Try To Remember

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.

Mary Ellen Ryder

Yes, I knew Mary Ellen Ryder, both of us having taught for the BSU English Department. Actually, she taught Linguistics, somehow separate from English, and I taught writing. She may have known all there is to know about linguistics; I'll never know all there is to know about writing. She was tenure track; I wasn't. But I like to think she considered me a colleague.

We were not close friends but close enough to call each other by first names, to chat now and then about words, close enough that when she saw my son Andrew's name on her linguistics class roster she asked, "How's Carol?" I knew her well enough to know her energy and excitement about her subject, about teaching it, to be aware of her cancer crises and triumphs, to have met her husband Peter several times. Well enough to know she liked to play the guitar and sing at those sometime English Department get togethers. Nothing spectacular, but she liked to do it.

I knew her well enough to sense her students' affection for her. And their respect. As my son Richard says, "Good luck to BSU finding someone as good as she was."

She was outspoken, a good quality when you have plenty of knowledge so that what you say rings true. Good for Mary Ellen. She did, and what she said was usually worth listening to.

English teachers are not your typical rank and file types. Double that for Mary Ellen. Only one like her to come along. That was true while she lived, true now that she has gone.

What My Student Wrote

“I wish that I had a penny for every time that I have ever stuck my foot in my mouth because I would be a milliner by the time that I am 21.”

Hmmm

Is it lying?

Jan came again today. This zucchini was slightly smaller than the first one, only 22 inches long and not quite as big around as my thigh. She asked again if it was too big.
I thought, "Yes."
I thought, "Obviously it's too big for you."
I thought, "I hate being in this predicament."
I thought, "You look very tired. I cannot refuse this squash."
So I said, "Oh no, I know what to do with it."

"What?" she asked.

I told her about freezing the pulp for zucchini bread. She had never heard of this process.

Here's the thing. It's true. I do know to do that with gigantic zucchinis, and I didn't really say I was going to do it. So is that lying?

Two other things I know to do:

One is what I just did. Put them both in an Albertsons bag, tie it up, and drop it in the garbage can. Tomorrow is trash day.

Two is say no to the next one. I just have to.

Summer Squash

My neighbor, Jan, came over the other day with a big zucchini. No need to say how big. We've all seen one. Heck, most of us have grown at least one in our own gardens. It's the squash that somehow stays hidden until that moment when, stunned and frightened, we see it. Yikes! We pick it in a hurry before it takes over the world and dash over to our neighbor's house in a gesture of generosity and good will. Sort of.

Well, she did ask if I could use it. I lied and said yes. So now its permanent home is on my kitchen counter. Apparently. Until I do something with it or throw it out. And I hate to throw it out. Thus Jan's burden has become mine.

I used to de-seed the big ones, then grate them up and freeze the pulp (unattractive word) to use in zucchini bread or zucchini chocolate cake, which were always very good, and my children liked them . . . unless they saw the green things and were grossed out.

Anyway, I don't make that stuff anymore. Anybody need a big zucchini?

Mama Mia . . . not

Meryl Streep, a genuine movie star and a fine actress. Not perfect, of course, or she wouldn’t have knuckled under to pressure and starred in “The Bridges of Madison County.” It must have been pressure. Certainly she could tell the book was poor (crap is the word that comes to mind), and that very bad movie came to mind when I heard her say she never watches her own movies. But she was talking about the most recent one, “Mama Mia,” and she said that she has seen that one three times and can’t wait to see it the fourth. “Wow!” I thought. “You wouldn’t see Sophie’s Choice or The French Lieutenant’s Woman, but you would go four times to this one? It must be good, must be fun. Maybe I should go see it.”

I don’t go to many movies. Not many recommend themselves to me. This one, I thought about before hearing Meryl Streep’s comments. The trailers—shown at least a hundred times on TV—looked fun. It’s a musical. That sounded fun, too, and it features a lot of the music of Abba, not my favorite music but, again, “fun.” And usually I’m less likely to go to a movie that is hyped as much as this one has been, but Meryl Streep. She sings; she dances. She’s seen it three/four times.

