Memoir musings
Story is far older than the art of science and psychology, and will always be the elder in the equation no matter how much time passes. —Clarissa Pinkola Estes
I’ve been reading memoir. I’m in awe of anyone who can write memoir. How do they remember all that stuff? When I think back to my childhood or young adulthood, or five years ago – or last week – if I tried to write it down, I’d struggle to fill up a chapter, let alone a book.
I do remember certain events, obviously, but never the detail that the memoirists I’ve been reading lately seem to. They write as if they’re talking about yesterday. When I try to conjure up my early past, it’s hard to tell if what comes to mind is an actual memory or whether I’m remembering my mother’s version of what she’d remembered about it. Or if I’m remembering a scene captured on Dad’s old movie camera – like me tap-dancing on a picnic table at the Maroondah Dam when I was about seven.
How do you know whether you’re inventing a memory or actually recalling it? Maybe with memoir you’re allowed to do a bit of extrapolating and enhancement.
Sometimes when I can’t get off to sleep at night, I lie in bed and think of a memory. I put myself back in the scene, as if I’ve time-traveled; I try to picture every detail of the setting – colour of the walls, whether it was sunny or overcast, what I was wearing, what I was thinking, what I was feeling, what sounds I could hear, what I was holding in my hands. Not always, but every now and again it’s amazing how the sketchy charcoal smudges of a half-memory fill out into full Technicolor with sound and lights to boot.
Memoir is story. And ‘story’, as Robert Mckee reminds us, ‘is the currency of human contact’.
I grew up in a housing commission estate and all the houses in our street were the same. Some were mirror images of each other, and some might have had an extra bedroom. But they all had the same window frames, front doors, rough-hewn concrete walls, tap fittings, kitchen sinks, external laundry with the toilet opposite, wire front fence.
Our front fence was a gathering place for all the kids in our street. This is where we played kick to kick football and TV Stars, where we’d race the person out the front across the road and back if we guessed the right name. It was the starting line for races around the block on our bikes and scooters – always in the middle of the road, and always with risk riding on our backs like a monkey in a jockey’s cap, of meeting a car headlong as we rounded the final corner.
It was where I gave regular skipping lessons to the less coordinated and where we all mastered the art of hot pepper. And where I donned boxing gloves – my woollen mittens – and punched Susan Toohey in the stomach, to teach her a lesson for pushing me over.
It was where I learnt to ride a two-wheeler bike when I was too small to reach the pedals; the teenage boy across the road had leaned his bike against our fence and it rolled away when I couldn’t resist the temptation to sit on the seat. (I was to cry with joy when I finally received my own two-wheeler, at the age of eleven, several years later, captured by Dad on movie camera, my mother sobbing in sympathy beside me.)
Outside our front fence was the place where the man next door raised his family’s cat above his head and smashed it onto the pavement, after our fox terrier escaped and caught it, breaking its neck. And it was where we chalked our hopscotch game, between the bloodstains that etched the incident into the footpath and our memories.
Our front fence was the place where I broke up with the boy on the corner, when I took his hand in mine and held it for the first time, on the advice of my grandmother, who’d said it would be a fitting touch – a good parting gesture. He was thoroughly confused and so was I.
I remember my friend, Jeanette, had a dog named Blackie. One day, by our front gate, she put his paw in his mouth and squeezed it shut. His yelping haunted me for years. As did the protracted yelping of our fox terrier, another time, when I was at home on my own, and I picked him up to give him a cuddle, but he squirmed out of my arms and fell on his back. I thought I’d broken it.
Story.
It shapes, restores, entraps, frees, instills, enlarges, explains, undoes, enshrines, heals —
Maybe I could fill more pages than I thought—
(Susan Toohey and me on friendlier terms)
I’ve been reading memoir. I’m in awe of anyone who can write memoir. How do they remember all that stuff? When I think back to my childhood or young adulthood, or five years ago – or last week – if I tried to write it down, I’d struggle to fill up a chapter, let alone a book.
I do remember certain events, obviously, but never the detail that the memoirists I’ve been reading lately seem to. They write as if they’re talking about yesterday. When I try to conjure up my early past, it’s hard to tell if what comes to mind is an actual memory or whether I’m remembering my mother’s version of what she’d remembered about it. Or if I’m remembering a scene captured on Dad’s old movie camera – like me tap-dancing on a picnic table at the Maroondah Dam when I was about seven.
How do you know whether you’re inventing a memory or actually recalling it? Maybe with memoir you’re allowed to do a bit of extrapolating and enhancement.
Sometimes when I can’t get off to sleep at night, I lie in bed and think of a memory. I put myself back in the scene, as if I’ve time-traveled; I try to picture every detail of the setting – colour of the walls, whether it was sunny or overcast, what I was wearing, what I was thinking, what I was feeling, what sounds I could hear, what I was holding in my hands. Not always, but every now and again it’s amazing how the sketchy charcoal smudges of a half-memory fill out into full Technicolor with sound and lights to boot.
Memoir is story. And ‘story’, as Robert Mckee reminds us, ‘is the currency of human contact’.
I grew up in a housing commission estate and all the houses in our street were the same. Some were mirror images of each other, and some might have had an extra bedroom. But they all had the same window frames, front doors, rough-hewn concrete walls, tap fittings, kitchen sinks, external laundry with the toilet opposite, wire front fence.
Our front fence was a gathering place for all the kids in our street. This is where we played kick to kick football and TV Stars, where we’d race the person out the front across the road and back if we guessed the right name. It was the starting line for races around the block on our bikes and scooters – always in the middle of the road, and always with risk riding on our backs like a monkey in a jockey’s cap, of meeting a car headlong as we rounded the final corner.
It was where I gave regular skipping lessons to the less coordinated and where we all mastered the art of hot pepper. And where I donned boxing gloves – my woollen mittens – and punched Susan Toohey in the stomach, to teach her a lesson for pushing me over.
It was where I learnt to ride a two-wheeler bike when I was too small to reach the pedals; the teenage boy across the road had leaned his bike against our fence and it rolled away when I couldn’t resist the temptation to sit on the seat. (I was to cry with joy when I finally received my own two-wheeler, at the age of eleven, several years later, captured by Dad on movie camera, my mother sobbing in sympathy beside me.)
Outside our front fence was the place where the man next door raised his family’s cat above his head and smashed it onto the pavement, after our fox terrier escaped and caught it, breaking its neck. And it was where we chalked our hopscotch game, between the bloodstains that etched the incident into the footpath and our memories.
Our front fence was the place where I broke up with the boy on the corner, when I took his hand in mine and held it for the first time, on the advice of my grandmother, who’d said it would be a fitting touch – a good parting gesture. He was thoroughly confused and so was I.
I remember my friend, Jeanette, had a dog named Blackie. One day, by our front gate, she put his paw in his mouth and squeezed it shut. His yelping haunted me for years. As did the protracted yelping of our fox terrier, another time, when I was at home on my own, and I picked him up to give him a cuddle, but he squirmed out of my arms and fell on his back. I thought I’d broken it.
Story.
It shapes, restores, entraps, frees, instills, enlarges, explains, undoes, enshrines, heals —
Maybe I could fill more pages than I thought—
(Susan Toohey and me on friendlier terms)
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