Tag: memoir

A Closet of Journals

Stashed in my closet is a plastic bin overflowing with journals of scribbled emotions, recordings of events, travel notes. From adolescence up until a few years ago, I compulsively filled notebooks with thoughts, thrills, anxieties and dreams. It was as if by recording it, I might save my life.

College journal.

Early journals have the curvy writing of teenage angst, annoyance with my parents, first love, terrible heartbreak. College – more adventures in love, discovering and floundering on my own. Studying was eclipsed by my desire to travel the world, so for a few months at eighteen, I traveled alone through Europe, a lined notebook (now missing) my constant  companion.  The next batch of beat-up spirals are scrawls of years in Kentucky where I enjoyed the friendship and support of the community of fellow Studio 70 artists. Kyoto is next – bicycling through the narrow streets, hours sitting in gardens – dream-like musings. Returning to New York, I filled books with my life in the city, job at the United Nations.  Pages brim with romantic thrills followed by heartbreak. Then, the war in Croatia and Bosnia – meeting and marrying N, having Molly.  The joys of being a mother, the pain and confusion of living with addiction. All of it jotted into these books.

From today I will try to write every day as a way of taking time for myself, of touching/listening to something from within, as a way of organizing my time in a way that some ‘work’ is possible. I would love to write – to have the life of a writer. For this I think I need not only discipline and stories to tell but an ability to listen and to tell, of the inner life. So from today I will take at least half an hour every morning, if not more, to keep this little journal. I can do this now as Molly sleeps…  a way of not just getting swallowed by the daily chores of my life.

I wrote this when Molly was 4 months old. The rumbling of desire to write a book –  I imagined a love story about  meeting and marrying N in Sarajevo during the war, giving birth to Molly prematurely in Italy. I thought I had the elements for a good story — little did I know of  the drama yet to unfold.

I no longer keep a journal. No time? No inclination? Because I blog instead? Perhaps a little of each. I think the answer is in the closet — that bin of books. I will probably just burn them one day. Braver now and less inclined to keep secrets, I am ready to move beyond the closet – and write with the hope of being read.

About Grief

During the run of Joan Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking  in June, I was invited to write a guest post on grief for the Westport Country Playhouse’s blog. Here it is:

A story not so different than my own
June 27, 2012

My husband died when he was 48.

Photo by Leslie Datsis

The lurking question with a death so young is: How? Was he ill? An accident? We can’t help but rubberneck. Rebelling against the urge to bow to the stigma of shame associated with addiction and suicide, I usually spill my story pretty quickly. I tell them exactly what happened. “I’m so sorry,” is the usual wincing reaction. But often, there is recognition and relief because they have a story not so different from my own.

My daughter was 8 years old when it happened. She felt sure all of her classmate’s lived normal, happy lives. I assured her nobody gets to escape sadness, and brought her to The Den for Grieving Kids in Greenwich. There she gathered with other children who had lost their parents and I joined the surviving spouses. We found comfort in baring our raw hearts. Our own particulars seemed terrible to my daughter and I, but we learned those left behind always have painful and complicated feelings. Over the years of going to The Den, we received and, I like to think also gave, solace to our groups. As lonely as we sometimes felt, it helped knowing we were not alone.

Indeed, memoirs of grief outnumber even celebrity reveal-alls on bookstore shelves. Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking came out a year after my husband’s death. I recognized her language of grief, the trance-like telling of numbness and eventually, the glimmer of feeling again. I still read memoirs of loss compulsively, as if I might find an answer to the myriad of lingering questions I will always bear like a ragged scar. My life is full of joy but not a day passes without at least a passing shadow of memory.

But books like Didion’s or Nina Sankovitch’s elegantly written, Tolstoy and the Purple Chair, remind me that the survivor’s intimate knowledge of mortality is not an awful thing. I know to breathe deeply the air I share for some finite time with my loved ones. To pay attention, to cherish moments and do my best to never be blithe about leave-taking, even for sleep.

Admitting I am Powerless

The first of the 12-steps has always been a challenge for me, although I’ve had plenty of lessons. Like when my daughter was born 17 years ago last week — in the wrong country, almost 2 months early. You’d think that physically experiencing my powerlessness, I would have gotten it…

Mind you, there were things I might have done differently. (see, there I go!) I certainly should not have taken a helicopter to a UNICEF meeting 6 months into my pregnancy. Whipped through the sky by the Bora, a fierce wind that blows across the Adriatic in the spring, was like riding a roller coaster. It was the only time in my pregnancy I threw up. I felt her tightly wound up inside of me, my stomach taut. I imagined her holding on to the umbilical cord for dear life as we lurched through the air. Or perhaps it was descending the 17 flights of stairs from my office to the safety of the garage every time Serb shells were lobbed into Zagreb that spring. Maybe if I hadn’t done those things…

Or it may have been Molly’s first declaration of independence, claiming her right to Italian residency, like the smart girl she is. In spite of all our best laid plans, even though we had  plane tickets to England and an apartment rented in Oxford, and a midwife ready to deliver her. Molly’s name is instead, forever inked into the registry of births in an impossibly picturesque town in the heel of Italy. My little (just shy of 5 lbs) premie Italian.  I admit I cannot control a boundless love for her.

