the more important point is to ask yourself why you are including that particular point. Revenge or discredit doesn’t make good memoir. Then ask yourself if you are willing to live with yourself and accept the consequences of whatever it is you’ve chosen to say. You might show the person involved the part that concerns them, but in the end, it’s your story. Be truthful. Be responsible.

And then there’s this advice from writer Phillip Lopate:

1. Befriend only people who are too poor to hire lawyers to sue you.

2. If you plan to write about friendship, make lots of friends, because you are bound to lose a few.

3. For the same reason, try to come from a large family. 

Your turn:

1. Model Rhoda Janzen’s piece about her mother. You could start with “He/she is the kind of person who . . .  and then give an example to illustrate the statement.

2. Gestures, expressions, family sayings:

Make a list of sayings you heard growing up: Who said it? How did it reflect their beliefs or values?

Think about a particular person. How did/do they register different emotions—worry, joy, disapproval? Do they take their glasses off? Twitch their nose? Twirl a curl? Whistle?

3. Sketch a scene, an anecdote that illustrates your relationship with a person. For example, if your grandfather was a quiet, patient man, how did he express love to you? Take you fishing? Patiently teach you how to do something?

4. Think of someone who made an impact on you for better or for worse. Write about a specific incident. Try to capture the emotion of the moment without specifically naming it.

And as always, love to hear from you.

Blessings,

Marcia

photo credit: visualhunt

When you can't own the house on the hill, meet the person who does

Certainly I had no idea words C.S. Lewis used to describe his childhood in the big house his father built would end up being a quirky connection for me from the Lord.

I put Lewis’s sentence on the overhead screen: I am a product of long corridors, empty sunlit rooms, upstairs indoor silences . . . and told the participants in my memoir class to use it as a model to describe a place from their lives.

The room was quiet as a dozen or so heads bent over paper and iPads. As students took turns reading their pieces, we were transported to ocean beaches, arid deserts, exotic cities, and sad farewell places. One woman captured our attention with her nostalgic description of sunsets over long mountain views and generations of family spilling over sweeping lawns. It was so lovely, I asked her where she lived.

The scariest thing about memoir: hanging out the laundry

 Someone has approached me to write a book about a plan interrupted—actually, his plan to kill his mother’s murderer.  

 I’m interested for a couple of reasons. The first is because I love how God gets in the way of things, doesn’t sweat standing between a round of 9mm bullets and a man’s heart. Brings assassins to their knees in worship. 

That kind of story reminds me no heart is too hardened, too broken, or too bitter for Him to heal.

The second reason is personal. After writing one memoir, I’ve taken on a great deal of anxiety about having hung my laundry, right down to the seamless underwear, out there for all to see. In person I am cautious, reserved. I keep my distance for a while. (I think I figured out that even a fool seems wise if she keeps her mouth shut long before I read it in Scripture.) 

But when I write, this other person starts talking. She’s shameless, she tells all. Then she publishes it.

It’s ironic that I feel more comfortable about getting into someone else’s head—even one with murder on the mind—than I do about exposing my own story again. Now there are probably other things going on here, but one thing is for sure: good memoir isn’t about airing dirty laundry just for the sake of shocking the neighbors, but it is about being real, touching nerves, bravely hanging those bigger-than-you-like and dingier-than-you-wish undies right alongside the teeny frilly pair.

And then not hiding behind the sheets when someone comes by.

I see from the reviews on my book how much people enjoy seeing the humanness that wrestles with life but surrenders to God, the hidden weakness that stands strong in God’s strength. Because truth touches the stuff of life that belongs to us all.

So what stops us from openly sharing these thoughts—the struggles AND the joys with each other or even with God? What makes me fend off swarms of insecurity about what people will think now that the memoirist inside of me has spilled her mind?

Last Sunday our pastor asked everyone to write down what stops them from diving full-face into a surrendered life with the Lord. What blocks our living as though we really believed?  As the pastor read some of the responses: fear, self, carnal delights, and distrust that God would fail them, I ran down my own list. 

Why do I block that person who delights in early morning solitude with the Lord from living “joyfully free” in him in front of others?

Maybe that early morning person is related to the memoirist who boldly pens about faith and foibles.

Maybe I need to be living inside out.

photo credit: romerican via photo pin cc

What do you want to be?: And then there's God

I admit, I am envious of those of you who clearly know what your focus, life purpose, and (if a writer) platform is. You are the goal setters, outline makers, and Twitter collectors. You can settle down in your neighborhoods because you know where you want to live; you can write your stories because you know what to say, and you are comfortable with what you believe God has purposed you to do.

The pressure on me to join this group is becoming more intense because 1) I have written a published book for which I am somewhat responsible to market  2) I am becoming “full of days” and should figure this out sooner than later 3) My husband is putting his foot down about moving to another Renovation.

