I am taking another memoir writing class, and this weeks’ writing assignment proves challenging. We are to first draw a timeline of our story, to identify a scene to put the story in motion, and to find the question that is trying to be answered. Then we ask ourselves what does the voice of now sound like? We will bring in a paragraph of that now voice beginning with “So….”
So: this is difficult for me because I had not taken the class because I want to write a memoir. I blog. I write stories of my life, hold them up to the light, put them down, kick them, pick them up again, pick at them, and mostly do my best to laugh at them out loud so that others might understand the world a little differently than they did before. I write audibly because that’s how I figure things out. I excelled in a classroom if I was able to sucker a fellow student or even better a whole study group into letting me lead them. I learned as I “taught” them the material. So my blog is me just figuring stuff out about myself under the guise of telling other about it.
Another reason that the prospect of writing a memoir perplexes me is that I have a ridiculous memory. There’s a whole category of life experiences that I simply do not record. I could tell you less than a dozen names of teachers I had loved in my 20+ years of schooling. Any recollection I might have of a childhood event has been supplemented by retellings by my parents, photo-albums of early 80s fashion, and a handful of diary entries I kept growing up.
This is not all bad. My spotty memory has proven to keep our book expenses low, because I love serial fiction. Because I can read the same book four or five times and not remember what happened, when the latest book in a series is published, I read the whole series again from the beginning. I may anticipate the latest book as much as the next person, but I won’t enjoy it unless I remind myself what preceded it. And, yes, I can read the first book for the tenth time and still go, “AHA! No Way?!” at the end.
This also worked well when television shows came out on DVD. This was well before Hulu and Netflix, and people would splurge $39.99 for a season on DVD, because you didn’t know when USA or PBS was going to air it again, and you just couldn’t wait. Take the X-files, simply one of the best TV shows ever. They released each season about a year apart. You would get Season One, spend the whole weekend eyes glomming on freak of the week excellence and kettle corn while pouring over a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle. Then you’d wait. And wait. For another year until Season Two was released. Then in my case, I’d spend one weekend glomming on Season One all over again. Maybe even the same jigsaw puzzle but definitely different kettle corn. The next weekend was dedicated to Season Two. If they’d made as many seasons of the X-Files as they have of the Simpsons this cycle could have proven impossible, but it was totally manageable with the X-Files, House, and the West Wing. Throw in the requisite BBC and PBS Tivo recordings, and my television watching needs were met. Of course, this was also before children vacuumed up every moment of spare time as well as more than a few jigsaw puzzle pieces.
All of that is to say, that I don’t remember many things. If it’s important, I need to write it down. I have written down many things in my life that I later mine for memories. I have journals from the ages of 13, 17-28 with a few entries from my early 30s. I have a short-lived blog from my late 30s documenting some of my infertility struggles. I have this blog that I began now a couple of years ago. I have a (now failing) activity tracker called Moves that has recorded my iPhone’s movements for the last several years. I often use it and Google calendar to remind myself of where I was or what I was doing on a particular day. And I have a diary of everything that I have from February 2014 to date. (I really do.)
What I don’t have are trivia-night handy memories. I couldn’t really tell you much about a single episode of the X-Files, even Season One that I have watched at least 11 times. I have a degree in English with honors because I could analyze a book or poem that I just read, but the few classes that required identification and memorization lowered my GPA enough to make me grumble. I could recite a speech that I’d worked on flawlessly as long as I was still working performing it. If I had to put it down for a month, there was little hope that I would recall it. I taught the same HTML introduction class for nine years. I remember HTML, but I could not tell you how I taught any of it.
I’ve thought a great deal on the quality of my memory. For a while in my twenties I attributed it to not wanting to remember my childhood. I think many people in their twenties do some version of blame therapy. As I grew older it was easier to “join the club” of sleep-deprived, hormone-addled parents who all claimed to also have no memory anymore. Presently, I find myself wondering if my memory and lack of spatial awareness are due to my aphantasia – the inability to visualize in your mind. So many of the mneumonic tricks that we’re taught are based on the loci method or the creating of a visual reference guide to find a memory. I’ve walked around through my head blind for the entirety of my life.
Oddly, what I do remember are decisions. I may not have any idea what happened on a given day, but if you say, that after some argument we decided to eat pizza, I might correct you and swear on my life that it was sushi. Mostly, because there was a negotiation. It’s the bifurcations of directions in life that I recall, usually vehemently. Whether I was a vegetarian at the time and what toppings were on the pizza would have to be put together with research.
In the past year, since taking pregabalin for pain, I’ve begun to shape things in my head. I can imagine shadows where it was only white noise before. It’s not graphical nor colorful, but there is some dimension. I can begin to loci my way through some memories. I focused for an hour last week on my grandparents’ house in Indiana and found it remarkable how much I could remember. Not events or people, just an empty static house, but to recall that there was a drawer with beads and bangles boggles my mind.
I do not know how long I will be able to retain this limited vision. Will it recede when the medication stops working for me? Will I live long enough to dredge through the murk and muck to find what should be remembered? And what should be remembered?
SO, maybe that is where I end this. Have I founded my question? What should be remembered? I will have to ask myself that in my assignment.