Memory, Memoir and ... Just a Bunch of Rambling

I realize I've gone longer than I want to without posting. Why? I have been working on a new post and I want to cut some of it, and I have needed to let it percolate a bit.

On the other hand, I always find it interesting reading about the process of writers or artists of any medium. I include the "practical" arts, making little distinction among artisans, artists, writers, what have you. I mean there are cooks/chefs who are artists in my book. ANY time engaging in the creative process is a  large and important part of a person's life, I feel artist is good generic word. I so often see that the process is very much the same. We are inspired to create and we start to act on that inspiration. Sometimes we get all tangled up and must start again. Or we must "edit" our finished product, or it can change along the way. Potters, quilters, cooks who stray from recipes, writers, painters, photographers, metalworkers, sculptors--you name it. I call it art.

I learn from the process as described by others.  I feel less alone. And I feel supported just by reading how other people wind up changing their focus smack in the middle of a project!

But, all this remembering is sure getting in the way of this memoir-writing stuff! It's a total pain in the hoo-hah, I can tell you.

As I started to look at my 300 pages (no exaggeration there) of memoir material and began to choose material where my mother and our relationship were more of a focus, well, then my dad leaped out and said, "GAWDAMMIT! I have something to say." He will not brook SHUT UP from anyone--it was true in life and quite clearly is true from the Great Beyond.

The Demon Was a Boy... Darn it all
And now? Much to my confusion and sometimes distress, the humanity of brother Jim is leaping into my brain. This is hard, yet necessary. It is not so much that I blocked those memories, but for years I had to focus on what I had blocked and simply put them aside.  Now HE won't shut up, either.

The theme broadens then, and I wonder what I want to say and I wonder whether my story will have meaning beyond an interesting read. I find it presumptuous to begin a project and feel that MY handling of life would be any kind of inspiration to follow. Yet what I still find miraculous is the mind that tucks so many wondrous memories in with the horrors, when I blocked out the pain so long ago. It's as if I wrapped the pain up in a whole lot of packing paper, but tucked prisms in there along with each horrific memory. And as I try to figure out where to put the one who was most monstrous, damn it all... turns out that, yes, he was just a baby once upon a time. And a small boy. And a ten-year-old who practically carried his little sister home one day, so she would not burn her bare foot on hot tar. And a teenager capable of showing me true tenderness.

And then, where two of the men start yelling, the third's not far behind.

Jack starts yelling at me, too. "Yo! Jetty. What about when we went to the lake with Feej and sang on the dock. And how I wouldn't let you go in the back room at The Depot when someone was singing up front. And what about when I thought I'd be a minister and you would not hang out the clothes ... and..." Yeah. Right. WhatEVER. So Jack had his dark side even when we were kids.

I look at all the stories, and, believe it or not, I have not told them all in here! I look at them and over and over what I see is a collection of people whose personalities themselves were rain forests of wondrous light and terrifying darkness.

I was the heroine of light, right? Not so much. Inconveniently, I remember my darkness as well.

And Our Heroine Had Her Demons, too  ... No Surprise, I'm Sure
When I was twelve, I was asked to baby sit for a teacher's little girl who was four. When I was there, I kept having images of pushing her down the stairs, of pushing her off a swing, of things that terrified me. I did not do anything to hurt her, but I told Mrs. Richardson that I felt I was too young to care for her little girl. She thanked me for my honesty. I cried through most of that night, believing I must be some sort of demon straight out of hell.  I refused to EVER baby sit through my teens. By my twenties, however, no such visions came to me in the presence of small children.

The lesson was there, though. And I had many demons of my own, biting at my heels. I was hell-bent to self-destruct off and on until at last I sought professional help. And I'm thinking that I cannot leave it out or the book will not state the truth. Truth, as opposed to the facts. Honesty without hiding, without leaving out what is not pretty about me, not just them. (I hate that. It is just so much nicer to stay aloof, to imply that I was pure. But that's also boring, so what the hell.)

So what is the thing I want to say? And do I need to know before I put it all together? The "books" say I should. The "experts" say I should be able to state my theme in a sentence or two--clearly, concisely.

And So It Goes...
And I say, probably I have to simply ramble and THEN see what route I wound up taking. AFTER that, the editing with a HATCHET will be needed.

Unless, of course, I change my mind!

There is something about the men in the house. The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost--those tee-shirts from Jim's girlfriend at the time. The women did not tend to speak up without risking the sarcasm of the Holy Ones. My mother took the brunt of the derision, and that is part of her pain, as well. My sister absented herself from most of the competitive bile from "the boys." She was judged by them, regardless.

I leaped in with both feet, mouth a-blaze, and held my own when I could. I learned to slice people to ribbons at an early age. It saved my skin in junior high, when I was so often the target at school.

Daddy said I came "out the chute going 'Oh, YEAH?' and never looked back." Interesting metaphor... Nevertheless he is right. And I have been struggling for a week with the new stuff that keeps gushing from deep inside, like a geyser from the middle of the sea.  And I am not sure but that this is the thing about it all.  My story reads like a novel. A sweeping southern saga with layer upon layer upon layer.

My mom told me I could NOT be a southern writer, which made me very angry. I was drawn to them. They could tell the scariest, most painful stories without ever losing the beauty of it all.

So I'll just dive in and see where it goes, for all my trying to find focus. I will allow the Carson McCullers and Harper Lee inside run wild.  Maybe there are two books in one. I have no clue. But you are all along for the ride, so ...

Now I will delete the old draft, because I've covered it all here! Undoubtedly, you'll read some of the story in here, but I know I have to keep some of it for the book now, not the blog. So I'll write about other things.

PS
I'm not looking for words of support or comfort. It isn't that. However,  if you all have some story of your process--preferably the part that makes you NUTS, that would be great! And by the way, long comments are ALWAYS welcome. And it can be all about you. That's fine with me. I learn from comments-- A LOT sometimes.