Memory Writers Network

by Jerry Waxler

(You can listen to the podcast version by clicking the player control at the bottom of this post or download it from iTunes.)

Six mornings a week, my dad commuted to his drugstore in North Philadelphia. By closing time, he had been there for almost 14 hours, but I never heard him complain. He enjoyed his work, and it may never have occurred to him that there was anything to complain about. When I was in high school, I started working with my dad at the store. Every Friday afternoon I took the subway, and on Saturday afternoon drove with my mom. My job was stocking shelves, serving customers, occasionally counting pills to help fill prescriptions, and eating lots of candy bars. Sometimes mom packed dinner, and sometimes I walked down to the Horn and Hardarts cafeteria at Broad and Erie and brought back a hot meal to eat at the store. By the end of the day, we were all ready to go home. Around 9:30 I mopped the floor, then descended rickety stairs to check the cellar door. Finally we positioned bars across the windows, set the alarm, and went outside.

One Saturday, we drove south on 17th Street, turned left on to Ontario, and started east towards Broad Street, when a large man ran out between two cars and flagged us down. He knocked on the window, yelling at us to open up, gesturing down the street towards some unseen quarry. It was a cop, fiddling with his holster, preparing to draw his gun. As my mother reached over her shoulder to unlock the door, the strangest thing happened. Her hands grabbed wildly at the latch as if she was pulling up, but time after time her fingers missed and the door remained locked. I watched in growing horror as precious time slipped away.

This is exactly what always bothered me about my mother, and here was yet another proof. She was a klutz, and just in the most urgent moment, she failed to come through. I cursed the luck that gave me such an incompetent mother. Losing patience, the cop ran to a taxi that pulled up behind us. The driver of that vehicle knew how to open his door. The cop jumped in and they pulled around us and drove off in pursuit. Meanwhile, I was filled with wonder at how my mother who had been opening car doors her whole life could have failed at such a simple task, and fumed the whole way home.

At first glance, such intense moments appear to be excellent material for a memoir. Jeanette Walls’ wildly successful memoir, “Glass Castle,” seems like a collection of such experiences. But taken as a whole, her book is more than a compilation of zany moments. Each episode contributes to an intimate, compassionate portrayal of real human beings. Memories are simply the raw material for memoirs, like pigments for a painter or clay for a sculptor, and shaping them into the story is not an exhaustive collection but an artistic synthesis. So no matter how many high powered incidents come to mind, I still don’t necessarily end up with a readable book that authentically portrays my life. To turn anecdotes into a life story, there is much creative work to do.

For one thing, I must place the experience in context. We didn’t just appear on that street. We arrived there through the natural course of our daily lives. So I back up and explain what we were doing there in the first place. That episode with the cop makes the whole night come to life — the drugstore, the neighborhood, and my relationship with my parents. As this anecdote falls onto paper, I begin to see the world of that teenage boy, broadening my insight into the night and also expanding my understanding of how it fit into my whole life.

For example, I’m not very well coordinated myself, and during my teenage years I was especially disappointed by my lack of agility. Feeling my frustration with my mom that night awakens the recognition that neither of my parents nor any of us three kids were athletic. I have recently been reading about hereditary factors that cluster together the characteristics of nerdiness and lack of physical coordination. (see my Asperger’s article). The incident with the car lock suggests that this might help explain the Waxler family. I file that observation for future consideration.

The incident stirs up an observation about my relationship with my dad. He was a loving man, and always treated me with kindness and respect, but we never talked much. I don’t remember having had a single conversation with him, which made him seem distant. Now that I am reading about us as two characters in a story, a fact jumps out. Working in the drugstore with my father, gave me an opportunity to spend large swaths of time shoulder to shoulder with him, helping him in the store that supported the family. Now I realize we were partners, in a manly sort of way. I’ve envied other boys who worked with their dad on the farm or the family business, and now I realized until I was 18, I was one of those boys.

The fact that we had to put bars on the window and set the alarm, and that a cop was running around chasing criminals, foreshadows the fact that a few years later, corner drugstores would become targets for violent crime. When I went away to college, dad’s good friend, Sam Dreidink, who owned a drugstore a few miles away, was held up at gunpoint. On the way out, the robbery completed, his assailant shot Sam in the stomach. He lived, but in terrific pain for the rest of his life. A few months later, my dad was held up. During the robbery, he was forced to his knees with a shotgun pointed at his head. They stole his money and whatever narcotics he had in stock. When they left, he was still whole in body, but that incident ended his years in the drugstore.

