I have been unusually studious the past few days, turning off the tv and the computer and going out to Hardees and the coffee shops to work on reading and writing (although thankfully no ‘rithmetic), reading Alice Notley and Joyce Johnson ad Jack Zipes on the roof of my apartment building, which is lovely once you manage to navigate the windows that open outward. The first time I came out I spilled my diet coke, which now sits in undrinkable puddles in roof indentations, evaporating quickly like the leftovers from a rainstorm. Had to leave the house to go to the corner market to get some more, this time bringing the bottle out and then my glass of ice separately. Live and learn, my mother used to say. Like the time my friends and I went camping because I had just bought a pup tent with my newly-minted Sears charge card. We couldn’t figure out how to put the tent up, despite the instructions in Japanese and in French, which I had three years of and could barely speak, and so we just tied the tent strings to the window frames of my car. Then we tried to cook some food on the grill, but the crumbs kept falling off the frozen onion rings that we were turning with melting plastic forks like Dali clocks because I didn’t think to buy actual grilling utensils or actual food, and so the crumbs kept falling through the grill grates. We laughed and laughed at ourselves and ate what crumbs remained on the grill and it turned into a great story.
It’s a little awkward climbing through the window and then standing up, since I am wearing a mini-skirt and a tank top, the lightest pieces of clothing that were nearest my bed and when I bend over, the skirt keeps riding up. But, I think, it’s just an ass. Everybody has one. And then I giggle and think, although not everyone else’s is as fine as mine. The neighbors will just have to scratch their eyes out. They are lucky I have any clothes on at all. But the day is young. And I’m not as young as I used to be/never was, and life is short and mine is getting shorter. So we shall see. It ain’t over til it’s over.
Surrealist Doodle
This was used as the cover of Karawane in 2006 and I have included it in on a number of bags and postcards over the years. Someone on the subway asked me if it was a Miro. I was very flattered!
Showing posts with label Memoir. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Memoir. Show all posts
Sunday, August 24, 2014
Monday, May 21, 2012
Memoir of my mother
I am teaching a class on writing, specifically on memoir writing, through community ed at Minneapolis Public Schools this summer and so this is something that I started writing in my head as I was thinking about the class.
It doesn't have a title yet. I suck at titles. And who knows if I will go anywhere with it. But this is the beginning, a kind of tribute.
This is what I remember. My mother died 2 ½ years ago now, although embarrassingly, I can’t remember the exact date. It was somewhere between her birthday, October 16th, and Thanksgiving. I believe it was around the 13th. It was on a Sunday morning about 9:30 Central Standard Time. Despite my imprecision, I can say that for the first two years at least, time for me, stopped, which is probably why the date is so imprecise. My measurement of time stopped. I didn’t realize it, but the person against whom I measured my sense of time was now gone and so time literally stopped. For the next two years, I couldn’t remember what year it was and so consequently, how old I was. I was perpetually 45 years old, which was the age I was when she died. I even had a hard time remembering how old she was when she died.
She said to me once that she still didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life and that now it was nearly over. This was a few years before she died, before she even got sick.
In response to my requests “Mom, can we go to Disneyworld, New York, California, Fill in the Blank next summer? She would always reply “I don’t know, I could be dead by then.” And she was always around. So I didn’t really take those threats seriously.
I told her she should write her memoirs, her history, in the time she had left. But she said she probably wouldn’t.
This is what I remember of my mother, scattered: and collected from various memories that she told me about her childhood, mixed with memories of my own. Of course now that she’s gone, thankfully, I don’t remember any of the bad parts. Those are intellectual memories now, not emotional ones. I have forgiven her for all of the “bad” memories and they have no hold on me anymore. I have only funny memories, good memories of her now, as saccharine as that may sound. I don’t mean it to. It’s just the way it is.
This is what I remember. My mother died 2 ½ years ago now, although embarrassingly, I can’t remember the exact date. It was somewhere between her birthday, October 16th, and Thanksgiving. I believe it was around the 13th. It was on a Sunday morning about 9:30 Central Standard Time. Despite my imprecision, I can say that for the first two years at least, time for me, stopped, which is probably why the date is so imprecise. My measurement of time stopped. I didn’t realize it, but the person against whom I measured my sense of time was now gone and so time literally stopped. For the next two years, I couldn’t remember what year it was and so consequently, how old I was. I was perpetually 45 years old, which was the age I was when she died. I even had a hard time remembering how old she was when she died.
She said to me once that she still didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life and that now it was nearly over. This was a few years before she died, before she even got sick.
In response to my requests “Mom, can we go to Disneyworld, New York, California, Fill in the Blank next summer? She would always reply “I don’t know, I could be dead by then.” And she was always around. So I didn’t really take those threats seriously.
I told her she should write her memoirs, her history, in the time she had left. But she said she probably wouldn’t.
This is what I remember of my mother, scattered: and collected from various memories that she told me about her childhood, mixed with memories of my own. Of course now that she’s gone, thankfully, I don’t remember any of the bad parts. Those are intellectual memories now, not emotional ones. I have forgiven her for all of the “bad” memories and they have no hold on me anymore. I have only funny memories, good memories of her now, as saccharine as that may sound. I don’t mean it to. It’s just the way it is.
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