Photoessay #1495 - Memoirist reunion

First, heard from Matt this morning. He lives in Hampton VA right in the middle of the hurricane's path. He writes that they experienced no damage or flooding, didn't even lose their power. Luckkkkyy! All we have to have here is some November windstorm and we lose our power.

Last night, I attended a reunion dinner for our certificate class from last year. Seven out of sixteen attended at Joyce's beautiful home on a golf course on a ridge on the way to the Cascade Mountains.

Wonderful time and though-provoking conversation generally following the major themes of the class. Including

a. The nature of what we remember and the validity of our memories. One provocative book we read was "Reality Hunger" by David Shields. Hard to explain exactly what this book (by design) (perhaps manifesto) but, at the end, his point was that there really is no distinction between fiction and non-fiction. It's all perceptions, memories, recollections which are colored by our own humanity and the passage of time. Has influenced me a lot. Not everybody in the class agreed. One member said that she did not accept that premise. She's taken the summer off from her job and has written a major part of a book about her family's experience spending a year in Latin America. I understand that my memories may differ from my children's, she says, but I'm certainly not going to make up anything that didn't happen.

b. The distinction between the narrator and the author. In our class, we were taught that that the writer in a first person narrative is presenting the view of the narrator not necessarily the author. They may be the same or different or slightly so. Another member talked about a book which she hopes to write about an inappropriate relationship she had with a mental health therapist. She wonders whether she (or any of us memoirists) really want to reveal such personal matters. How close does the story have to be to the narrator's experience? You could write a book about ethical boundary issues in therapy inspired by your experience but you don't have to make your personal experience the center of the book.

I can see that in my own writing. I never want to get too close to the narrator's personal feelings.

All interesting, very interesting. Even the morning after. Group picture taken in front of the hostess' living room.

Photoessay #1181 - Workshopping

Every session of my memoir class we 'workshop' 2-4 pieces of writing by class members. The entries are posted on the bulletin board a week in advance. Each class member is to read the piece and give constructive criticism. We also have an in class discussion led by Theo of approx 15 minutes apiece.

Here are SOME of the pieces from last night on my second piece. About my mother's passing last February. The Priscilla story was my piece last quarter. It's a lot of work to do this. I've experimented with different ways. I don't like writing longhand and I have a hard time reading others' comments written in longhand.

So I've been writing my comments in a separate text file, printing it out and contributing it. Everybody has to comment on everybody else's pieces and you must sign your name.

Theo first asks for general comments. This class of approx 20 women really really want to be involved so there's always a lot of discussion. Then Theo asks for suggestions and criticism is always mild and kind.

I haven't even tried to decipher these out yet. One thing that I've been hit on in both pieces is that it's not clear what the narrator is FEELING. And I can see that I don't want to expose or access this. So something to work on.

In fact, we have another smaller piece due right away that we will workshop in small groups. I posted it the other day. But, I can probably pump up the emotional content, as it was an emotional piece. Rumor control has it that the subject of that experience needs to be tagged.

Theo did mention that I had a dynamite close. Very strong high quality. I knew it was good. I had written it on a previous version and I knew I wanted to keep it.

Claire Ginsburgh feared being alone at the end. But she wasn't. Her children peacefully stayed with her. We had all the time in the world. Plenty of ski-jumpers still blasting down the mountains soaring into the air and figure-skaters spinning and spinning.

I used the winter olympics as a theme all the way through

Photoessay #1179 - Surprise!

Because of the snow, my GAB (Guided Autobiography group) and Memoir class met on the same day. I suggested 'Surprise!' as our next topic. As I walked out of Third Place Books, I decided that I would write about the huge surprise regarding pregnancy with Naomi.

That night, we got an assignment to do some mini-workshops, some shorter pieces. The first one due quite soon. I'll do the same piece for both.

WARNING: There are some OB/GYN references in this piece. So don't read it if it's going to make you uncomfortable.


Surprise!

I glumly sat in the clinic waiting room squirming in my uncomfortable chair barely glancing at the magazines with news about the Berlin wall falling and Roger Rabbit on the cover. My husband, Dennis was with me. They had told me to bring somebody to drive me home. My 3 kids, ages 3, 4, 7 were at my neighbors. I had been bleeding weird, I knew it wasn't a period as I generally was amenorrheic. Something just wasn't right.

We just had returned from a vacation to California. If you can call taking 3 little kids on a road trip in the heat of summer on a very limited budget a vacation. The doctor said that if the bleeding didn't stop, I needed to come in for a D&C. I was a little vague on what that meant but it sounded painful.

My husband's good about this sort of thing. He would do whatever I asked. For me. For any of the kids. Soon they called me in and they gave me one of those printed cotton gowns. You know the ones. You had to take everything off and put them on, never quite sure if they tied in front or back. Either way was lousy. Just part of the deal, I told myself.