My mom lived 70 more years, during which I discovered her apparent lapses in “common sense” often moved conversations in unexpected directions, offering the people in her life zest and interest, cleverness and fun. Her lack of predictability turned out to be one of her endearing traits, and instead of feeling manipulated or confused by her approach, I became one of her many admirers. Forty years after that night in the car, I knew that behind a thin facade of silliness, she was an authentic, fascinating person. Which makes me wonder as I read my story if she knew exactly what she was doing, and in her own klutzy way she was protecting her family from a man with a gun.

Writing Prompt: Write an anecdote from your life that has dramatic intensity. Using that anecdote as a core, backtrack and describe what lead up to it. Also, go forward and see what happens afterward. Try it a few times, or with a few anecdotes, to see if you can find a beginning, middle, and end. Could this be a chapter in your memoir? Could it become a standalone short story?

—

To listen to the podcast version click the player control below:

 

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (62)

Writing Prompt
Take one of your written dramatic anecdotes. You now have three different points of view about the same event. One is the memory of what it felt to be back there. Another is a reader, reading a written story about characters in the incident. The third is an adult, with a much broader understanding not only of the incident but who the people are, where they’ve been, and where they are going. Dance amidst these three points of view find new thoughts and connections that help put it in place. Consider what the people wanted. What were they thinking when they performed this particular action? What other episode does this story remind you of? How did your or their flaws influence the course of events? How have you or they changed since then?

by Jerry Waxler

(Listen to the podcast using the player control at the bottom of this post or download it with iTunes.)

While searching the internet for my own last name, I found an article by a Caroline Waxler, about a television show “Mad Men” that shows office workers in the sixties. Caroline, who happens to be my niece, knew abstractly that women had come a long way but didn’t comprehend how far. Could it have really been that bad just a few decades ago? To find out she asked her mother. The discussion not only gave her deeper insight into the history of feminism. It also provided mother and daughter an opportunity to share their stories.

The article was interesting to me, not only because Caroline is on the web. She’s always up to something. Her latest adventure is launching the website mainstreet.com, which manages to combine the seemingly unrelated world of celebrities and personal finance. The more interesting aspect of the article for me was that it challenged one of my basic assumptions about the transmission of human knowledge. Until I read the article, I assumed Caroline would have known exactly what life was like in the sixties. I had some vague notion that the information would ooze over to her through the media, discussions with older people, and her extensive education and reading. Now that I’ve thought it through more clearly, I recognize my folly. By the time she entered the business world, the behavior that shocked her on “Mad Men” was no longer just obsolete. It was illegal. Most of the upheaval took place before Caroline was born and was over by the time she was a little girl.

As I thought about Caroline’s revelation that times have changed, I had a revelation of my own. Many powerful culture trends are obscure only a generation later. This simple observation offers me a new way to look at my past. Instead of seeing events through my own eyes, I gain fresh perspective by seeing my world from the point of view of a younger person who didn’t know my world. I brainstormed this notion and turned up a few scenes that I can add to my stack of vignettes.

• After a day at my all-boys high school, I took the subway to work at my father’s neighborhood drugstore in North Philadelphia. Family-owned drugstores and all-boys public high schools are nearly extinct.
• Occasionally I took the subway by myself into center city, and sat in the balcony of the Philadelphia Academy of Music to hear orchestra rehearsals, or went to the listening room of the main branch of the Public Library to hear classical music on scratchy 78 RPM records.
• On summer evenings, before we had air conditioners, our family sat on the patio of our row home and talked to the neighbors. One summer, when my brother Ed was home from college, we sat out on the porch and played chess every day. He was a nerd, too.
• While waiting for dinner I sprawled on the living room floor, reading the comic section of the newspaper. Our television was in the basement, which is also where Ed assembled a high fidelity amplifier he was going to take with him to his college dorm. I helped him by following the diagram and soldering transistors.
• I was a freshman in college when I first heard the word “marijuana.” I had no idea what it meant, and didn’t even know the concept of recreational drugs.

As I look back through my life, I realize that culture is not a steady thing. The world around me has changed in small ways that gradually accumulate. Only when I look across a few decades do I see how the small changes added up to profound differences. A memoir is a perfect place to highlight these changes, explore them, turn them into stories, and share them with others. By striving to explain these differences more clearly, I can add depth that will help people learn about the past, while sharing the authentic world in which I lived.

To listen to this blog, click on the podcast link below.

Podcast version click the player control below:

 

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (147)

—

Writing Prompt
In the period of your memoir, what lifestyle “givens” that seem so obvious inside one period might seem foreign to people a generation later?

Writing Prompt
Remember a situation when you were telling a younger person about your life and you realized that they didn’t know what you were talking about. Fundamental differences are hard to explain, which makes them excellent writing exercises. Take such a situation, slow it down, and write it in richer detail that will provide some of the background that will make it more understandable to someone who wasn’t there.