 

Remembering the Siege


A bitter anniversary: 20 years since the siege of Sarajevo began. For 4 years, my world revolved around that insane war. Terrible as it was, I felt then that I was at the center of the world. At first, I naively thought I might make a difference. Clicking compulsively through links on the internet, reading articles, watching videos marking this anniversary, more than once there are warnings that images might be too disturbing – you must click on them if you want to see them. I do not. I have enough disturbing images in my mind to last me forever. Still, I search, looking for something, no — for someone — surprised at how bereft I feel, remembering alone.

Books to Show Me the Way

I am reading two books that happened to be reviewed in this week’s New York Time’s Book Review. Birds of a Lesser Paradise: Stories by Megan Mayhew Bergman and Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed.  The reviews are good and I feel glad for the authors for the attention they are getting — as if they are  my friends. Isn’t this the kind of connection and loyalty a good book inspires?

Birds of a Lesser Paradise is a collection of exquisite short stories that I have been savoring for more than a month. Like expensive European chocolate I want to make last. Rather than race through, the book sits by my bed for times I am alert enough to fully indulge. The writing is gorgeous, full of sentences that demand to be re-read. Not to beat the food imagery to death, but lest you think I am talking about bon-bons, these stories are like salty-sweet concoctions. They are deep. Against the backdrop of fantastic landscapes of nature and animals, we glimpse lives of loss and loneliness. Thoughts of them linger long after the story is done, demanding time to fully resonate.  Polly Rosenwaike ends her review of Birds by saying she “… wished it would send us deeper into the woods, and more fiercely stalk the mysteries that elude us, disturb us, tear us apart.” Of course readers’ experiences vary — but I disagree with Polly. For me, it is the subtle echoing quality to these stories that gives them their power. They don’t bash you in the head – they are not fierce. And need not be. And there is also the sheer joy of reading such fine writing.

Dani Shapiro‘s review of Cheryl Strayed’s memoir Wild, about a grief-driven, remarkable journey of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail is an author’s dream. The review is thoughtful, quite moving — and makes me want to drop everything and just read. Forget the laundry, the rest of the Times and curl up with Wild for the rest of the day. I am not quite 20 pages into the book but am already struck by the honesty, the intelligent yet raw writing. And she certainly is fearless: would you head off alone on a 1,100 mile jaunt in the wilderness? The results are riveting. Dani Shapiro writes “”Wild” isn’t a concept-generated book, that is, one of those projects that began as a good, salable idea. Rather, it started out as an experience that was lived, digested and deeply understood. Only then was it fashioned into a book – one that is both a literary and human triumph.” When I read that I thought, “That’s what I want a reviewer to say about my book.”

Bravo to these writers — and thanks for the inspiration. I feel galvanized to go back to my revisions and more bravely bare my heart.

Parade Conjured Memories

As a child growing up in New York City we always went and sometimes, marched in the Saint Patrick’s Day parade. Wearing my Mary-Janes and double-breasted wool coat, I proudly strutted alongside my Grandfather as he walked, shoulder-to-shoulder with other tweed-cap wearing immigrants from County Cavan. My parents also used to bring us to anti-war marches — a little less festive than a parade.

Lately, in working on my memoir, I have been recalling these protests. Perhaps a key to how, armed with a Bachelors Degree in sculpture, a resume full of waitressing, and a few years of teaching English in Kyoto, I ended up with a job in a Bosnia during the war. What do you think? Here’s a (still raw) excerpt:

“Nights in my apartment in *Kiseljak were harder to bear as the winter dragged on into what should have been spring. For days on end, my cold apartment remained without electricity or water.  To stay warm I crawled into bed to read by candlelight, falling asleep early just to pass the time.  I missed Ian. These days, the telephone rarely worked so there was no comfort in our evening talks. Time apart became harder to bear since our weekend in Italy.

When the sun made a rare appearance in this mountain village, I felt the promise of spring, but nights remained long and frozen. Alone in the darkness, I listened to the terrifying grumble of tanks rolling through the street outside.

What the hell was I doing in this place?

Terrified my sweaty fingers might slip out of my father’s dry, soft hand, I squeezed harder, hoping he might notice my fear.  Shuffling along in a sea of adults protesting the Vietnam War on the streets of Manhattan, I kept my eyes on his profile against skyscrapers, sure I’d get lost in this crowd. I dared not tell him. I was 7.

