Memoirous

Riding my bike on Memorial Day I passed many cemeteries dressed for the day. Spruced up. All the old flowers gone, the lawns cut, the gravestones cleared of debris. Ready to receive visitors. That’s how we used to spend Memorial Day as a kid, visiting my grandmother’s grave in Kentucky—and a few others that I could not understand who they were in our lineage. The tradition started as a way to honor those fallen in past wars. Growing up World War II was still somewhat fresh. That was a good war. The Vietnam conflict, never properly recognized as a war, was complicated. We didn’t have any family that had died in war. Dad was a Navy veteran and my mother’s brother had also enlisted and a few other uncles who had married Mom’s sisters. Again, we didn’t need to honor them because they were still alive. Anyway, while visiting grandma’s grave—a person, by the way, that I didn’t feel a great connection with as she had passed when I was a toddler—I would explore the graveyard and read the...

As kids growing up we knew better than to disturb Mom when she was in the middle of one of her shows. Daytime TV was made up of soap operas and everyone had their favorite. General Hospital, All My Children, As the World Turns. I can still recall the opening jingle for The Guiding Light. As a kid, I thought all the stories seemed the same as far as melodrama. Someone was having an affair, someone was getting divorced, some young person was finding out their father/mother wasn’t who they thought. A character was usually being rushed to the hospital. My favorite was Dark Shadows and later All My Children, which came on after I got home from school. The point being: there was no Internet, no streaming, no binge-watching, you had to catch them at a certain time or you missed an important plot point. You might never learn WHY Janie needed an operation or WHY Margo was acting so cool to Don lately. Someone could need an appendectomy in one episode and by the next have bounced back. Somet...

Possibly because I’ve been reading the letters of poets Bernadette Mayer and Clark Coolidge (SEE link my last post, http://memoirouswrite.blogspot.com/2023/06/all-this-thinking-correspondence-of.html ) between the two, I’ve been dwelling in the past. Add to that I’m old. Not old old, but thumbing the pages of social security mail sent to me, encouraging me to sign up for Part B—or is it A, and is it Medicare or Medicaid, is it anything? What are we assured of? I’ve been dwelling in an existential crux, thinking about mortality, the passing of an age. Maybe family makes us/me think about all this. I remember after both my parents died within a span of months, going back to Ohio to clear out the dregs, the last of the last at their extended living facility/house in Canal Fulton. I thought it was no big deal. I had a car, gas money, the time—all the factors that have usually vexed me in getting away from my “normal” life in Chicago. My plan was to stay at the house and slowly unwind e...

Soon it will be time to pack up. It is easy (somewhat) to get rid of my stuff. There are rules ( see death-cleanse, Marie Kondo) such as if you haven’t worn it for 3 years or if you are waiting to fit into an article of clothing just get rid of it. All the kitchen gadgets, “Tupperware” (really just used yoghurt tubs), tiny bars of soap, the one-sock bag=all of this goes. The maybe pile takes more deliberation, yet when the rules are applied, it’s a no-brainer. But what about Mom’s wedding dress? Mike’s father’s old record collection? Grace’s books, the ones she read as well as the ones she wrote? Our mini-storage is nine-tenths memories, full of other people’s stuff that we cannot bring ourselves to get rid of. When my parents died I was not offered anything of worth from their estate. All of that was divided among the other siblings. It is a story of betrayal, yet an old story that is still being written. Instead I took the stuff no one else wanted. Who takes a 75-year old wed...

 I wrote a post or two ago about the Swedish death cleanse. As I’m sorting through cabinets, upper shelves, the office closet I’m making piles. There are as many piles as objects. Some are going straight to the garbage, while some can go anonymously to Salvation Army. Some I might try to sell or re-gift. There is a pile just called give-away—but then I wonder: Who wants my junk? Most of my friends are in the throes of doing the same thing. All those CDs, DVDs technology has erased the need for them. Millennials like the idea of records, but I gave away those long ago. All my Christmas ornaments are not appreciated as 1) my kid has money and an Amazon Prime account and will get her own and 2) besides she doesn’t celebrate a religious Christmas, so no angels, babe in a manger etc. It seems my treasures are someone else’s burden; they don’t want them either. And, then, there are Mom’s radish cups. The problem with these is that no one has the foggiest idea of what they are or wh...

I remember the first time I tasted Coca Cola. It was like liquid gold, measured as my sister and I split a bottle. The rule was whoever poured let the other one choose, that way no one got the upper hand, got more. It was the rare treat, maybe allowed once a week. My mother bought an 8-pack, the bottles redeemable the next time she groceried. No one touched Mom’s pop without asking. Of course she’d know if you’d snitched one; she kept track. Coke was on par with Mom’s nerve pills, the prescription she took to calm down and face life, or if not life then the daily chore of cooking and keeping house and raising four kids. It was a big deal to be granted one of Mom’s pop. A privilege. An invitation to a club. When it was gone, we’d have to wait until the next time she went to the super market. I think about this sometimes, like when I shop or see people loading the checkout with liters and cartons of pop. How it used to be the currency of love.