Note: Some people could accuse me of narcissism for looking at the internet for my name, like looking in the mirror too long. Others call it smart marketing. I have written an essay on the question of whether a memoir is narcissistic. I still need to write one about the blurry line between narcissism and self-marketing.

Note: Here’s Caroline Waxler’s article if you want to read her thoughts and her mom’s response.

Note: I’m reading a remarkably simple and powerful memoir, Colored People: A Memoir by Henry Louis Gates Jr. about growing up in the fifties in West Virginia. He wrote it for his kids, who didn’t know his world. And I get to watch, and share his observations, learning about a slice of life I did not see for myself.

by Jerry Waxler

The holidays bring together a mélange of generations, family units, and significant others, bonded by blood, marriage, love, and shared life experience. Then why did I feel more dread than joy? I didn’t understand my own reactions to the holidays until I started writing family stories, and then the answer leapt off the page. There were just too many stories in one room. The chiefs in their own homes are now guests. Siblings connect in a secret code that sounds foreign to their spouses. Fully grown adults behave like children, and kids who are ordinarily the cutest, now must compete with even smaller ones. The clash of roles has always confused me, and I’m not alone. Many people struggle to sort out their feelings about holiday gatherings.

Now that I see the problem, I’ve worked out a solution. My interest in storytelling helps me focus on the interesting, curious, or historical features of my clan. By looking for their stories, I become engaged with people more intimately, and my curiosity reveals who we are as individuals and as a group. I’m not claiming writing is a panacea, but it has helped me stay on top, like a surfer riding the energy rather than falling in. Here are some suggestions for applying this strategy to your own holiday gathering.

Connect with each person by writing scenes
Before the holidays, in your imagination go around the table, visualizing each person. Watch the memories that play through your mind, and when a scene jumps out, describe it. Don’t worry how important the scene is. Even if it seems trivial, write about it. What did you see? Who was there? What happened first? Then what? Your writing exercise will open you to a deeper channel through which you can learn about your relationship.

For example, I try to imagine my father at the holiday dinner. At first, all I see is a tangle of people eating, drinking, and getting through the hour. Then I shift to a different family gathering, Passover which combines a feast with a ritual service. My father tells us to read a passage from the book of instructions. Then we do things like dip a toothpick into radish and taste it. While the book provides stage directions, my father is the director. This is interesting. I’m not accustomed to seeing him in that role and find this memory soothing. By writing that scene, I cast my father in a light that would help me relate to him at the Thanksgiving meal.

If you feel anger towards someone, that’s more problematic. The initial temptation is to complain, but that only makes you feel worse. Step back and with your storytelling curiosity look for scenes that evoke a range of emotions, such as drama, passion, or pleasure. If you suspect it’s going to sound like another round of ranting, continue brainstorming until you light on a memory that sparks your interest. Then tell the story. Describe the external circumstances, the furniture, the smells of cooking, the sound of voices or clatter of dishes. Out of the scene will emerge a more complex picture of your connection with this person. The exercise may help you develop a more sophisticated container into which you can pour your heart.

Your interest in people changes the dynamics
Family preconceptions remain frozen in time, so older relatives see younger ones as if they are children, and younger ones see elders as the powerful parental figures they once were. These prescribed roles force interactions into a groove that confines each of you into only a sliver of your whole personality. Break past these limits by telling people you are writing about their lives. Ask the questions you will someday wish you had. As you sit there with paper and pen or tape recorder, eyes wide with interest, the focus shifts. Now you are empowering people to be themselves, in toto, opening a door into their real lives, not just their ritualized position in the clan. Even though you are talking about the past, your interactions in the present become more authentic and intimate.

To evoke vivid responses ask for sensory descriptions. If you can get them to wade through a pile of leaves as they walked to elementary school, or describe the dresser and mirror in their childhood bedroom they will probably become energized with fresh stories, rather than the routine ones they usually tell. Test the question by posing it to yourself. If it stirs up memories, there’s a good chance it will work on your relatives. If it leaves you blank, try something more specific. If the atmosphere during the larger gathering is not conducive to reverie, pull your interviewee aside before or after the meal and talk in a more private setting.

Write about those you miss
The holidays are a ritual time to come together as a tribe, but what about the people you won’t be with? They might be cut off by a feud, a death or divorce, or they are on a battlefield, in a hospital, a nursing home, or a prison. Longing is itself a form of connection that links people at a distance. Stories go further by reminding you of the love and joy and other qualities about them that are the reason you miss them in the first place. Write about a peaceful time, or a peak time, or any story that awakens your connection.