The nurse did the preliminaries, the doctor came in. So, here we go. My feet were in the stirrups, the doctor's in place, her hands were raised, ready to go.

Something was on my mind. "Would this make a difference if I was pregnant?" I asked.

She immediately put down the instruments. "Yes" she replied, "It would make a big difference. Are you pregnant?"

"I dunno," I mumbled. And I didn't. But I just had this feeling.

She picked up the chart and scanned through it. "You did have a pregnancy test a few months ago and it and the results were negative,"

Yes, I did remember that. My husband and I spent a fair amount of time doing infertility treatments. Dennis, himself, is an adult adoptee and he felt good about adoption as an option for family building. We looked into it and our first two children, Danny and Susanna were infant placements from Korea. In some kind of crazy (so we hadn't really figured it out, ok?) turn of events I had unexpectantly become pregnant with Ilana right when Susanna turned a year old. And we were so busy with three little kids and, since I was still largely in denial about that whole first pregnancy, we really hadn't been paying attention to that birth control thing. Because it would never happen again.

But that spring, I had felt funny, the same way as when I was pregnant the first time. Since I didn't have periods, I couldn't use that as an indicator. I had even packed up the younger kids and gone to the neighborhood clinic for a blood test. Results: negative. No problem, I thought, I'm just out of my mind.

"I know, I know," I answered the doctor. "But my stomach is kind of sticking out."

"I'm thinking," said the doctor pausing "why don't we do another pregnancy test just to be sure."

"OK, yeah, I think that's a good idea", I answered beginning to feel a little worried. "My husband's already here and we already have a babysitter, so why not?"

So I peed in the cup and everybody went away leaving me alone in my freezing gown sitting on the hard metal table. The linoleum floor, the counter with medical supplies, the fan whirring.

After quite a while, the doctor (along with the nurse, the med tech and who knew who else) burst into the room. "LOOOK!!" she screeched, "Look at this!" and she put some round thing in front of my face. It had a 'plus sign' on it.

"What? What does it mean?" I didn't know what I was looking at.

"You're PREGNANT!" she shouted. "You were pregnant this whole time! I am SO glad that we found out!" Me too. Later I will realize that we were seconds away from an unintended second trimester abortion.

Somehow Dennis was in the room now. Everybody talking at once. I stared at the round pregnancy test. That's one thing I'd learned about having lots of kids, your affect went way down. You didn't even notice most things. Who had time? Who cared what you thought anyway?

The doctor considered "But how far along ARE you?"

"I must have been pregnant when I took that test. It doesn't make any sense for me to feel pregnant enough to take the test and then get pregnant later" In my world, this seemed logical.

"If that's true, then you would be more than 4 months along!" she sputtered. "And why are you bleeding?"

The doctor's now thinking referrals; ultrasound, high risk pregnancy, the works.
Medical issues aside, now I'm pregnant? Of course, I was pregnant before I walked into that clinic. Dennis and I were going to have a fourth child? We're stunned but happy maybe. On the way home, Dennis kept mumbling "Where can I get a car that seats 8?"

The following day I did go have the ultrasound. Indeed, I was in my second trimester. I could see the baby on the imaging machine.

Shocked, I talked to that tiny image. "I didn't know, baby! Really I didn't know you were even there!" I didn't want to think what would have happened if I hadn't stopped the process, don't EVEN go there.

Eventually they decided that I was likely bleeding from an abruption and I would either miscarry or not. Go home and rest, they said. Right, what about the three other children?? But I did and I delivered my youngest, Naomi 3 weeks early (though nobody really knew the due date, did they?) on December 16, 1989.

No first trimester problems for me. I just spaced the whole thing out.

I should have known though. I'm not that fond of peanut butter but during my first pregnancy I ate it by the spoonful. And recently that darn peanut butter looked so so good.

Photoessay #1098 - An outline of the Priscilla story

Ilana called me last night and BEGGED me to tell the story.

I've done two exercises from my writing book, laying out the story, one involving the 9 elements of the story and one structuring the story as desires and scenes. I think the first exercise is more rigorous but the second is a bit more complete.

A tragic story, the story really concerns Priscilla but I'm dragged in at every turn. I'm 18 at the time.

Remember this is a work IN PROGRESS. Picture again of Priscilla, I have very few.

Desire-I really want to leave home and go to UCSC, I'm happy to have the eccentric Priscilla to come with me also to be a UCSC student

Scene 1 – portrait of Priscilla as a high school extreme intentional outcast, though I don't know how she felt Priscilla so brilliant, tremendously talented. I KNOW that she will go on to do great things, no doubt in my mind. (1969)

Scene 2 – My father takes Priscilla and I to UCSC for a visit (spring 1970)

Desire – I'm at UCSC and I want to soak it all up, socially and academically.

