Tag: memoir

True Story

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Loving family? Fun party? Seething resentment? Monumental discomfort? Let’s take a look.

The Cast (left to right):

Mildred Lorraine Palmer Gough Tebbs (there will be three more last names added to that string before she takes her final bow). Also known as my maternal grandmother. She’s probably 42 in this photo. She’s feisty, out-spoken, opinionated, prefers men to women in all cases and loves a good cocktail.

Paul Tebbs, my grandfather and stepfather to my mother, although she will always consider him her true father. He is a man of few words and will speak up only when it will benefit someone else. He’s an engineer by day and raises cattle for fun on the weekends. He loves  good cigars, which will eventually kill him. He’s 48 here.

My mother. Helen Louise Gough Tebbs Grimes. She believed she was controlled by her domineering mother until she met my father, who ripped the puppet strings right out of Mildred’s hands. Although, while everyone was still alive the mastery would pass back and forth between hands. She’s creative, talented and beautiful, but it’s not enough. She taught herself to like scotch but would prefer a glass of wine. She’s about 22 here. And I’m probably 11 minutes old.

Donald Earl Grimes, about 36 in this photo. Too intelligent for anyone’s good, charming, sarcastic with a side of mean, always right and incredibly artistically talented. And married. Not to my mother. With three daughters. Of which I am the youngest and the only one belonging to my mother. Oh, and he also loves a good cocktail.

I have no idea what occasion would put them all in such close proximity, but I would almost guarantee a minimum of one high ball each has been had. If gin is involved things will begin to deteriorate rapidly. My grandfather will begin to play interference and eventually guide my grandmother out the door or to bed. My mother will tug at my father’s pant leg or laugh, tilt her head and then say, we really should be  going, or it’s getting late, but her words will evaporate before they reach the sensible part of his brain. The situation may escalate, words spat with enough venom to start a revolution. But there will be no apologies the next day or the next time they’re all in the same room. It never happened. And it will happen again.

Even so, I love this photo. For what it says as much as for what it hides.

Instagram didn’t invent The Brightside, it just offers a few more filters.

Gone Fishing

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This photo was taken 10 years before she would become my mother. And about 22 before I would doubt she had any redeemable skills as a human being. Parents don’t know anything, they don’t get it, whatever “it” we happen to be going through. How could they possibly understand how complicated life is for us?

Clearly the woman child can bait her own fishing hook. By age 12 she could also ride a horse, tend to cows and chickens, play the piano and the harp and ignore her little brother like it was her job.

It’s so easy to forget the interior lives of our parents, that they were once young and impressionable and even capable. I’m quite sure at 12 I was reading Seventeen magazine and fueling my developing obsession with boys and the size of my burgeoning thighs. In all fairness though, I did have a Girl Scout sash full of badges for skills I had legitimately learned. And some I even remember, like tying a square knot and sewing on a button. Oh, yeah, and storytelling. That was an actual badge.

Many of the skills I earned badges for were taught to me by this young fisherwoman.

I have her journals, her recent ones – like from the last two decades of her life – and within the cloth-covered, unlined books there are snippets of a life lived before I was even a thought. One such gem gives a nod of gratitude to the difficult woman whom she would always call Mother, for her ingenuity and abiiity to make something from nothing. Stunning dresses from dry goods sacks, a meal from scraps and beauty from bits of nature and just the right placement of objects.

All that resourcefulness was necessary for a while, but after my grandmother married the man I knew to be my grandfather (who was actually my mother’s step-father), circumstances greatly improved for everyone. “Mother” was able to design dresses made from fine fabrics for an actual couture house and collect genuine antiques to put her decorating skills to work in the 18th Century farmhouse they purchased so my grandfather could try his hand at being a “gentleman farmer” on weekends.

Fifteen years after this photo was taken, I would spend long weekends on this farm – where my mother and her brother spent their school age years – with its rolling Pennsylvania hills, a hundred head of cattle and a single bull named Pat. The “farm” became a showplace for my grandmother’s talents, a touchstone for my mother and an idyllic summer refuge for this still only child and grandchild.

This farm was a main character in the story of my youth. I would be flogged by a goose, wear a chain of daisies in my hair and help my grandmother and mother sew in the sweltering hot attic in just our underwear.