 I’m not looking for excuses, but I do want to offer those of you in my tribe the hope that gets me through when I can’t seem to find my spot: And then there’s God.

In most author interviews, people are asked, “When did you know you wanted to be a writer?” Many answer something about how they scribbled stories on napkins at McDonald’s and never dreamed 

about anything else. 

I thought about what my own response would be. Forever fond of stories, I think I considered writing early on, but the desire was more defined when we decided to move south. I envisioned sitting by my own pool and writing a book. About what? I had no idea, but it was a vivid image.

And so we moved south; I sat by my pool and wrote a book.

As a child, I don’t remember, being smiled at by friendly strangers and asked, “What’s your name?” followed by “How old are you?” The question I do remember is “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

Aware very early that I needed to be something, I chose my course. A fourth-grade lesson about ancient civilizations convinced me I would spend my life as an archeologist, unearthing hidden treasures—an idea dispelled in seventh-grade by the pictures in a Wonder Book on the universe, which convinced me to be an astronomer. (I waited about fifty years to see the faint return of Haley’s comet, which looked about as much like the illustration in the book as a hand-held sparkler to full-fledged fireworks display.)

And then I read a book about Albert Schweitzer in eight-grade that fixed my fickle fantasies. For the next six years I pictured being a missionary jungle doctor. (At the time I didn’t know too much about the missionary part, but God and good seemed worthy enough.)

I enrolled in a pre-med track at the University of Vermont. During my second year we went on a field trip to examine a corpse. It may have been a preserved body of some sort that the medical school had on hand, but all I remember was the hand with the perfectly formed nails sticking out from the sheet.

Fingernails were all I could attach to the science lesson that had once been someone’s daughter.

Still, my dream continued until the next semester when the pressures of college chemistry, delivered by an ancient man whose language I could never grasp, collided with the decades-old weight of “having to be something.” 

In one of those moments we call in writing memoir “pivotal events,” I ran into some recruiters for an organization called VISTA, signed up on the spot outside the college coffee shop, and walked away (for a few years).

I have been many things since that day, and am still plagued by the question "What do you want to be?" (Those of you with vision suggestions or psychiatrist friends can email separately!) But this I know and cling to: 

1) I have surrendered my life to Christ—my gifts, talents, and lackings. 

2) Whether I feel it or not, He is in charge. 

3) I will do my part—the next thing—as best as I can identify it, and trust Him to intersect at the “pivotal moments.”

With a heart of thanksgiving, I say, and then there’s’ God.

The boathouse: Memoir gives way to devotion

In keeping with the series I’m doing on memoir, I wanted to discuss how pictures, places,and  moments can stimulate memories. I was going to give an example of how this boat scene generated the memory of a rite-of-passage moment for me: the time when my father handed me a slender knife and took me around the back of the shed by the public boat landing.

“It’s time you learned to clean the fish you catch,” he said, and without further ado made a clean slit along the back of the head, detaching it from the body.

But that story wouldn’t come; I hear your collective sighs of relief.

What comes instead is an insistence of a reminder of His Presence—His undeniably real Presence in solitary places as well as stormy seas. Maybe someone needs it today.  Maybe just me.

***

I slipped inside the door of the boathouse and absorbed the cool quiet of the shadows. Boats purposed to carry fishermen, and kids, and lovers bumped gently against their moorings, silent beyond the reach of the day’s brilliance. For a moment, I stood, anchored in the well-being of a soul alone in the presence of the Lord.

A few minutes later, a car full with family, fishing gear, and large dog, pulled up. They, energetic with the prospect of an outing, transferred their loads from car to boat. The shadows scattered in the activity, and I turned to join my own husband and hyper pup.

The memory of the moment won’t leave me. I stare at the picture I took and try to hold in my hand the longing for oneness, the conviction to feel, not just say, that it is absolutely well with my soul, even when I’m frustrated, or annoyed, or fearful.

Two nights in a row I dream about being in little boats inadequate for the seas. In one dream, I’m thrown overboard into dark tumultuous waters. There is a man treading water with me, and although I see the danger, I am not afraid.

The next night, I dream the waves on each side are higher than the boat that flounders in the deep trough.  Again, there is a man with me, and although the situation looks frightful, I am concerned but not afraid.

Now I realize the stuff of dreams isn’t something to hang your theology on, nor fill your memoirs with, but two in a row with the same theme get my attention. My first thought is that since I am not consciously aware of any present fear or danger of wave-size magnitude, maybe the dreams are a warning.

This, of course, makes me fearful. My eyes fixed on the waves overlook the Presence.

Then, on Sunday, the pastor directs our attention to John 6. The part where Jesus withdraws to a solitary place to be alone with his Father.  

The part where He walks on a stormy night sea to reach his disciples who are straining against the waves.

The part where He says: “It is I; stop fearing.”

My boathouse, dreams, and sermon meld into a heart offering.