My English teacher parents often brought us kids to marches and peace rallies. Personally, they followed the Irish-Catholic script of the 1950s – marrying at twenty and producing four children within 5 years. They sent us to Catholic school, happy to have others instill the fear of God in us. But socially and politically, they were proudly liberal and they encouraged us to speak up against injustice.

We lived in non-descript apartment buildings in the nicer parts of the Bronx. My brothers squeezed into one tiny bedroom and my older sister and I shared the other. At dinner, to avoid the cacophony of four children vying to be heard, my parents required we raise our hands when we wanted to speak. After dinner, we watched the Vietnam War on the news, full of gunfire and dead soldiers in black and white. The memory of anger, the shame and conviction that something must be done — daunting as that may be.

Idealism still pulses through my veins, but just as years ago, I hoped my distant father would lift me up safely above the terrifying anti-war crowd, I longed to be swept away out of the dark cruelty of this war.”

(Names have been changed to protect the not-so-innocent!) Anyway, not everyone loves a parade, do they?

*Kiseljak a Bosnian-Croat village about 20 miles outside of Sarajevo where I was based with UNPROFOR – the UN Peacekeeping Operation in Former Yugoslavia.

Reason to Get Up in the Morning

Today I pushed the always-set alarm to ‘off’ and went back to sleep — something I never do. I might hit ‘snooze’ for a few extra minutes, but not ‘off’. I didn’t sleep for too much longer – it’s now just 8 AM. But most Sunday mornings, I’ve already dropped Molly at her job, gone grocery shopping and walked Tetley. Left to my druthers, I like to rise early — but there has been something vacation-like about this week with Molly away. And with her off to college in less than 2 years, it’s a taste of what awaits me. And yet…

The longing to take care of someone besides myself, hit me in my late twenties. I had been living in Japan only a month or so.

A cold morning in Kyoto, curled up in the warmth of a futon on the sweet smelling tatami-matted front room in Sarah‘s little house on Marutamachi Street. Sarah was away. There was no place I needed to go. No reason for me to crawl out of bed and get up in this unheated, empty house. For breakfast I would need to dash down the frigid, creaking hall to the tiny kitchen, light the kerosene heater and hover over a cup of tea and wait for my breath to disappear as the room warmed, but why bother? No one was expecting me to show up. Very few people in this country even knew I existed. So I stayed under the covers listening to the sounds of the narrow, busy street. High pitched greetings of women neighbors, grinding gears of trucks, dings of bicycle bells, customers announcing their presence in the tofu shop across the street. Noises of other people’s busy lives. No one waited for me anywhere, nor expected anything of me. I burrowed deeper into my futon with a new ache: a longing to be needed.

As Molly becomes more independent, I moan less about having to drive her places and welcome those moments together. Soon she’ll have her license and she’ll just borrow the car. With another year of high school, she’ll still need some prodding and sometimes, bullying awake in the morning. But not for that much longer. My daily tasks as a mother are changing, disappearing — and I recall the emptiness of a cold Kyoto morning.

A Homecoming (Of Sorts)


This was the plan: I would have my baby in beautiful Cambridge, England. Not too far from N’s family in England, but most importantly, home to Chloe, a friend I’d made on the job at UNICEF-Croatia. A breast-feeding specialist as well as a mid-wife, I couldn’t imagine anyone else I’d rather have deliver my baby. There was no way I wanted to give birth in Zagreb where I was still living, especially after my obstetrician there prescribed tranquilizers for me, 6 months into my pregnancy. As a program officer for UNICEF I’d been in plenty of hospitals in Croatia and would prefer not to cross a maternity ward threshold as a mother-to-be.  Then, my husband landed a plum (and turned out, very temporary) job in Brindisi, Italy.  The baby’s due date was August 1. There was time.

In early June, I left Zagreb and joined N in the small town of Ostuni where he’d splurged on an incredible villa. I picked cherries and limes from the garden, filled vases with just-cut roses. I read and napped on the balcony, gazed at the fields of sunflowers and the shimmer of the Adriatic Sea in the distance. Seduced by the beauty and bliss of the place, I quizzed Chloe about what she thought about staying in Italy for the birth. She suggested a comparable choice might also be Sarajevo — still very much under siege. Southern Italian hospitals were poor and birthing attitudes very behind in terms of best practices for the mother.

So we stuck to our plans. I would depart for England in early July. There, I’d finally read the final chapter – about the 9th month – and face up to what I was in for. I’d bond with other pregnant women and learn to breathe and pant correctly. I’d eat fish and chips to my hearts content and revel in finally completely understanding everything said around me for the first time in almost 4 years.

