Praying for Catharsis
Last year, my daughter who is now 15, painted a sign and taped it above my desk. It said, “I, Christy Whitey-Tightey, will have written and published my memoir by January 1, 2017.” (Don’t ask about the whitey-tightey part. That is not my nickname.)
This followed at least a couple of years of her asking me, telling me, ordering me, instructing me, encouraging me, to write a memoir. Which has weird echoes of my father doing the same to my mother during my entire childhood, lamenting that she was wasting her talent.
When I was in my early teens, my dad started bringing home trade publications for writers for me, Writer’s Journal, Writer’s Digest. You see, I always wanted to be a writer too. And I did write a lot when I was a kid. I kept a journal steadily from fifth grade on. But something broke down along the way. I lost my confidence, if I ever had it. If I ever had it, it was gone early. Now it’s my job to get it back. But, that’s another story.
So, yes, my daughter has been encouraging me to write a memoir, and I’ve been reading books about writing memoirs for years, which she’s noticed. She also gives me memoirs that she buys used, urging me to read them, checking on my progress.
This year, she transferred from Theater to Literary Arts at her arts school, and the whole class is doing NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month — you write 50,000 words in a month). Naturally, she asked, told, ordered, instructed, urged me to follow suit. I said I would. I said, Okay.
I didn’t begin until November 5th. This and that came up. She grew increasingly anxious. She said, “Mom, tonight, sit in the living room with me, and let’s work on our novels together.”
I folded laundry for a while and then positioned myself at the head of the couch to begin my memoir while she typed away on hers at her desk in the corner of the living room. I began writing, and in a couple of hours, I had 4000 words. She came over and said, “I hate you.” She said I was lightning fast. I said, “Of course, it’s easier what I’m doing, this is my life, I don’t have to think about plot, character development, any of that, and you do.”
In that sense, it’s true that it’s easier. But I’m now discovering the way that it’s going to be harder. Much harder. I was writing about the insanely scary birthday parties my mother used to throw me when I was a child, and memories I didn’t realize I had came burbling to the surface.
Tears sprang to my eyes, and insight, realization dawned on me, and I began learning things about myself. Like, Jesus H. Christ, that was TERRIFYING. Far more terrifying than I even realized. What must that have felt like to a six year old?
That’s what they say, don’t they? That’s the reason I’ve known for years I need to write my memoir. Simply to try to sort myself out. It’s the only way. The mere act of putting it all down on paper makes memories come hurtling out of nowhere, bringing with them a flood of barely controllable emotion. But that’s not why we do it. We do it to claim our story and understand ourselves better. To find patterns and have empathy toward ourselves. To forgive, ourselves and others.
I’m in a cafe in Berkeley, and tears are springing to my eyes, and they overflow quickly, giving me no time to regain control. I realize now I’m going to have to be careful where I choose to write, or else give myself over to bawling in public for possibly months to come.
The truth is, since my mother died in 1995 of cihrrohsis, (why do I ALWAYS misspell that word, even though I’ve written, typed, and read it hundreds if not thousands of times? It means something.) Whatever, liver failure brought about by drinking like a fish every day of her adult life, I have not missed her. It’s true. What was there to miss? Very little.
The pain I felt at her funeral though was stark and dire. It’s the pain of never having had what could have been. The realization that now it is gone forever, something one had hoped for since birth, how could one not have hoped for the love of one’s mother since birth?
Writing about my childhood is bringing up wounds and sorrow, fear, pain, and the anxiety, the intense anxiety, I must have felt at that time. And you know what? It’s a good thing. I know it is. I think I’ve been waiting for years to do this. Maybe I wasn’t ready. Maybe I was just lazy.
It took my dear daughter’s support and belief in me to push me over the ledge. And I may still refuse to fall. I may still hang by my fingernails and then creep back up and sit myself stubbornly back on that ledge.
But the truth is, just by beginning, the edge is beginning to crumble. Rocks and pebbles and clods of earth are disrupted, and they’re rolling down in steadily increasing waves. It’s going to be hard to stay put.
