I found my hook for the memoir, inadvertently. I was going to put an entry on this blog about this Christmas, which was over the top in every wonderful way I could imagine. As I wrote it I began to think of my mom again and of this magical world she created for us, which I took to more than the others. I began thinking of our relationship through the years and it was hitting me in waves that I experienced the rain forest qualities of this extraordinary woman more than the rest.
I did not sugar coat her drinking and psychosis. She did not sugar coat her words to describe me, most especially, when she was drunk. I had the very best of her, when I was four through when I was about nine. Then I experienced her very worst.
And my mother was her worst at Thanksgiving, but her best at Christmas. Our spiritual celebration was secular, but we did not ignore our Christian roots entirely. I have had to defend my excesses at Christmas, when I was criticized as materialistic, silly, supersticious, or just completely impractical. I was tolerated sometimes by those who felt above such childishness. I shut up when other adults around me wanted to discontinue all adult gift-giving because, as we all know, Christmas is for children. I have listened to ministers advise us to think of others less fortunate, to remember "Christ's humble beginnings" and to put away crass materialism.
And inside, all along, a voice in me was clear and strong that told me to ignore those other voices. A voice that told me to celebrate to my soul's content, to enjoy, to give, to love, to decorate, to keep my head up without apology.
And there it was ... the hook that grabs me about my mom, about the gifts she gave and the pain she endured and spread sometimes, despite her sweeter voices. to understand my mother and me, to understand my family, one has to understand that my mother irrevokably proved the existence of elves. You cannot write our story without knowing this and without knowing that Santa was not even a jump from that, since he was no more than a really BIG elf himself. One has to understand that life in our home really was a rain forest: lush or rotting, with nothing in between ... and that the lushness did not exist without the rotting, no matter how much I might have wished that the rotten had not been quite so painful, nor quite so sick.
It was my family. When I look at those two holidays and the intervening times. ... when I look at the time between Christmas and our escape to our lake island, it is simply more of the same. Those summers were the vacation version of Christmas.
ANYWAY, I am excited because I have my framework. Perhaps I've not explained it well, but that isn't the point. You know how it feels when all the bits and pieces and flotsam and jetsam of stories fall together in a moment? That's how I feel.
So I had to run into my room here, and sit down and tell you all how excited I am! I have been working on the memoir, but it has been hard to find the stem, the TRUNK from which all branches stem. I know it was my mom at the center, but what about my mom? Her magic was at its core all along. And I was the one who received the most of that magic, or who was most tuned into it. I'm not sure which. Perhaps I will learn as I go along; more likely it really does not matter at all.
But I am back. And I'll be writing entries again more regularly. I've lost a few followers, which makes me a little sad, but it can't be helped. And I'm not in here for the numbers, after all. I am in here to practice my craft, to share it, to share my art ... and to have the fun of drinking in all of yours!
May we all have a wonderful 2012, and if we do not, may we continue to find comfort with the support that never seems to falter in this general area of the blogosphere!
Accidental Spring
"Accidental Spring" This began as the background for painting other papers, but became something else!
12 comments:
Jeannette,
I am glad you have found your frame work and look forward to reading your memoir. I will also be looking forward to your entries here. Some joyous, some very painful, but all very well written.
Have a happy New Year and a very good 2012.
Jeanette, how fortunate you are to have found your HOOK. I am still casting about, writing chapters in no particular order, unable to bring them together under one umbrella.
I wish you could tell me the secret. I hope it will happen to me too.
A happy and productive New Year to you.
yay! congrats! happy new year!
ps - can i assume you've read 'running with scissors' by augusten burroughs? enough to make me say a giant THANK YOU to myself, hahaha
Thank you all! Oh, yes, I have read 'Running with Scissors.' I think I have read about twenty or thirty memoirs, and half a dozen books on writing memoir.
I don't know why it all clicked, except that I started thinking of my mom and magic... and generosity of heart, and well. BAM. Things began to get organized for me.
Of course, now comes the WORK of it all, but I love the work, so that is good. Wouldn't it be wonderful to at last finish this book in 2012? Or, better yet, to publish it? But the main thing is to do it. Period.
Jeannette,
your enthusiasm is gorgeous - never mind the scissors, run with this.)
magic. something i wasn't presented with in my childhood, however, lately it seems to present itself daily.
all the best in this new year.
xo
erin
Oh YES! This is so exciting!
I really like how you write about your mother, the good and the bad.
I'm estranged from mine-by my choice-and am only now after 5 years,having little realizations about her and myself that are putting things in a better light. It's so lovely to read your experience and see it in balance and kindness.
Funny. I had trouble with Burroughs' "Running with Scissors." I recognize it as perhaps a brilliant book, but the voice did not touch me as it has others. Not that this matters at all, frankly. Sometimes, though, reading a voice so different from my own, about matters that actually hit VERY close to home makes me look harder at what I do. It makes me want to be sure that the voice I use is not borrowed.
I am not sure whether that made sense, but I'll leave it alone. I will leave the scissors on the table Erin!
The biggest release in going through the God-awful work of PTSD therapy and sticking with it until all was uncovered, looked at, and filed in appropriate mind-corners, was the love that was revealed. My mothers boundless love for me, and mine for her.
I did not know just how much of her I remembered, how much of her I absorbed into the fiber of my soul. And how much of her was already there, in me, waiting to fly free once the pain, the rage, the bile was gone.
Such a gift. Such a mother. Such a life. SOmetimes small lives can feel so very large.
I am thrilled for you, and for us that you have found your hook.
And grateful to hear that I am not alone in my reaction to Running with Scissors. It didn't tug on my heart strings or evoke recognition as many other memoirs (often less lauded and less well known) have done.
Your rainforest analogy on the other hand sings to me.
Thank you - I am so looking forward to both the memoir and your next post.
'Small lives can feel so very large' - true. Particularly when they are our own small lives, or those that interact with them.
It is a big deal to turn that kind of corner. Now you feel the wind at your back. Happy New Year, Jeannette.
Yes it is, Bruce. And as you've said to me, a good deal of this is already written, and if not online or in my document file, it is in my head.
But one still has to be careful with this feeling... I can get caught up in that and then NOT do the real work of it.
So I am taking much of this afternoon through tomorrow to get a jump start on all that. THere is a lot of reorganizing and deleting to do to get at the flow that I want. That the book needs. And yesterday I jotted some notes about peripheral stories that actually can and should fit into the overall structure, but that I have not written.
I have all of my mother's letters to my father during WW II. It was hard to read those, hearing a 25 year-old needy innocent, dreaming of mansions in Washington. And her frantic questions to my father about a woman in Australia--turned out she wasn't nuts. He lived with her.
But it is a gift of understanding that few children get. Perhaps most don't want it. I don't know. But I am glad I had it, as was my sister.
oops. I left out the part that points out that these stories helped me get a more rounded picture of my mother. What mattered to her in those years before reality set in; what their joint dreams were ... so many things that flesh out my ability to capture her with more than a daughter's view. So I need to go through them again and glean what matters to the book... including a WWII Christmas, where the dream of our gatherings was born.
smiles....very cool....best wishes on working that hook out...smiles.
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