My mother and the memoir: Part II
So, on November 23, I wrote about the enlightening phone conversation I'd had about a month earlier with my mother, regarding the memoir I wrote about my father. I had locked the post at the time, but I don't really feel a need to keep it private, and while there's a good bit of revenge in my motives, I also want the input of more people who know the people in question, and I want the following letter to be accessible to other people I don't know who might have a similar family dynamic, so they can feel less alone.
[I'll try to keep the editorializing to a minimum; my own notes will be in square brackets.]
My mother's letter:
-----
About your book. Most of it is fantasy. You have told yourself things and repeated them over and over to everybody you meet until maybe you believe them.
The dirt dauber incident - never happened. A dirt dauber did sting him in the van once - on the hand. He didn't say much about it because stings really didn't bother him.
When they came to pun in our telephone and he said "They are here for Jo. I'll go straighten them out." Never happened.
I didn't hide the gun because I was afraid he would kill us. I just didn't think it was a good idea for a drunk to have a gun for reasons I am not going into now.
Darrell crawling around on the sidewalk half-naked being whipped - Never happened.
Bob Sutton never came to tell me that Tom had been arrested for being drunk. That whole conversation came straight out of your imagination. Tom did stop at Bro. Bob's house one night when it was pouring down rain and as he was backing out of the drive way the car slid enough to get hung up. Bro. Bob called Boone [our neighbor; this would have been before we had a phone] and Boone came over and took us up there. The men pushed the car back up on the drive way. I drove the car home. Pat wasn't there. The police weren't there. And Bob Sutton did not come to our house.
The hammer incident - coming off the handle - that happened. But to Mr. Berryman and his daughter. He told that story in one form or another to every class he had. [Can anyone who was in one of Mr. Berryman's classes remember him telling a story in which he berated his daughter for "choking a hammer" while tapping tacks into a wall, and having the head of the hammer come off?]
I remember the paint. It was the most expensive paint I ever bought and the worst. You picked it out. I didn't re-paint because it was too late in the year. I don't like to paint in the winter. Not because you Dad wouldn't let you.
The tools were real. Not toys. I still use them because they are light-weight. Your Dad would never have used an expression like "choking" a hammer. That is a Jim Berryman term. He would never have said you "hammer like a girl." Another Berryman term. [Again, GCHS classmates and teachers, does this sound like a Berryman term?] Your Dad would never have said anything like that. You used tools the right way or wrong way. It made no difference to him if you were boy or girl. Never happened.
When I asked you where he would put bank papers - never happened.
When I said later that there were more papers and money than I was aware of. Never happened.
Why would I ask you anything about bank papers? I knew where the papers were and why they were there. And I knew exactly how much money we had. I did the taxes. Remember?
You seem to think you were a calm, grown-up intelligent teen-ager. There is no such thing. You were a pain to live with.
You did stain and varnish just to make the house stink sometimes.
Do you remember you and Mr. Berryman and Ms. Lee getting mad at me because I wouldn't drive you to Leitchfield and sit in the car for two hours while you went to Mr. Berryman's "church." Do you remember getting mad at me because I wouldn't drive you to Bowling Green and sit in the car for hours so you could date Jason.
Do you remember telling people you could "levitate." Do you remember telling them you were from another planet. Do you remember your imaginary friends. Your imaginary wallaby? When you were a teen-ager. You embarrassed everybody around you, because you acted crazy. People were never sure whether you were acting or whether you really were crazy. I could go over more things but why waste my time. You should not have written your book. I know you wanted to embarrass me - and you did. You always have. [It's weird, I didn't actually notice that last sentence when I read this the first time through.] But you embarrass yourself more.
God gave you a wonderful gift. You can use it for good or evil. It's your choice.
You are my child and a will always love you no matter what you do. But I don't understand why you do these things.
You will say or write what you want to, whether or not it is true and no matter who it hurts. Why?
-----
I don't feel particularly alone right now, because I've built my own family from people who don't share my DNA. And I don't feel particularly bad, or sad, though at least I'm not shrinking away (too much) from people who offered their sympathies after I shared the snippet of the letter I did last night on Facebook. I don't feel good, but mainly I feel relieved: I thought she felt this way about me, but I didn't trust my paranoia. Now I know where I stand. I also am acutely aware of the way this would have destroyed me five years ago, or even less. It would be serendipitous that I wrote the rest of the all-about-me memoir recently, about the darkest part of my life, because writing the scenes, I had a strong, clear memory of the way I felt then, but without actually reliving that feeling and drowning in it. Reading what she wrote, I feel as if I'm remembering reading it five years ago and being crushed. But I'm not crushed. It's uncomfortable, but I've realized recently that uncomfort is not the same as discomfort. But it's not serendipity that I wrote those memoir sections, because the motivation for writing the scenes was probably the phone conversation. It put me in a mindset where writing the scenes felt natural. So thanks, mom, for inspiring me.