Molly had other ideas: she was born almost 2 months early on June 13 in a tiny hospital in Ostuni. Whisked away from me to Brindisi Hospital, I barely glimpsed her, did not touch her. Chloe was right about the momma-care (it sucked) but not the neonatology department of Brindisi Hospital. Fancy facilities aren’t everything and the doctors and nurses who took care of (including singing to) my too-early Molly, were superb.

As I write, my daughter is back in Italy for 10 days with her high school’s Italian class. I mentally track her there – imagining what she is seeing, hearing, smelling, eating. I know she must be falling deeply in love with Italy. I can’t help but think she chose to be born there. The Puglia region is not on the school itinerary but Florence is – where I purchased a pregnancy kit that read “Si”. In Rome now, she probably sat on the Spanish steps, threw coins with her wishes, into the Trevi fountain. If the weather cooperates, she will visit Capri. We lost our camera on the boat back to Naples where her birth certificate and first passport were issued. Molly will cross the country by bus all the way back up to Venice, and every mile passed will pull her more deeply in love with this place of such rich beauty and spirit, this place where she first glimpsed the world. And in so many ways, this is a wish come true.

 

Working

My 16 year old daughter started her first job in the real world yesterday. I dropped her off and watched her walk through the dawn-lit, still empty parking lot to the small family-run cafe. Driving home I recalled my own first job at 16.

Nature’s Kitchen was a storefront Indian restaurant. It was just me and the cook, Singh – a gentle man with a young family back in India. He loved beer and the Average White Band. As soon as the last patron left, he cranked up a tape and we’d clean up to the blaring funky beat.  No table cloths on the 15 or so tables, just yellow paper placemat with scalloped edges, one set at every place. I remember this detail because for years I kept a little love note on a torn-off piece of placemat from an admirer I liked back. He probably scrawled it while slurping his mulligitawny soup. There were crushes, celebrities and crazy people who came in regularly. The glove lady was most memorable. She wore elbow length gloves and came back into the kitchen to boss Singh around. She wouldn’t place her order with me and only allowed him to bring her dishes out – probably because she had crowed at him to wash his hands first. She always finished her meal with the Indian pudding — a scary looking cream-of-wheat concoction  in a battered frying pan, kept warm but also drying out, at the back of the black stove. Thinking back, I’m surprised anything out of that kitchen met glove-lady’s clean neurosis.

Waitressing became my go-to job. It was easy to walk into a restaurant and get hired. Quick and cash, tips that back-in-the-day, did not get reported. I waitressed in restaurants, bars, country clubs and hotels for over ten years. My final job was at a fancy hotel chain as a unionized banquet waitress. I was relieved to no longer have to rattle off salad dressing choices or beers on tap. Sometimes I could go through the whole night only saying one word to the customers as I rounded each table with a heavy pot: “coffee?” Lifting the metal lids, balancing two plates on one arm, a the third in hand slid quietly in front of the diner, while at the next table, my colleagues did the same. It all felt so choreographed. Most nights, I enjoyed moving efficiently through the room in my little black polyester uniform with white ruffly apron, the night planned out – a beginning, middle and end around courses of a mass meal. Finally, worried I’d be doomed to this work for the rest of my life, I swore waitressing off and headed to Japan with the idea of learning how to make seiketei – Japanese rock gardens. But that’s another story.

I wonder how many of us finally land a way to make money that is really right for us? Something that gives us pleasure — or at least, does not defeat us body and soul? And for how long does it remain so? For now, I watch my daughters new pleasure at making bacon-egg sandwiches and coffee and hope she always finds a way.

Just a Story

The other day I ran into my friend’s mother, L. We’ve known each other so long and we have such a mutual affection, she is also my friend.  L is also a suicide widow — her youngest child was my daughter’s age when her husband killed himself. Her daughter and I became friends just after this happened and I recall the shadow of sadness that hovered over their home. But the other day when L and I stood in the bookstore parking lot chatting, she said: “It was 36 years ago. You know, now when I tell the story, I think ‘isn’t that terribly sad’ as if it were someone else”.  Time has turned an awful tragedy into a story she tells dispassionately.

For most of my life, I compulsively filled pages of my journal. I still have them all and sometimes crack a tattered notebook for a glimpse of what I was seeing and feeling during a certain time and place. But not much. I don’t really need to remember every joy or more likely, angst.  I recall wondering when I was in high school, why I felt the need to write things down, half-believing that if I did not record it, it didn’t really happen. Oh, if that were true! Now, when I think about writing — about N’s suicide, my bout with cancer, M’s premature birth — I realize for me, writing is a kind of alchemy.  As if by focusing on telling it, the once-unbearable loses the power to haunt me. The balm of time gets speeded up, a healing distance is created.  In telling the story, it becomes just a story. And perhaps, also remembrance.

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