Over the weekend I read about a new genealogy website, actually a controversy brewing over a genealogy website that spends time analyzing the present—and perhaps, eerily, revealing too much information, about you. In the the article a woman did a people search and her name popped up, not unusual as she was an author, but the troubling part was that at this website the names of her children and their ages was listed. So this wasn’t so much about researching the past, but the present. She didn’t want that info out there. I’ve been off and on conducting research into my family. What I find on the web is both interesting and confusing. For example one bit of misinformation about my dad has snowballed into all the websites that collect and generate genealogical information. It started with a misprint in an on-line newspaper obituary and spread from there. He did not die in 2001, but in December of 2011. Yet, now and forever on the WWW he will have died in 2001. That date will carry ...

Souvenirs. Postcards. Today these words almost seem quaint. My husband and I once when traveling told our host in Slovenia that we would send him a postcard from our next destination. He seemed puzzled. You mean like an auntie or my grandmother? I guess it did seem rather old-fashioned—especially since we could easily send an email or upload a picture from our phone. Or any number of things. And easier too. Our next destination was Montenegro then Albania. How does one even ask for a stamp in Albanian? How reliable is postal service? Postcards in the US have been known to take decades. Mail sent from the front during World War II is still getting delivered . I LOVE postcards. I buy them and send them and appreciate getting them in the mail. I save them and tape them to the walls of my office or upon the door to the room we have reserved for couchsurfers . Going through my parents old photos I stumbled upon old postcards. It seems postcard writing runs in the ...

I’ve been going through old photographs, in preparation to send them to a digital scanning service. Finally all those old scallop-edged photos from my parents, from the 1950s, early 60s will be on a memory stick so that I can share them with my cousins, brothers and sisters. I was extremely hesitant when sending them off. What if they get lost in the mail? What if the company I decide to use are reckless? You can insure mail, but you cannot replace these old photos. Organizing by size, etc, the photos became like a flipbook of the past. A past not even always shared. Some of the photos I have no idea who is in them. Where were they taken? I only know they are important, and, perhaps, an older cousin will recognize something and we can build on that shared information. How many times has an old photo opened up doors you never even knew about? Often I wonder: What happens to all those digital pics we take on our cell phones? With SnapChat they will simply disappear, but what...

It is now July and I went into a card shop. July had always been a big month for birthdays. My mother was born July 11 th and my husband’s grandmother Thelma’s was July 13. My father and daughter share a birthday, July 24 th . My habit is to take a walk or bike in the afternoon so I walked south on Broadway and found a shop selling cards. Looking over all the humorous and sometimes erotic ones, I didn’t think they were quite right. Then there are the earnest ones that don’t seem to work either. I just need something which says I love you. I miss you. I wish you were here. I wish things could stay the same. Always. But most of my July birthdays are gone, and though my daughter lives quite close we don’t see each other as much as we used to. Her two jobs keep her busy. So I left empty-handed and walked home, dreaming that maybe I would just pick up the phone and give them a call. in memory of Fred Burkhart, would have been 74 on June 23rd ...

As a writer I’m always getting edited. Sometimes as a person I feel like people are trying to edit me. Life can be challenging—much like writing a short story. Last week I received an e-mail via this blog about an essay I wrote over two years ago about Lake Erie called Wild Waves Motel. Tim wanted to catch me up on some of the facts my piece left out or entirely screwed up. My memory was definitely terrible. Mainly he and I connected over the emotional touchpoints. What I loved most about his taking issue with my memoir flash was his take or perspective. As a kid when I got up early to wander down to the water—can you imagine today’s helicopter parents letting their kid wander down to the beach alone?!—I’d occasionally notice one or two dead fish washed up. He also remembered the dead fish, for his own reasons. Lake Erie back then was a little better than a cesspool. It would be a few more years of concentrated effort and a decided shift away from manufacturing and indust...

Mom’s Fruitcake Just the word “fruitcake” evokes nostalgia for some and crass jokes from others. It has been the focus of much ridicule by people especially of my generation. Today’s “kids” probably donn’t even know what one is. (Not sure if they’re lucky or not— see I’m still stuck in a fruitcake stereotype.) I’ll readily admit I’m not a fan of the fruitcake. Maybe it was the rum or the sheer density of the thing. An absolute brick. My mom’s fruitcake probably weighed 11 pounds once wrapped and ready to mail. I remember Dad lugging a couple of these to the post office every year about this time in order for it to arrive before Christmas. I couldn’t help wonder: won’t it be old, stale, inedible by then? I had no idea in my child’s imagination that these things are archival. They literally can last forever. For me now, with both Mom and Dad gone, the fruitcake is a memory touchstone. Mom would shop for the ingredients because none of it was stuff we had around the hous...