Lord, I pray you would fill this feeble faith with the knowledge of you, in my solitary places of worship, in the bustle of daylight, in the dark and danger- filled waves against which no one can stand in his own strength.  May I not doubt that I AM is with me.

Memoir: Stumbling into a story

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On my way to writing this blog I stumbled into another story. Sitting there in my inbox was an invitation to “tell your first car story” to Click and Clack the Tappet brothers, who host the outrageously funny radio talk show, Car Talk.

I just wanted to get the link to post here for you, but already the memory of our 1956 baby blue Ford Fairlane convertible was floating before my eyes. So I had to stop a while and join in their fun. You can too; check it out. I’m sure you’re already remembering your first car.

I tell you. It’s the little stuff that makes the stories.

You don’t have to waste time trying to come up with the spectacular or something that’s never been said because there really isn’t anything new under the sun. According to Anne Lamott, “Mark Twain said that Adam was the only man who, when he said a good thing, knew that nobody had said it before (Bird by Bird).

So what makes your story—your childhood, your loss, your adventure, or discovery inviting enough for someone to want to open the book?

Lots of people have had appalling childhoods (The Glass Castle) or lovely childhoods (An American Childhood) or suffered divorce and abandonment, or addiction, or the sudden death of a spouse (A Three Dog Life) and yet each one tells a whole new story.

Makes you marvel at the greatness of the Creator, doesn’t it—(presently) four billion differently shaped and outfitted people, four billion stories.

Whether you start out to craft a story with a specific theme, or you unfold a specific memory and discover the seed within, in the telling, you must get up close and personal. Draw your readers into your moment. No keeping them at arm’s length while you safely tell about the doctor who walked into the waiting room and told you your son was dying.  

You have to open up that wound as you looked into the doctor’s eyes and knew your life would never be the same. And we, your readers, will hold our breath with you as we look into his eyes also.

This is not to say memoir is one big Saturday night confessional. But for your first draft, at least, pull off the masks and write from your heart. “If something inside you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal.”—Anne Lamott

Next time we’ll explore What is it about? Marion Roach Smith helps to put this in perspective with the idea : “You are not the story. You are the illustration.” And by then I hope to have a list of recommended books for you to download.

Meanwhile, the best way to learn is to read good writing.

May the Lord bless the meditations of your heart and the works of your hands this week.

               

                             Smith, Marion Roach. The Memoir Project

                              http://marionroach.com/memoir-blog/

                             Lamott, Ann. Bird by Bird.

My Three Dog Night

The discussion question at the end of the hauntingly poignant memoir, Three Dog Life by Abigail Thomas asks, what is the coldest night you have survived? What “dogs” helped you through it? (Referring to the number of dogs an Aborigine slept with to keep warm)

My literal coldest was easy. A Chippewa reservation in northern Minnesota. I was a VISTA volunteer living in a two room shack on the edge of town. The stray that had taken up housekeeping with me, whimpered me awake. I tried to move my feet under the covers and realized they were slow and stiff with cold. The oil line to the stove in the corner had frozen or clogged or did whatever they sometimes do when the temperature is fifty or so below zero.

How long I had slept without heat I don’t know, but I remember the difficulty I had stuffing my feet into the felt-lined rubber boots we clogged around in. I pulled the fur-trimmed hood of the air force parka close around my face making a long snout to warm the air before breathing into my lungs, and stepped out into the night.

The snow underfoot squeaked as I lifted one heavy foot after the other to walk the mile to town where there was a twenty-four café that also served as the bus stop, police dispatch, and general news center. They must have served other things there too, because I know it wasn’t coffee they set before my frozen face when I stumbled in the door. The dog settled at my feet and we waited for morning and oil stove fix-it men.  

But my real three dog night involved neither temperature nor dogs. I was alone in a hospital, about to give birth to a child. A child conceived in a time of flower children and faith in false freedoms. A time when my good girl restraints were unfettered like a helium balloon escaped from a toddler’s arm.

Because I had no money, home, job, or tangible prospects for the future, my thought was to give this child to someone who did. But against all advice, I first wanted to see this person whose life I had so carelessly conceived. The doctor, more interested in showing his students an example of a “fine episiotomy” brushed off my concern with a cavalier, “Oh, there will be more beautiful babies.”

But what about this beautiful baby I wondered. “As it happened,” the ward for girls like me was being renovated, so I was given a private room. That night, in the slide projector of my mind, scenes from my life reeled by. I saw my recklessness, my self-centeredness, my selfishness contrasted against the beauty, value, and preciousness of a life. By morning, an idea had taken root, a conviction about what I was to decide.

It’s been many, many years since that night. A few Christmases back, I received a gift from the daughter of that child, now grown and special to my heart. The gift was a pencil, inscribed “To the world’s best grandma.”   

I thank the Lord often, that although I didn’t know Him that night back then, I know He was present, His eye on me as well as my little one, His heart toward us for a future and hope.