But I was never taught to bait my own hook. I’d rather feed the fish than eat them. But mom? Turns out she could take pretty good care of herself.

The Mom Chronicles

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I have a project, a book idea, that I really want to start. At least I say I do. I think I do. My body, though, is offering some sort of different direction.

I have bazillions of family photos, maybe a literal ton. Somehow, I have become the family historian. I completely embrace it, but now that I want to do something with all this history I’m stuck. Memoir? Novel based on imagined histories? Something else yet to be revealed?

There is this clear chronological plan in my head: take all the photos from the 1800’s through today and organize them by year, or decade if the specific year is unclear. So I started. And as I am sorting I feel so much tension in my core. Angst even. It doesn’t matter what decade it is, my body does not like this. A tiny little voice, and sometimes “random” outside influences, whispers, “let go of the past.” But I’m not holding onto it. Am I?

I’ve said all along that I’m not sure what I’m supposed to glean from this project. There is not a ton of hidden history. I mean, I’m on a first name basis with all the skeletons. And deep dives into my ancestry show pretty solid hard workers, no slave ownership, northern stock, farmers, railroad men, way too many children for each household. For sure there are secrets I’ll never uncover in the way back. For sure there are hidden truths within my own lifetime. But that doesn’t resonate as a plan or feel like the source of this unease.

I’m shifting my focus, changing up my process. I will gather all the photos of one person regardless of decade and create a timeline. But what about the other people in that person’s life? Where do they go? Why am I doing this anyway? There is something I need from all of this. Maybe the clenching in my gut is a sign to keep going. To find the right path. I hope there’s juicy dirt or ridiculousness hiding for me.

Whatever the case, I am going to choose one photo a day to write about. Could be of anyone from any era. Whether my writing is rooted in the truth or a complete fabrication will remain to be seen. The process is to write. To connect words with the image.

So here goes.

This is a photo of my mother and an unknown friend. It’s the mid 1940’s and she is living in Texas with her mother, new stepfather and new little brother. Her new dad is in the military and will use his training and GI Bill education to become an engineer like his father. He loved my mother, adopted her the moment he could after he married my grandmother. Her young childhood was good, sandwiched between a traumatic entry into the world and the realization, around 7, that her step grandparents preferred to believe she didn’t exist. She wasn’t blood. They would shower her younger brother with gifts at holidays and leave her with nothing. They doted on him while turning away from her, adhering to some antiquated code that made no sense to a young child. Or even her grown parents.

But here, in this photo, at this time in her life, she was free and happy.

There are parallels between my mother’s life and my own. Her birth story is quite dramatic, mine less so, but still not ideal or average. Her younger brother would garner the lion’s share of positive attention. Mine did the same, especially from my father who already had two daughters by another before I came along unexpectedly. If he had to have another unplanned child, at least a golden boy child was bestowed upon him.

But back to mom. She’s not around anymore to query about the mysteries of her past, but she did share a fair amount while still living. I love a good story so every opportunity I had I would throw out a few questions while pouring her another glass of wine. Maybe as I pluck photos from the past some of these stories will resurface and I can share them.

If not, I’ll make something up that sounds feasible and hopefully entertaining.

Bad Grandpa, Good Grandpa

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Someone, one of my second, third or some number removed cousins, accused my great grandfather of inappropriate touching. I don’t remember which one, but she would be hovering around 70 at this point.

I don’t know the details. None of them, simply that it allegedly happened. She was the only one of dozens of girl cousins who made such accusations.

When something like this comes up there are any number of appropriate or expected responses: disbelief, denial, entertain the possibility, shut down and talk about the weather. I chose the third response. Anything is possible.

I leaned toward curiosity more than repulsion or embarrassment. He was long gone by the time I heard this bit of family gossip and I knew so little about him, that I couldn’t piece together an argument either way, but I could wonder.

I suppose it’s natural to sweep something like this under the rug, why would I bring it up? But humans as a species, and my family in particular, fascinate me. I get excited at the idea that I have dissidents or deviants in my bloodline, that we’re interesting, even in the worst way.