This time of year always stirs up a lot of memories. And one memory I had over Thanksgiving--actually people kept reminding me--was my mother's cranberry relish recipe. about 5 cups whole cranberries start with 1 cup sugar, but you'll definitely be adding more and 1 WHOLE orange, the whole thing I remember when I called Mom to ask for it--she made a point of saying, the whole orange. But I usually cut it up just to check for seeds and make sure that pimply thing on one end has been removed. Way back when, before what we now call a food processor, Mom had a huge kitchen contraption made out of die-cast metal and weighing about 50 lbs that did almost everything. It was like a wood chipper. A WHOLE orange was nothing for this baby. It could juice a rock. She had attachments she'd put on--like she used to make her own goose liver pâté .The thing actually had more attachments than her ElectroLux vacuum cleaner--another heavy-duty appliance. They were all made out of old ...

I taught a class this morning in Winnetka at the Off-Campus Writers Workshop (OCWW). I like the name of this group because even though it is “off-campus” it means that somewhere there is a university. It might be as close as I’ll get to being an adjunct (which, in some situations, is not saying so much). Anyway—it went well. We talked about where flash comes from and one of the things I mentioned was to-do lists. I create lists for just about everything. I’ve been keeping a list of things that remind me of Mom. My mother died about a year ago. I wasn’t exactly devastated when I got the phone call. She’d been in a state of fragile health for going on two months. My grief was mixed—relief and a sense of closure. Lately, though, I’ve been getting these sudden nudgings, memories provoked by the weirdest things. Here is a partial list: --excess handlotion Mom would routinely squirt too much out and then make me come over, hold open my hands, and then rub the excess lotion on ...

Lately I’ve taken to staying up late watching tsunami footage on YouTube. I’m sure there’s an explanation for this. It’s been almost 10 years since that infamous Boxing Day tsunami in 2004, and it’s been about 1 year since the passing of both my parents. What do these two separate events have to do with each other? Nothing, except loss, and trying to understand the universe. I sit in the dark, in my cave of sorrow, waiting for that fatal wave to wash over me. And there is nothing I can do about it. Not a single thing can change what happened. The carnage and broken lives left behind after the water receded is not quite the same as the betrayal I’ve encountered in the wake of Mom and Dad’s death. Yet here I am, asking myself why. Just like a tsunami, I was caught unaware. I didn’t see it coming—just like those unsuspecting tourists gatheried on the beaches of Phuket in Thailand. They came out to see a phenomena, the bay suddenly emptied of water. They had no way of knowing...

I was sharing just this morning with one of our residents at Friendly Towers about memoir. She read my contribution to a themed anthology on memoir ROLL , my essay “Sense of Smell.” This was a flash memoir that arose organically out of lilacs growing at a corner by the hospital on the way to the park—and then spiraled into 2 or 3 other memories. The resident commented that the piece she read seemed to have spiritual implications. How to respond? Not to get too abstract, I said that most memories stem perhaps from a physical jog (in the case of my essay I was literally jogging) ie a tangible reminder sparks the memory. But that most memories are seated in the heart. Consider the word “reminisce.” Yes, it means looking back, but it also implies nostalgia or longing. More than simple recall, certain aspects of remembering involve the emotional child, the hurt little girl, the angst-ridden teenager. I can remember exactly where I was when I was packed and ready to go to ca...

           Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad!

CLICK on to enlarge. My grandfather was born Harvey Myers October 19, 1979. This makes me feel old. Believe me I am the youngest of the youngest, so he was long gone by the time I was born. This is my grandmother who died in 1976. The above is the obituary for my maternal great-grandmother Margaret Snyder, born July 25, 1853. WOW! This is old. Ohio had only been a state for 50 years. Her maiden name was Potter. Her mother, my great, great grandmother's last name was Cain. Great-grandma Snyder died in 1932. Margaret Snyder

Some real old ones here. 1933 front: neighbor boy, Ann (Mom), back: Becky, Gwen, neighbor boy, Mart no date but Mom, the baby in front was born July 11, 1924, this pic probably 1925 left to right: Mart, Gwen, possibly Dick Myers?, Becky by baby Ann no date, back of pic identifies Gwen and Ann no date, back of pic identifies Gwen w/cat, Becky holding a cat no date, back of pic identifies as Becky no date, back identifies as Ann and Becky I believe out of all her sisters, Mom was the closest to Becky. In the pics where Mom is like 7 or 8 I think she looks so so so much like my sister Nancy.

My Uncle Bob Myers ran a heating and plumbing business in Upper Sandusky. It is my guess that these pics are from BEFORE the War. The one above says Aug 1941. P.S. If anyone is interested in reading more about Upper Sandusky--which by the way is south of the city of Sandusky (lower on the Sandusky River--go figure) then order a copy of my book Beyond Paradise where the main character Louise hails from Upper (what the locals call it!). For more info--see BOOKS MORE TO COME!