By looking for fresh ways to describe the people around you, you will gain poise not only for the day. You’ll generate insights and written passages that help you through the year. And you just might find some lovely bonding opportunities with the people in your life.

by Jerry Waxler

My grandmother was looking at me, her mouth drawn taught. She had just found out that I had to climb in through the basement window to get into my house. This was not something a good boy does, she said, and backed it up with a financial incentive to never do it again. She wasn’t a harsh disciplinarian. She was an advice-giver. Most of the advice she gave me was more suitable for old people, like when she told me to think positively in order to feel better. I ignored her, letting myself think anything I damned well pleased, even if it made me miserable, as it often did. I knew she meant well, but I didn’t really care. I never understood what she wanted from me, so I kept my distance, and obeyed her advice, or pretended to.

As I grew up, I continued to see her as a remote figure, more interested in molding me than relating to me, and this connection prevented both of us from opening up and sharing ourselves with each other. It’s only recently, as I delve back into my memories that I see beyond these rigid impressions of her and uncover nuances of our relationship.

To see grandmom as a whole person, I recall the family lore about her own childhood. She lost her father when she was 12 and had to quit school to work as a bookkeeper in the Philadelphia department store, Strawbridge and Clothier. Her paychecks kept the family afloat, and then paid to put her brother Ben through college. He ended up graduating from Wharton, and then married into a textile family, while grandmom’s life remained modest. Her husband with his small neighborhood pharmacy was content with just getting by, and it was only thanks to her financial sense that they lived comfortably. When I visited their home on North Broad Street, in the midst of shops and a few yards from the heavily trafficked street, I would lose myself amid the thick bushes in her yard and imagine myself in a vast forest.

In high school, I was fascinated by numbers. When I noticed grandmom poring over the page full of numbers and symbols in the evening paper I asked her about them. I had stumbled on a topic we could talk about. Grandmom taught me which symbols represented preferred or common shares and how much dividend the stock was paying. I ordered annual reports to match the company face with its name. Then she hooked me up with her stockbroker and with her help and savings from working at my dad’s drugstore, I bought a few shares. Later, when I got to college, I moved on to calculus, which had the power to put a man on the moon, and I hoped, enough power to explain the mysteries of the universe. I lost interest in the list of numbers on the stock page and ended that connection with my grandmother.

A few years later, she took up still-life painting. We used to joke about her being like Grandma Moses. Now that I’m sixty myself, I no longer see her creative efforts as a joke. Now I see them as an inspiration. Her inquisitive mind kept trying new things. She never gave me any advice about art or life long learning. Instead she showed me by example.

Throughout my childhood, whenever we went to visit, we would sit dutifully while grandmom played the piano. The vibrant, youthful look on her face as she played leads me to believe she was getting at least as much pleasure from it as we were. She never gave me advice about service either, but later in her life I discovered she had been volunteering at a nursing home. One of her pleasures was to entertain the residents by playing the piano for them, a practice she continued when she moved into the same home.

It is only in this retrospective storytelling that I begin to see past all the advice and look more closely at the life she actually lived, her dignity, her desire to grow and her willingness to serve others. As a complete person, she has so much more to offer, adding richness to my own story, who I was, who I am now, and who I am yet to become.

Writing prompt
Which characters in your early life remain stuck in the simplistic mold into which you originally poured them? One of the most interesting things about writing memoirs is to revisit these characters and flesh them in. Looking back from your adult vantage point, consider what they wanted, and why they acted the way they did, allowing them to evolve from distant figures to real people. Write about a character who seemed distant when you were younger, and fill in some details that takes the reader (and you) beyond first impressions.

by Jerry Waxler

After reading Carol O’Dell’s memoir, Mothering Mother about her experience caregiving for her mother with Alzheimer’s, I contacted her to ask what it was like to write and share her story with others. Here is part one of a two part original interview.

Waxler: What did you have to do to turn your very personal experiences into a book?

O’Dell: Like most newbie writers, I used my own life to teach me how to write. I joined local writers group in Atlanta in 1996 (we still have a reunion once or twice a year and all of them are terrific, active writers). There’s a real art to telling your own stories and making them readable, interesting, and universal. I’ve come a long way from my first attempts. One way I’ve found to tell stories that people find meaningful is to focus on the ones I tell the most. If my friends and family listen, and their faces light up, and I see they have been moved by it, I write that one down. If I can make them cry…well, that’s gravy.

Waxler: When you were writing Mothering Mother, what sort of work did you do to reclaim this story from your memory?

O’Dell: I wrote MOTHERING MOTHER in “real time.” I wrote journal style (but on the computer) every day. I wrote in the style you read in my book—in vignettes with headings. Whatever I was mulling over in my mind became the topic for the day—and if it didn’t fit under that heading, it didn’t belong there. Of course, many entries didn’t make it in. I tried not to show that I was whining every day. I also didn’t revise my journal during this process. I didn’t begin to compile this as a book until one year after she had passed. I knew the editor in me could really muck it up—make it too writerly—not keep it emotionally raw. I wanted to capture the moment so that other caregivers could truly relate to me—as a caregiver—not a writer.

