I've been reading the dictionary this morning, its definitions of remember, among which are: 2 to bring back to mind by an effort; recollect, recall and 3 to bear in mind; keep in the memory, be careful not to forget.
When I was teaching I would tell my students that if they would start writing, if they would simply do the physical thing of putting pencil to paper or fingers to keyboard, then ideas and memories would come to their minds. I still believe that.
I might also have told them, certainly I thought it, that there was value in writing their memories so as to preserve them. Now I wonder, because in writing we condense; we simply have to, whether we have an audience in mind or whether we are our only audience (and I always hope someone besides me will read what I write).
"All writing is written to be read," I also told them. So if I'm writing my memories for someone to read, I may want them to have all the details, but I can't expect them to want to read them all, and so I condense, trying to put on paper the most important or the most captivating. And I may be as true to the truth as I can be, but certain parts I might leave out and others just tweek a bit. Even if I don't, something about the actual memory is changed when I put it in writing.
Isn't that right?
Mary Blew and Annie Dillard say it's right. They say that what you have written becomes the memory, just as a photograph of a place becomes your memory of that place.
For me, I would like to deny that it's right. I would like to believe I can keep it all straight in my head--what I know/remember and what I choose to write about it. Obviously, this is an important notion for me, and it may be what has stopped me from writing a memoir about Wayne and me because a) I don't want to lose any of the memories for myself, and b) I want the reader to get a true picture.
Words are shifty, anyway. I can't know how any reader will interpret what I write. That seems daunting, but a writer can't let it be.
Here's the truth. If I write it, no guarantee it will be read. If I don't, that is the guarantee it won't be.
3 comments:
If you build it they will come.
You say "Yet, if I don't write it, our children and grandchildren will not know us."
So does that mean that if you do write it, we WILL know you? Didn't someone smart once say that a child never really knows her parents? I'd love to read it but would it really make me know you guys? A little better, maybe?
Also, I say, don't write or not write it out of fear--afraid we won't know you or afraid of losing (condensing) memories. Write (or not) because you want to or because you can't help it.
Speaking of remembering. I have a memory of someone coming to our home and showing us John Taylor's watch. I think he was a relative. Who was it; did he stay with us and if so, where (in which room)?
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