Pierce Brosnan is the male lead. I mean, he wins the girl (the older woman, Streep) in the end, so that must make him the male lead. But his part, as I found out, is minimal and nothing remarkable. Remarkable it is, though, that he and Meryl Streep have absolutely no chemistry between them and never will as long as the this world lasts, and their kiss scenes are unconvincing and borderline repulsive. But I’ve never seen Pierce Brosnan have any chemistry with any one.

He is probably a nice man and is without doubt a proper Britisher who cannot say Mama the way 95% of human beings say it, as in Mama, but pronounced it in an interview as if he had never heard the word and was reading it for the first time, as if he didn’t just star in the movie with that word in its title and repeated many times in the title song. He actually said Mama, with the first “a” pronounced as in pablum, which made me think he certainly hasn’t seen the film three times and must have spent any down time he had—which was no doubt plenty—in his dressing room trailer. Mama—think pablum—Mia. It has no ring to it. But, again, he’s British.

So silly me, I went anyway. Mistake.

No doubt Meryl Streep keeps going back to watch it so she can see herself jump and run and climb on things and hear herself sing, which she does well enough, the singing, I mean. Clearly she can’t be going to hear herself be called Donna, a name that doesn’t look or sound like her.

Take a guess, now, is the movie very short on story and very long on exaggerated gestures and overacting, if that’s what they were doing? Oh yes.

And is the pace frenetic and tiresome? Oh yes. Besides, the movie is crude. Christine Baranski—she can actually dance, and she can sing—is, as usual, the highlighted crude person. Is that typecasting? But most of the stars get to be crude, too. Lucky for them.

And because this is a Hollywood production, even if it's set in Greece, one of the men who might be Meryl Streep’s daughter’s father (you with me?), played by Colin Firth, turns out to be gay. A bit too predictable for me. And the young actress, Amanda something, who plays Streep’s daughter, whose wedding all are about to celebrate but don't, and who is supposed to be a rising star that everyone has eyes upon, is nothing to write home about either.

I guess the bottom line is money. They’ll all make some. They got mine, after all.

Oh Yes and Hallelujah

Okay, I know stuff. I know that a few years ago every car company had to come out with its own SUV. Even Volvo, for crying out loud. It was like a race, a competition. Duh. Car companies compete with each other. Now they’re all trying to give SUVs away. Oh well.

And I know that if one TV show is a hit, the other networks will do a copycat show, or try. Like Survivor, for instance. Look what it has spawned (do I have to name them all?), the latest being a reality dog competition where people go to a house and live there together—with their dogs—and the dogs have to do hard things, and a panel of judges makes nice or harsh with the owners, and the owners who have been criticized cry or talk back or both. And there’s a golden bone for whoever does well—not for the dog—and a bottom three, an elimination, and hugging when someone is sent home. Yes, I watched once, but that won't happen again.

But today I saw something I never expected to see, and I call it strange. Yes, tattooing is big these days. People have flowers and snakes on their necks and gnomes and monsters on their backs or they have arms covered with serpentine whatevers. Personally, I don’t like tattoos, and I always wonder if when the person grows up, if that happens, he or she might want to be uninked.

I don’t much care for piercings, either. I had a student with ten studs in one ear. No biggie, I guess. And I had students with pierced tongues, eyebrows, nostrils, and other body parts, I’m sure, which were unseen by me, thank goodness. One guy would sit in my class and play with his piercing constantly . . . using his tongue. The stud was in his lower lip, and he would manipulate the thing, or lengulate it (a word I just made up). Anyway, he got so he could take the stud out and put it back into his lip using only his tongue. Look, Mom, no hands.

But I digress.

What I saw today was evidence of some quarter of society trying to—what?—compete? join? and I just didn't expect it, although I guess I should have. The sign on the place said, Devotional Tattooing and Piercing. I don't think it's that they sing hymns during the process, but I could be wrong.