Waxler: When you were ready to write the book, were you worried about getting it wrong?

O’Dell: Because the word memoir means literally, “a memory,” I knew that certain moments had to be recorded as I, or as my mother remembered them. Facts are in some ways, secondary to memoir. It’s a perspective kind of writing. Yes, I would at times go back and check “the facts,” to see just how off or skewed my or my mother’s thinking really was. It’s good to juxtapose the facts against memory to show what people “do” with their past.

Waxler: When did you decide to try to seek a publisher, rather than just writing it for yourself?

O’Dell: I wanted to be published early on, so I submitted and published articles, essays, short stories, excerpts, and poems over the last ten years. In regard to MOTHERING MOTHER, I did not revise the book until my mother had been deceased for one year. I wanted to capture that first year—birthdays, mother’s day, receiving the death certificate, ordering the headstone, reinventing my own life—in order to round out the experience.

I revised it that summer, (my mother died in June) and then had it professionally edited (mostly copy edited, not content edited. By the way, I highly recommend this. It’s a competitive marketplace, and no matter how good you are, you need a professional eye to take a look at it). I also had to create a proposal, which takes several months to do a good one. I began submitting it in January, six months after starting the revision process, and it took almost a year and a half to sell—in part due to my moving, my daughter’s marriage and the time that took, and honestly, the funk you fall into after a couple of rejections hit you in the gut. It sold in April of 2006 and was published in April of 2007.

Waxler: What’s next?

O’Dell: The prequel to MOTHERING MOTHER is SAID CHILD, which is under consideration at my publisher’s right now, and it’s the story behind the story, so to speak. It’s even grittier, edgier, and took a decade to write, hone, and come to terms with.

—

To buy a copy of this book, click the Amazon link, Mothering Mother

This interview coincides with Carol O’Dell’s Virtual Book Tour. For more information about what a virtual book tour is and how to enter Carol O’Dell’s Virtual Booktour contest, and for more interviews and information about other services Carol offers, visit her website at http:\\www.caroldodell.com.

Click here for the book review I wrote about Mothering Mother.

by Jerry Waxler

After reading Carol O’Dell’s memoir, Mothering Mother about her experience caregiving for her mother with Alzheimer’s, I contacted her to ask what it was like to write and share her story with others. Here is part one of a two part original interview.

Waxler: During your original journaling, did the writing help you cope with your situation?

O’Dell: Absolutely! I found insights into my own soul and motives. I found that for the most part, I was a “better” person than I thought I was. My ideals, hopes, intentions were honorable-for the most part. I started to recognize how my experience went across the generations. Since I have three daughters, I started to realize that everything I thought or did to my mother, would one day boomerang. Like the old saying-what goes ‘round, comes ‘round.

Waxler: Even, and especially at the end of my mom’s life, I wrote by the hour. It gave me an excuse to walk out of the room. It allowed me to go into that “observer’s” place. It gave me something proactive to do with my fear, hurt, and sorrow.

O’Dell: Writing, especially personal writing, (but I think all writing’s personal) can be a form of self therapy. I’ve saved thousands of dollars. Instead of, “Physician, heal thyself” is should be “Writer heal thyself!”

Waxler: Many aspiring memoirists fear that writing about their experience might awaken the pain of it. Could you talk about how this worked for you?

O’Dell: Facing my own personal demons was an evolution. I’m sure I inflicted my pain onto others, and at times, my poor writing group was not only “bleeding” with my purple prose, but also from some pretty strong subject matter (I have other “issues” besides good ole’ mom!) All I can say is don’t try to publish this stuff too soon! You, as a person and as a writer, and perhaps your family, have to evolve and incorporate this material into your being. It’s healing, but anyone who knows anything about medicine and surgery will tell you that the healing process can be a messy, nonlinear journey. I think everyone can benefit from writing and examining aspects of their life-but not everyone needs to publish it. In the end, being a healthy, whole person is even more important than being published.

Waxler: Your experience would offer support and encouragement to others in your situation. Do you give talks on this topic?

O’Dell: Do I talk! All the time. I speak at Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Caregiver’s conferences, support groups and online forums. I speak to professional groups because caregiving is beginning to impact the workplace. I speak to writer’s groups and conferences too. I love to communicate.

Waxler: Did you start speaking in public before you started writing, or after?

O’Dell: I’m a preacher’s daughter (my mother was a minister), and I’ve always been “up front,” whether I wanted to or not. I sang as a child, played the piano, testified (I was brought up Pentecostal and we testified a lot!) So I am used to talking in front of people. I started giving writer’s group/conference talks about six years ago. By then, I had published many articles, essays, and short stories and I shared my journey of going from no publications to dozens. I also did open mic nights, booksigning events for anthologies–any way I could get in the practice.

