I'm a little more than halfway through Maggie Gee's memoir 'My Animal Life' which has three or four parallels with my own life and which tempts me, as did Margaret Forster's 'Hidden Lives', to attempt to write my own.
As a family historian it ought to be considered essential. How many times have I rued not having the diaries, which I know were kept, of my grandmother, of her father? How well I remember the conversation with my father about how we should all write our own biographies.
And how much do the words of my children ring in my ears: 'yes but family history is boring' because I give them facts and not a story.
Reading such memoirs loosens my mind so that I can see the way to do it, so that the words begin to come, to tell my story.
Yet there is what I perceive as danger, as reasons not to.
Just this year I have twice written pieces which describe a barn. The first was in response to a Six Sentences challenge (and was reposted here on 26th January) and yesterday's Thinking Ten piece, in response to the 'Once in a lifetime' prompt, was partially informed by memories - hints of memories - of that same barn.
Because what happened there is returning to me. Its effect, seemingly, longer lasting than I ever knew, the event itself buried for some fifty plus years. It is visual - hence my description of the place, and was more shaming than anything else. The shame of ignorance, of lack of knowledge. Not of facts, although they were probably lacking, but of how to behave, to react. The lack of sense of what I as a person was due, so that when I should have protested I kept quiet. And stayed quiet.
And whereas I feel justified in saying that I will not allow myself to be disloyal, I cannot say the same when I know it is just embarrassment of that ignorance, of revealing that inadequate person to people who know me now, that prevents me writing it.
Interesting question. I've always assumed that I couldn't write a memoir because I need to protect other people - even though at least one in my life should be revealed as what he is. It would hurt someone else too much to have it made public, however.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand. Should we not write the facts of what happened, and our actions and reactions, and try to explain why we acted and reacted as we did?
Yes indeed - it is that need to protect, to be loyal and, perhaps even more importantly, not to destroy the memories of others. And it is self-deluding to say we would warn others because how many of us would have heeded our parents' warnings? I don't know, but suspect this impulse mught fade despite the fact that writing about it here was partly to hold me to it ...
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