As I sort through memories of my May trip overseas, I find myself staring at pictures I took (usually wondering what I was thinking as I took it; so many blurry ones to choose from) and today this one caught my eye.
We were underground the old fort in Corfu-town and trying to figure out how to get back out when I put my head up and snapped this picture. I don’t think it was because it was a great shot or anything, but it was a WAY OUT ALIVE as we had just spotted a very large and scary looking spider scuttling across our path (and I had just slipped on a slippery step and caught myself at the last minute before cracking my head open) and I wanted to get back to light and out of the dungeon.
As I read memoir and work on writing memoir, these same feelings come to me. Especially when I’m inside various memories that I don’t care to dwell on too intimately. I just kinda slide right out of them, hastily scrawling some unoriginal universal truth over the top of what hurts. I want out and how!
Memoir is tough in that it forces me to think about where I was at the time of the incident and what my response was. Truthfully, I’m not a quick responder, well I wasn’t through most of my life anyway. I was a mediator, see. I was the middle between two sides. I always had that position in my family, in my church, among my closest friends. In the past few years, I’ve not had to be this mediator. I’m not the “leader” of a large group of people anymore (oldest sister, oldest girl in our church, oldest girl among my friends), as now I’m one of the group. No longer am I mediating or being the knowledgeable one; I was for probably twenty years.
My younger brother and sisters don’t need me to point the way anymore (I’m not sure they needed me as much as I thought they did all those years ago either) and that has been a learning experience in itself. I love being able to marvel at the brilliance of my sister who now teaches me about human resources and being an effective employee (I have a lot to learn!). I love hearing about how my other sister can spin magic in her Quickbooks accounts, keeping a business running and learning how to keep it running all at the same time! I didn’t teach either of them those things. I now learn from them.
So, memoirs show me a lot of stuff that I never sat down and thought about before. It’s a good thing! Five years ago I would have panicked at not being the mediator or the leader. Now, I shrug. Who cares? I don’t want that role any more anyway. It was good for a time, but now it’s so obsolete. I live in another state, and I’m in new roles: wife, employee, writer. In a few years, those roles will change again. That’s what life IS. Thank goodness, we don’t live static lives in which we don’t move an inch. Our lives move and boy do they ever!
What draws me to memoir is tracing in my own life how I’ve changed and how things have moved. And it reminds me that I’m drawn to stories of survival and light. I can’t read on and on about being underground; I need to know these people made it out . . . alive.
Off to work on some pieces today. Happy Tuesday!
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