On With Your Story

I thought about Charlotte this morning, as I passed my dining room table, picked up a book there, and carried it back to my office, where I am writing this. I was 21 when I met Charlotte, a middle-aged women with teenage children. With blond carefully set hair and a slightly plump figure in a crisply pressed white uniform, she looked more like the 1950s than the 1970s. In 1972, Charlotte and I were both training to be respiratory therapists in a program with about 15 or so other people at the UCLA Medical Center. A wife, mother, and homemaker, Charlotte was looking for her first paid work. A recent college graduate with no immediate job prospects, I was looking for a way to pay for graduate school.

Charlotte was an object of some derision to me and the half dozen other trainees my age because she undertook to mother us. She was always ready to instruct us on how to live properly. This did not go down well—we had too recently set out on our own and were proud of our independence. She struck us as smug and over-controlling — the kind of parent we would be glad to be free of. Charlotte once gave us this housekeeping solution to clutter: Whenever her kids or husband would go from one part of the house to another, they would always carry something with them that belonged there and put it away. This practical tip earned Charlotte some smirks and rolled eyes.

I don’t know if our derision was ever obvious to her, but I don’t see how she could have missed it. Nevertheless, she was unfailingly kind to everyone, especially to those of us who were almost young enough to be her children. And when I needed help, it was Charlotte who gave it. Our stipend for the full-time training program was $160 a month. My rent for a studio apartment was $103 a month. The remaining $57 didn’t cover a month’s food and other living expenses, so I applied for and received food stamps. In those days, you had to go in person to the welfare office to pick them up, between the hours of 9 AM and 5 PM–the same hours as the training program. How could I possibly get there? Charlotte. She offered to use her lunch break to drive me to the welfare office once a month.

Given our age difference, Charlotte is probably no longer living except in memories. I don’t remember Charlotte’s last name, but I remember her and what I learned, at times like today when I carried a book from one part of the house to another and put it away.

A friend recently shared with me the photo album his mother created shortly before dementia stole her memories. I remember meeting her only once; she gave a me recipe for a sour cream peach cobbler that I have made many times. The first page of the album is a handwritten list of the major milestones in her husband’s life, including his marriage to her in 1915. One of the last photos shows them together after 47 years of marriage. They are smiling and her head is inclined on his shoulder.  In the rest of the album, she is mostly present as a reflection. She is represented by the photos she selected, by the people she cared about. She, herself, is not in very many of the pictures. It’s as though you have to catch site of her quickly from the corner of your eye. Or you must be a detective and assemble the clues. For instance there is a clue to the woman behind the album in the arrangement of the photos. She put a photo of her son next to a photo of her husband, with the caption: “John’s first time formal 1969 and Bob’s last time formal 1991.”

When we make albums, they tend to be about the important people and places in our lives–not directly about us. People may make inferences about our loves and our values from what we select to show.

Tip #2: Tactics for getting and keeping your writing moving.

It’s a truth: the longer things take, the longer they take. One lesson I learned while writing for companies is that delays beget more delays. If you want to get something done, keep moving at all times.  I’ll give one example. Once I worked on a short brochure that took such a long and slow route through the multiple levels of approval (department, management, marketing, and legal) that by the time it was ready to print, the company had a new logo and a new location. So it was back to the drawing board for the brochure.

In writing a personal or family history or a memoir, the same thing can happen. The longer it takes, the greater the risk of never finishing. As life continues to happen, the project can be never-ending. Here are some practical ways you can keep the work from bogging down.

On October 7, the New York Times ran an article about First Lady Michelle Obama’s ancestry. Her great-great-great grandmother was a slave girl, who had been separated from her family when she was willed away as property. Her great-great-great grandfather, a white man. “In the annals of American slavery, this painful story would be utterly unremarkable, save for one reason,” said the news writer. That union started a family line that would eventually lead to the White House. “The newly discovered story of Mrs. Obama’s maternal ancestors. . . for the first time fully connects the first African-American first lady to the history of slavery, tracing their five-generation journey from bondage to a front-row seat to the presidency?

I read this article on my birthday, October 11. As people often do on birthdays, I was contemplating the accomplishments of my life and their value in the grand scheme of things. This story reminded me that unremarkable lives can ultimately have some remarkable effects. The stories of the way we live now can provide powerful lessons for the future if only we value them properly and take the time to tell them.

For a personal history aficionado, I am uncharacteristically anti mother’s day. On my more cynical days, I view it as a forced event for commercial purposes. My daughter always remembers the day, but I usually tell her to just skip it. And I mean it.

Of course, I like hearing from her. She sent me a greeting card this year with sweet notes from her and my soon-to-be son-in-law and enclosed a Starbucks gift card. She called me this morning, too. But it’s not like that TV commercial where mothers all over the world faint from shock when their grown children call. My daughter calls me every couple of days. And I see her every month or so, because she lives only 3 hours away by car. I am very fortunate, I know.

Instead of being Oscar the Grouchy Mom, I should welcome any occasion that reminds us to visit and listen to our families. That can be done without flower arrangements or champagne brunches or paper cards with printed sentiments. If my mother were alive today, this is what I would like to do.

When my brothers and I were children, my mother had a big book of wall paper samples. On the first of May, we would sit at the kitchen table with scissors and glue, and make little baskets from the wallpaper. In them we would put buttercups that we picked from the fields near our house. Then we’d put the baskets on the doorsteps of neighbors, ring the doorbell, and run away. If mom were alive today, I’d put a handmade May basket on her porch with herbs from my garden.

Thanks, mom, for that memory.