I know it’s not easy for every writer, but I do believe it’s almost necessary to sell books today. You can’t be reclusive or shy. If it’s uncomfortable for you, start small, do open mic nights, join Toastmasters-anything that gives you experience. Also, if you get published in anthologies such as Chicken Soup, you can schedule booksignings. It’s a great ice breaker to get used to the process. And if you’re at writer’s conferences-get in the thick of things-sit with the authors, agents, and editors. Offer to buy them a drink. Small talk. Talk books. It’s not like you don’t have anything in common.

Waxler: How does it feel sharing personal experiences with a live audience?

O’Dell: I LOVE to create a story, a vision that everyone in the room can see, hear, feel. Just as in writing, the old adage, “Show, don’t tell,” still applies. Showing the audience a story beats telling them, “you may experience frustration.” How about, “I’d stand at the counter shoving Oreos into my mouth at 6:00 at night. I hadn’t slept in 30 hours, and mother’s yelling at me to come change her night gown.” It’s visual. I implied the exhaustion, frustration, isolation.

There’s no greater feeling than to look into people’s eyes and know that they’ve agreed to suspend belief for a few minutes and go with you on this journey. To see them smile, laugh, cry, nod, forget to breathe, and then that sweet release at the end of a story…I LOVE IT! It’s like getting to “watch” your reader reading your work, which you don’t get to do, so this the next best thing.

—

To buy a copy of this book, click the Amazon link, Mothering Mother

This interview coincides with Carol O’Dell’s Virtual Book Tour. For more information about what a virtual book tour is and how to enter Carol O’Dell’s Virtual Booktour contest, and for more interviews and information about other services Carol offers, visit her website at http:\\www.caroldodell.com.

Click here for the book review I wrote about Mothering Mother.

 by Jerry Waxler

According to caregiver.org 50 million people in North America are informally caring for the elderly while 8.9 million of those caregivers face the added burden of Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. Carol O’Dell, author of the memoir “Mothering Mother” was one of those people. Not only was her mother no longer able to care for herself. She had literally lost her mind.

There is nothing pretty about the helplessness of aging, but unless our parents and everyone we love die fast and young, at some point we can no longer push aside the recognition that aging happens. One way to prepare for that realization is by learning about the experiences of those who have gone before us. Through such lessons as offered by the memoir Mothering Mother, we gradually do the emotional and spiritual work to accept the variety of stages of our lifetime journey.

O’Dell built a room onto her house and invited her mother to live with her family. By becoming her mother’s primary caregiver, O’Dell immersed herself more deeply into caregiving than she anticipated. She had to set herself aside, the way a mother sets herself aside to care for a newborn. But this was no cuddly infant. This was her mother, lost in forgetting so profound, she not only forgot the past. She forgot how to be human. It’s like a horror movie in which some evil force has stolen the person’s true self, leaving behind the shell.

O’Dell didn’t have the choice to send her mother to a care facility. For one thing, she and her husband were concerned that they could not financially afford to get adequate care for her mother. For another thing, O’Dell had promised her mother for years that she would care for her at home. Despite the difficulties, O’Dell had to stay the course.

There were times the strain on O’Dell was so severe she felt she was losing her own mind. Her experience was consuming, draining, demoralizing, overwhelming, even traumatic. Her memoir gives me a powerful glimpse into her emotionally complex situation. And she does it without overwhelming me. I found myself wanting to know more, and actually raced along to see what would happen next.

One of the reasons I wanted to know more about her experience was to try to understand how she coped. If she could cope with this situation then there is hope for humanity. And in fact, she did exactly that. She cared for her aging, failing mother, and coped with it to the best of her ability, and in the process earned my respect as an expert. Her ordinary life gave her the material to inform millions of people what that experience was like. While O’Dell’s experience seems overwhelming, by sharing it with us, she also shares some of the strength and sanity she gained by immersing herself so deeply into the final throes of her mother’s life.

Writing a memoir is exactly the opposite of the mental deterioration of dementia. By writing a story about taking care of someone with Alzheimer’s, O’Dell was exercising that part of her brain, the prefrontal cortex, that distinguishes humans from the other creatures on the planet. The very act of writing helps the writer cope, and once the story is written, it can be reread, reorganized, and shared. This organizational ability of the brain is the basis for much of what we consider sane and sacred about being human. While Carol O’Dell can’t erase her mother’s suffering or her own, she can write about it, choosing her words and phrases and images. These simple tools let her organize events into a story. And through this process she can reclaim some of the humanity that was lost, and offer it to us as a gift.

by Jerry Waxler

My dad owned a neighborhood drugstore in north Philadelphia, and on the nights he was able to make it home for dinner, most of the conversation centered around him telling us about the menagerie of characters who streamed through the store and gave him endless raw material. We sat and dutifully listened, but since there was no rule about equal air time, I grew up without having picked up even a smattering of skill to help me tell stories of my own.

