Every Tuesday night for five years, I wrote stories of my family in Stephanie Moore’s writing class. I’d no idea I was writing a memoir until I was done. When I finished, I sent drafts to my siblings and some friends. They loved it, so I ran it by Andy at my bookstore to see if I had a “book,” who said yes and referred me to a retired New York editor living in Marin.
She said, “Your writing is good. You portray characters well, you are quite funny, you have a good story, but your book is a mess. Who is the protagonist, you or your mother? Who is your audience? Whose story are you telling? You have five books in here with too much stuff and it’s confusing and rambling.”
I didn’t know how to respond. I’m a one-trick pony, so I stuck everything in there. I also write how my mind works, which is all over the map. I eliminated the genealogy and historical stories and tried to keep the storyline to my immediate family, of which I’m the youngest. Then I got the new version out. It passed the family test – until it didn’t – but that’s another story.
I posted the first few years of the memoir as a series here in the Sun, but my brother’s diary became too boring for some, so I recently switched to posting tales of my young grandchildren, which became too much for others. It’s hard to keep everyone happy, but I’m flexible, so I’ll switch it up.
My father was German and my mother was English, which explains everything. On my dad’s side, I’m a generation removed from hardworking, church-going, duty-bound dairy farmers. On my mother’s, I’m from freewheeling, drinking, smoking, gambling, hell-raising cattle ranchers with a couple of righteous Catholics thrown in for temperance. My maternal relatives had more fun; I can tell from their stories. Most of them didn’t see much value in being good, except my Grandma Nellie Chatfield, who believed that rectitude was required behavior, and the higher she stood on her moral ground, the lower her family descended. I take after Nellie and my father’s side of the family. How unfortunate for me and those around me, especially those who tend not to behave.
It’s no coincidence that my writing began when I was 53, the same age my mother was when she called it a day, nor that it took five years to write our chronicles, the same amount of time I lived with her as a kid. I suspect she’s had a hand in the whole thing, directing from the ethers, enjoying having her story told. She would have LOVED all the attention. My father would have cautioned me to keep much of what I penned behind closed doors. He was a private man of the generation that didn’t discuss affairs of the family, money or sex.
Dredging up my past was a cross between Groundhog Day and post-traumatic stress. It’s amazing how long the shelf life is on the defining moments that smack us as kids. They’re like Wonder Bread – always fresh. I made it through my childhood, then I lived through writing about it, which was at times as anxiety-producing as experiencing it the first time around. My right shoulder froze, then my left, my stomach wasn’t happy, nor was my sister, and I had three computer crashes. In the last one, I lost my motherboard. Now what are the odds of that? I didn’t even know a computer had a motherboard.
And, my mother is still with me; I’m continually bowled over how I recreate her in so many of my relationships. The bane of my existence and my greatest teacher, she is a gift that keeps on giving.
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