My great grandfather was born in 1896. He met the love of his life just before The Great War wherever it was she was singing. (I like to imagine a smoke-filled USO hall with a great deal of drinking and patriotism, but truthfully a church would probably be closer to the mark.) Once betrothed he gave her the false option of marrying him or continuing on with this singing silliness. The fact that I am writing this is evidence of a passion thwarted. It came back later in the form of stage mom, but that’s another story.

After the war he worked at the post office and advanced in pay grade despite the obstacles of The Great Depression. (So much greatness back then.) He and his beloved silent song bird would produce six children. The accuser belongs to one of them.

Perhaps he was too old and tired by the time I met him, but he was nothing but a really old funny man to me.

When we rode around in his 1960-something metallic aqua Ford Galaxie with the front and back windows that rolled all the way down, he would throw the question into the back seat, “Hey there Allison, is that back wheel going around?” To which I would reply, “If we’re moving, they’re all going around.” This would elicit a grand guffaw. Too smart for old grandpa.

I remember standing in the front yard of his Florida home kicking the dirt, bored while adults made small talk about food and directions. Noticing my impatience and wrapping up the conversation my great grandfather would ask me if he could pick me up by my ears. I ran to him to experience such a feat of strength. Both his and that of my ears.

He would make a great show of gathering my ears into his fists, then he would carefully place his palms over my ears and lift me off the ground. He was of course picking me up by my whole head and I wonder just now how wise that really was. There doesn’t seem to be any permanent damage so, no harm I suppose.

Somewhere between those memories and going off to college his wife died, after a rousing bout of dementia – including stories that shouldn’t be funny, but are – and he aged dramatically. “Just sitting around waiting to die,” he would say daily to anyone who asked how he was.

But that didn’t stop him from cocktails in his driveway at 3:00 pm with his two cohorts, Jim and Frank. The youngest was 78, the oldest 86.

This was near the beginning of his day. After drive way happy hour there would be early bird dinners out and waitress flirtation and sometimes pinching or grabbing (aha!), more cocktails, driving home after many cocktails, cocktails at home, nodding off in front of Johnny Carson, waking up to a test pattern but in time to take medication, then bed. Up at 8 in the morning for more medication, back to bed until noon, local news, put the lawn chairs back in the driveway and so it continued.

Until it didn’t.

All in the Family

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One of the side effects of minimizing social media was to be time to work on THE BOOK. In truth there are a few books battling it out in my brain, but the one I have made the most progress on was my intended.

The India Book.

A lot of it has been written. Well, a lot has been written, whether it makes it into the mythic book or not will depend largely on my friends who honestly read and comment, a paid editor and my mood.

This was the plan until yesterday when I made the decision to pick up a memoir I had started reading some time ago – before I realized my world was not under my control – and now I am questioning where to put those writing hours.

The book is Confessions of a Sociopath by M.E. Thomas. The cover promises a chilling, gripping, and thoughtful read and it does not disappoint. I am fascinated with Ms. Thomas’ self- assessment (and later professional diagnosis) of sociopath and what that means. Her stories of childhood, adulthood, her professional career as an attorney and volunteer Sunday school teacher and her dispassionate, yet raw and honest depiction of these things has me rapt. But more than the actual details of her life and her postulation that sociopathy is a cocktail of genetics and environment, I am deeply in love with her command of language and writing ability.

So much so, that I’m leaning away from India and closer to the “memoir” I accidentally started a few year ago.

By the way, I now understand why it takes some writers 10 years to complete a book. It’s not that they get up every morning and work from 9-5 pounding out prose and researching characters and methods of murder; it’s that they can’t stop editing and complaining and changing their minds. I’m guessing.

Perhaps writing a new chapter for the memoir will lead me back to India.

Telling the stories no one wants told. This single sentence keeps showing up in the front of my mind like a wall street ticker on an Apple product release day. Telling the stories no one wants told…Telling the stories no one wants told…

Sleeping with cousins, inappropriate touching, being slapped down the stairs into labor at nearly nine months pregnant, affairs, illegitimate children, alcoholism, murder, serial marriages, deceit, war, strength, undying love, suffering, living on a boat, living out of a car, killed in the line of duty. It’s all in my family.

It’s all part of my story.