In fact, I spent quite the next several decades story-less, feeling awkward about reporting on what happened to me. And though I didn’t realize it at first, I gradually noticed that my lack of storytelling was cutting me off from people. Stories are how we tell each other who we are, and so without stories, I felt isolated. Once I noticed how important it was to be able to tell stories, I set out to learn in adulthood what I had not learned as a child.

It turns out that with a little digging you can find storytellers who will teach you their craft. For example, Charles Kiernan, coordinator of the Lehigh Valley Storytelling Guild, has been studying story telling for years. For him, storytelling is a performance art. He looks like Mark Twain, including the flowing mane of hair and bushy mustache, and when he dresses in period costume, it’s like listening to your own copy of Mark Twain. In addition to the performance and folklore aspects of storytelling, he’s also interested in creating them.

Here’s the simple, powerful lesson he shared with me, that he’ll be teaching in more detail at the Augusta Heritage Folkarts Festival in West Virginia, July 8-13, 2007. Say you’re sitting around at a family gathering, and the older adults start telling stories about Uncle Bob. The ones who knew Uncle Bob start laughing, and everyone else glazes over. They never met Uncle Bob, they didn’t know his pranks, or the sadness underneath his smile, so the story isn’t working for them. The problem is that so many family stories contain codes. The people who know the code can make sense of the story, and those who don’t know the code are left out.

It’s like that old joke about a newly convicted criminal in the penitentiary. Someone down the cellblock screams out the number “68″ and all the other prisoners crack up laughing. The newbie asks what is going on, and his cellmate says, “We’ve heard these jokes so many times, we just tell them by the number.” It’s the same with family stories. As storyteller Charles Kiernan, coordinator of the Lehigh Valley Storytelling Guild, explains it, say you’re at the dinner table celebrating a holiday with your extended family. You start telling stories about Uncle Bob, and all the adults who knew Uncle Bob crack up, while the kids who don’t remember Uncle Bob glaze over. Why are they staring at the ceiling, waiting for an excuse to get away from the table?

Kiernan’s family-oriented workshop will teach students to slow down and instead of telling stories in code that only insiders understand, they’ll learn to tell the story in a way that can be understood by listeners who never met Uncle Bob. The trick is to describe him in more detail. What did he wear? What was his hair like? What room do you picture him in? Sit down with someone who didn’t know him and describe him in as much detail as possible, so your listener could pick Bob out of a crowd.

If you want to tell a story, look closely at your language, and “unpack” it, laying out its content for everyone to appreciate. With a little learning you can turn the joke known only to the old inmates into a joke you can share with kids and strangers.

While this advice sounds simple, I consider it to be brilliant. For one thing, it acknowledges an important fact. Just because we think we’re telling a good story doesn’t mean the listener is hearing a good story. That in itself is a powerful piece of information, because most of us think that when we tell about events, we are doing the best possible job sharing the story. It turns out, the storyteller plays a crucial role, shaping a bunch of events into something worth listening to. Once we realize this fact, we can start looking for tricks to give our stories more impact.

Secondly, the message is brilliant because it is extraordinarily fundamental, sweeping across all aspects of storytelling. For example, I was preparing to write a description of my years in college, and was hoping to explain how the music of the times influenced my feelings. I could hope that by simply mentioning that the Beatles were intense or important, I might be able to convey what I was feeling, since everyone really knows about the Beatles. But I remembered Kiernan’s advice about avoiding code words, and thought how that applies to those icons of the sixties. If I just mention the word, “sixties” or “Beatles” I might hope everyone understands what I mean. But they will only get what they think, not what I think. That’s like the prisoner saying “68.” I have to tell a story.

So how can I unpack my thoughts and feelings about the Beatles? I’ll talk more about that in my next blog entry, and put into a scene what I mean by the coded word “Beatles.”

 by Jerry Waxler

In searching through bookstores and bestseller lists, I find many memoirs whose central feature is the quirkiness and pain of dysfunctional childhood. For example,

Glass Castle, Jeanette Walls
Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt
This Boy’s Life, Tobias Wolff

In fact, so many big sellers seem to center on strange childhood, I have been wondering if all of us should be writing about dysfunctional childhoods, or should we feel somehow inadequate if we didn’t have one. To answer this question I have been speculating about some of the reasons this theme of painful early life has caught the attention of so many readers and publishers.

Follow the money
One reason there are successful dysfunctional childhood stories is the success of Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes. The publishing business follows trends. So they are looking for other books in a similar vein.

