Memoirous

After losing both of my parents in a matter of 2 months, I'm now more than ever reflecting upon the transience of life and what remains when everything is done. The Tree of Life. The Tree of Life is a film by Terrence Malick whose earlier work has exhibited an ethereal quality--grass blowing in the wind, long takes of actors staring across empty fields, etc.  I'm not sure how to describe this movie. Is it a montage, a series of vignettes, moody, emotive? But more important than what it says are the questions the film forces us to ask: What is this about? Where's the story? --spoiler--it has no traditional storytelling arc. Tree of Life is flash memoir. Moments. Ordinary. Riven. Island. A mother's voice. A father's criticism. The look from a younger brother. Trust. Betrayal. It is about the threads of life that weave in and out of all of us. I couldn't stop thinking that the house in the film reminded me of my Aunt Jane's house in Upper Sandusky, Ohio...

These unremarkable moments, they come and go, then disappear into an abyss of moments, similar in their familiarity. Staring into pure nothingness. Yet, I am made up of these moments of the ordinary. The laundry, the rising and lying down, the steady rhythm. A day like any other day, one right after another. When sometimes all that gives it shape is a cup of good coffee, the #78 arriving soon after I cross the street, or a robo call from the library letting me know a book I requested is now in. If all we aspire to when writing memoir is the monumental or heroic, the turning point or plot twist, then we are likely to overlook the mundane, which is actually the flesh and bone of existence. Sitting around a table at Shotzy’s Bar in Upper Sandusky, Ohio after Mom’s graveside service we shared simple remembrances. Mom never had to write a resume or beef up an application. There were no bullets, no highlighting her accomplishments. Her life revolved around husband and home, and as noble ...

All this going back and forth to Ohio—I’m ready to be done, to go back to a normal routine. I need to eat a salad to make up for all the eating. A run would put some miles between the long drive there and back. Regular stuff like washing my hair and a long bath would help to transition. Back & forth. There & back. What is normal and what is routine about a life now changed, cleaved into separate parts? Before & after. I want to go back to before. Before Dad died surrounded by family and before Mom died alone in the hospital. Stop time. Make up for lost time. Rewind. Here & now. I’m left with this side, the rest of what is to come. Forever & ever.

Every family has one—the odd relative. My husband had a great uncle who because of seizures never worked. One day walking home from school my husband, a little boy, saw the man laid out on the lawn. He kept walking and never mentioned it to anyone, afraid his great uncle might possibly be dead. Back then society had a way of accommodating an idiosyncratic or oddball. They were often referred to politely as sick, though the illness they suffered had nothing to do with a three-day flu. Or their behavior was shrugged off as just “their way.” But the 40s and 50s was also the era that brought us One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest . In my book Orphan Girl I wrote about Marie James who narrated a hellish existence as a patient before escaping from an asylum in Wisconsin. I know the field of mental health has made progress since then. In the 1970s the pendulum swung the other direction. The doors to institutions were flung open and during the bleak Reagan years the majority of homeless on the...

  In college my mother and then later both my mom and dad worked at Wild Waves motel along the shores of Lake Erie at Mitiwanga, Ohio. Motel is perhaps a euphemism. By the time my parents started taking me and my brothers and sister up to the lake, the place was getting ragged around the edges. The newer duplex cottages were all right, except the beds sank in the middle and the lamps had the dimmest bulbs ever. Worst yet were the original cabins made out of logs. Yup, little log cabins which might sound quaint if they weren’t infested with wood spiders. The one-room cabin was roughly the size of a double bed—so very little walking space. You slept pretty damn close to those spidery walls. Wild Waves had definitely seen better days. Situated between Vermilion and Huron along Route 6, Wild Waves at one time sported a dining room where guests could get their lunch or dinner, tennis courts, and a fine sand beach. There was also shuffleboard and a pingpong table constructed ...