Originally posted at http://violetcheetah.dreamwidth.org/57022.html. Feel free to comment there
comments
[I'll try to keep the editorializing to a minimum; my own notes will be in square brackets.]
My mother's letter:
-----
About your book. Most of it is fantasy. You have told yourself things and repeated them over and over to everybody you meet until maybe you believe them.
The dirt dauber incident - never happened. A dirt dauber did sting him in the van once - on the hand. He didn't say much about it because stings really didn't bother him.
When they came to pun in our telephone and he said "They are here for Jo. I'll go straighten them out." Never happened.
I didn't hide the gun because I was afraid he would kill us. I just didn't think it was a good idea for a drunk to have a gun for reasons I am not going into now.
Darrell crawling around on the sidewalk half-naked being whipped - Never happened.
Bob Sutton never came to tell me that Tom had been arrested for being drunk. That whole conversation came straight out of your imagination. Tom did stop at Bro. Bob's house one night when it was pouring down rain and as he was backing out of the drive way the car slid enough to get hung up. Bro. Bob called Boone [our neighbor; this would have been before we had a phone] and Boone came over and took us up there. The men pushed the car back up on the drive way. I drove the car home. Pat wasn't there. The police weren't there. And Bob Sutton did not come to our house.
The hammer incident - coming off the handle - that happened. But to Mr. Berryman and his daughter. He told that story in one form or another to every class he had. [Can anyone who was in one of Mr. Berryman's classes remember him telling a story in which he berated his daughter for "choking a hammer" while tapping tacks into a wall, and having the head of the hammer come off?]
I remember the paint. It was the most expensive paint I ever bought and the worst. You picked it out. I didn't re-paint because it was too late in the year. I don't like to paint in the winter. Not because you Dad wouldn't let you.
The tools were real. Not toys. I still use them because they are light-weight. Your Dad would never have used an expression like "choking" a hammer. That is a Jim Berryman term. He would never have said you "hammer like a girl." Another Berryman term. [Again, GCHS classmates and teachers, does this sound like a Berryman term?] Your Dad would never have said anything like that. You used tools the right way or wrong way. It made no difference to him if you were boy or girl. Never happened.
When I asked you where he would put bank papers - never happened.
When I said later that there were more papers and money than I was aware of. Never happened.
Why would I ask you anything about bank papers? I knew where the papers were and why they were there. And I knew exactly how much money we had. I did the taxes. Remember?
You seem to think you were a calm, grown-up intelligent teen-ager. There is no such thing. You were a pain to live with.
You did stain and varnish just to make the house stink sometimes.
Do you remember you and Mr. Berryman and Ms. Lee getting mad at me because I wouldn't drive you to Leitchfield and sit in the car for two hours while you went to Mr. Berryman's "church." Do you remember getting mad at me because I wouldn't drive you to Bowling Green and sit in the car for hours so you could date Jason.
Do you remember telling people you could "levitate." Do you remember telling them you were from another planet. Do you remember your imaginary friends. Your imaginary wallaby? When you were a teen-ager. You embarrassed everybody around you, because you acted crazy. People were never sure whether you were acting or whether you really were crazy. I could go over more things but why waste my time. You should not have written your book. I know you wanted to embarrass me - and you did. You always have. [It's weird, I didn't actually notice that last sentence when I read this the first time through.] But you embarrass yourself more.
God gave you a wonderful gift. You can use it for good or evil. It's your choice.
You are my child and a will always love you no matter what you do. But I don't understand why you do these things.
You will say or write what you want to, whether or not it is true and no matter who it hurts. Why?
-----
I don't feel particularly alone right now, because I've built my own family from people who don't share my DNA. And I don't feel particularly bad, or sad, though at least I'm not shrinking away (too much) from people who offered their sympathies after I shared the snippet of the letter I did last night on Facebook. I don't feel good, but mainly I feel relieved: I thought she felt this way about me, but I didn't trust my paranoia. Now I know where I stand. I also am acutely aware of the way this would have destroyed me five years ago, or even less. It would be serendipitous that I wrote the rest of the all-about-me memoir recently, about the darkest part of my life, because writing the scenes, I had a strong, clear memory of the way I felt then, but without actually reliving that feeling and drowning in it. Reading what she wrote, I feel as if I'm remembering reading it five years ago and being crushed. But I'm not crushed. It's uncomfortable, but I've realized recently that uncomfort is not the same as discomfort. But it's not serendipity that I wrote those memoir sections, because the motivation for writing the scenes was probably the phone conversation. It put me in a mindset where writing the scenes felt natural. So thanks, mom, for inspiring me.
Originally posted at http://violetcheetah.dreamwidth.org/57022.html. Feel free to comment there
comments