Easy for the reader to jump into the protagonist’s shoes
Any vulnerability and danger, puts us on the edge of our seats. Children are vulnerable, so a story about a dysfunctional childhood has a natural hook that pulls readers in. We want the child to be safe, and feel concerned at their crazy parents and excess freedom.

Watch in voyeuristic horror
Protecting kids seems like a basic contract all parents are supposed to sign up for. And when it breaks down, we feel horrified. Like onlookers at an accident, our disgust draws us on to the next page. We watch in horror as kids cope with parents who disobey the rules.

Revel in the entertaining surprises
The quirkiness of a dysfunctional childhood is simply more entertaining and surprising than a normal one. These surprises and shocks keep us reading.

They offer hope
If they suffered this much and survived (enough to be able to write this book), then there’s hope for the world. Resilience of individuals gives hope for resilience for the rest of us.

Someone had it worse than me
Many of us think we had difficulties in our childhood. These books are testimony to the fact that other people also had it bad, or in most cases significantly worse.

The family unit rules
The family is a unit that is precious and powerful, a crucible of human experience in which we were formed. Parents and extended family feed, clothe, teach, guide, punish, demand, coax, love, or not. Siblings stick together or not. Memoirs of extreme cases help us piece together a deeper understanding of this unit and give us glimpses of how it worked in our own life.

Solve a puzzle: Is it nature or nurture?
For years we have heard endless debates about the impact of nature versus nurture. Did they grow to be good people because of their childhood or despite it? It’s a fascinating question, and we hope that this one book, this one person’s experience will help us settle this unsolvable debate once and for all.

Solve a puzzle: where is the love?
As I read these books I easily see the dysfunction. But in the back of my mind, I feel like I’m reading a detective story. I know there must be love in this situation somewhere, but where? My curiosity to find the love draws me on.

Putting words on our pre-verbal times
We all started childhood before we could put words on our experience. Then gradually we found words, but it took years before we could eloquently advocate for ourselves or explain our world. Our unformed voice was a sort of muteness. Reading someone’s story of that period gives us words.

Learn about coming of age
Coming of age is a universal experience. We all went through it, but we don’t necessarily understand it. Reading about how it worked for other people helps us sort out our own coming of age.

Surviving great suffering indicates greatness
We don’t all win a Nobel prize, or an Olympic gold medal. But one thing we did all do is survive childhood. If faced adversity in childhood, now you have overcome that adversity — the greater the difficulty, the greater the achievement of having survived it. So when we read a story about someone who survived a difficult childhood, we are actually reading the story of a champion. And readers like champions.

I’ve been transcribing recorded interviews from a digital recorder recently. I listen to the tape, and type it into my document, and if I miss something, which is often, I go back and listen to it again. I’ve noticed a peculiar thing about this project. As I listen and type, I often get the words wrong. I remember the sense of what they said, but I misremember the word choices only seconds after I hear them.

That calls into doubt the truth of any conversation I try to repeat. If I try to write some dialog, say from a year ago, or ten or twenty, I’m certain to get the words “wrong.” Does that make me a liar? Or more relevant to the topic of memoirs, does it make it fictional?

The fact is it’s difficult to remember conversations verbatim, and probably very few of us do it. It’s even harder to remember colors. In fact, two people can be sitting in front of a painting, and each will have a different set of words to describe the painting. Words only capture the best approximation of a thing, not the thing itself.

My mother and her sister would often get into arguments over how their childhood worked. I never really understood the nuances of their arguments - they were both too edgy about it to explain it clearly, but it had something to do with whether their childhood was happy. Their differences in memory certainly had something to do with the fact that they were seven years apart, so they grew up almost in different decades. A lot can happen in those seven years, and their experience could have been very different because of the changes in the world, and in their parents. And they had very different siblings. One had a sister seven years her elder and the other had a sister seven years her junior. I believe we all tend to underestimate the effect our siblings have on us. They are children, just like us, but their presence creates an important part of our environment. They indeed have different memories. Does that make either one true and the other false?

In my opinion, each has the right to remember her own story. Memoir writing is about our best memory, and if you hold yourself to some artificial standard of pure Truth, you’ll never be able to sit down and write. Memoir writing is story telling. If repeating dialog makes it a good story, it doesn’t matter to me as a reader if that differs from the actual dialog.

I just started reading the memoir “Invisible Wall” by Harry Bernstein. He begins with a scene he remembers from when he was 4 years old. He was 93 when he wrote it. That makes the memory 89 years old. I’m sure there are details in his account that are different from the events that actually took place. But I am thrilled to be reading the story that Bernstein tells, I am willing to suspend my concerns about truth of events decades ago, in exchange for the pleasure of the living, vibrant reality of Bernstein’s story of those events. Thank you Mr. Bernstein, and all you budding memoirists in the world, for sharing your story.