Scene 3 – Crown College – something to show that both of us are getting along great (Fall 1970).

Scene 4 – Priscilla tutoring me in Honors Calculus. It's SO hard, I'm SO discouraged, I have a hard time getting it.

Scene 5 – I decided to take spelunking, talk Priscilla into it

Scene 6 – Priscilla LOVES spelunking (her fatal flaw), often approaches me to go with her. But I'm wondering why I ever wanted to go in dark holes in the ground, I'm more interested in having a boyfriend

Desire – I'm dismayed with Priscilla's obsession with spelunking

Scene 7 – Priscilla comes late at night, begs me (and boyfriend who has a car) to give her and some friends a ride to some caves that supposedly go all the way to the ocean. On the cement plant property in Davenport on the Pacific Coast north of Santa Cruz. It's got to be a secret. Sounds like a crazy idea to me but I'm young and stupid and she talks us into it. (Dec 1970)

Scene 8 – We go to cement plant property in the middle of a rainy windy dark night with a group of spelunkers. Driving around on those dark dirt roads in the pouring rain with the headlights off. Let the spelunkers out. Stuck in mud, almost drive off cliff

Desire – I'm more interested in college activities and a boyfriend

Scene 9 – Boyfriend and I decide we will make love, really do it. This decision has been discussed and on the table for awhile. We do. I spend the night with boyfriend (Jan 1971)

Scene 10 – I walk back to the my room the next morning, kind of blown away by the whole thing, need to think about this.

Scene 11 – When I get there (just across the quad, less than 1 minute walk), I find the place in turmoil. Something terrible has happened. Lots of loud voices and drama. I'm sucked in immediately, somehow I'm involved. It takes me awhile to start getting the picture. Priscilla has died in a spelunking accident. At that same site at the cement plant. Some kind of head injury accident. My two RAs on my floor were part of the party, they are hysterical, terrified, also afraid that they will be held culpable. I don't know what to do.

Desire – I just can't believe it! Priscilla??? I want to help

Note: As an adult, I know realize that there's a million things to do when somebody dies. I don't remember or was not aware of all the things that must have taken care of.

Scene 12 – The college calls me in and asks if I will greet and accompany her parents as they come to collect her things. Because I'm her friend. I've maybe met her parents once or twice. I agree

Scene 13 – The parents come and I walk around with them and help load her things. Somber. Terrible sad job. If there's a memorial, I never hear of it.

Desire – How to remember Priscilla

Scene 14 – Discussion of what kind of memorial at Crown. People who don't know her think it should be something about caving. No! I have some say. Spelunking was the death of her. I suggest some books about mathematics. That's what she really loved.

Scene 15 – For years, I keep thinking that I see Priscilla on the street. She's there just beyond my grasp.

Photoessay #1097 - The Dark Story

I'm taking this yearlong course at Univ of Washington Extensiion in Memoir Writing. It's just the right thing at the right time for me. I can devote tons of time to this and I'm loving it! I took the Guided Autobiography class this past summer; the teacher had taken this program and used some of the exercises and the ideas. But that's mostly fun, just to get you writing about your life among various themes. I loved the other women in the class, we're still getting together and reading our pieces every two weeks. Fun!

But this class takes a more serious tone, you work to put together something more comprehensive and complete. Plus learn serious writer stuff. We look at other writers and see how they do it. And wonder if you really have the nerve. 23 people in this class, all women, I'm among the oldest.

Going in, I had the idea of writing about UCSC 1970...did I have the nerve? Could I remember enough? Could I make it hang together and maybe rewrite some history while I was at it. I know, I KNOW those were extraordinary people at an extraordinary time.

On my teacher's blog, she suggested that her memoir students come to the class so inspired and excited (that's me), they think they know what they want to write about (yes, yes). And then, around week 6, the dark story emerges, the scary story that they know needs to be told. Do they have the courage? Why, again, did they start this anyway?

I thought, heavens, that won't happen to me. I started work on an exercise that Theo(and also Joanne, in the summer class) suggested. At home, I drew out a map of Crown College by memory (subsequently I found *3* more online). And started writing all I could remember about each site on the map (dining hall, gatehouse, central square, etc). Write write write, you do start remembering things. And then it hit me. The Dark Story. The story about Priscilla. Sex and death. Haven't thought about that story for years. Needs to be told. A tragedy (including a fatal flaw), a loss to the world.

So I write it up with the nine components of story from our book. Does it fit? Yes. I show that to a few of my class members with my burning question? Can I take the sex out? No! No! they all say. The sex has to stay. Geez. I tell Dennis. Oh well, my kids are all older that I was at the time. And who cares who was sleeping with who in 1971, most everybody in that class hadn't even been born yet!

So I will tell the Priscilla story. Likely on this blog.

Aside to Matt, one of my readers...you certainly remember this story.