I feel it more and more, the insistence that I am, that each of us is, the steward of our own past. It begins to nudge me toward memoir, though not in a linear way. More likely fiction, however that may be achieved. Real stories, parts of which are true.
No matter how small we think our lives or our stories, they are pieces of an intricately entwined whole, pieces upon which other stories and lives balance or lean. We are not complete without each other.
As age drags us reluctantly or gleefully forward, that over which we are stewards expands. The more distant reaches do not shrink proportionately. Each minute, year, hour maintains its size. We simply let out our mental corsets to include new arrivals or, more accurately, to allow space for reinterpretation of all that has been. Events become clearer at a distance, we know ourselves better as we evolve.
The puzzle: how to weave the husbands, the missing but essential magazine issue, garage sale fashions, a backstage encounter, discovering martial arts movies, ghost towns, music, years of car trips, jewelry made of shells, hamburgers and ice cream, books and all the people into either a single strand or episodes of coherent narrative, even in my own mind let alone on paper.
We need not have survived the Titanic's sinking nor been Rosa Parks to have a story that deserves tending. Ordinary life is a series of wonders, our wonders, both unique and universal, begging our stewardship, whispering, Do Not Forget.
5 comments:
So lovely. And I've been feeling the same way. And this summer I've been physically stewarding some of my past into safekeeping, and some into the recycling bin!
Love your description of the strands that weave our narrative. I'm going to add some of those specifics it to my lists of prompts for writing a memoir.
Kathleen - Physically stewarding bits of the past, I can picture that so easily. Of course, singly or collectively they have much to tell. Thank you. Carry on, what else can we do? xo
Kass - Thank you. There are so many separate strands, each event, object, relationship, on and on, we could give ourselves prompts to last, well, forever. What to leave in, what to leave out. xo
The words which you express so eloquently escape me when I try to describe how beautiful you tell your message Bisous
Janie McKeever
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