True story, or true enough
It's all material
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In this issue:
The new girl, a garbage can, and a memory
Memoir picks for you
Moment of Zen with John Malkovich - can you say “mem-wah”?
The View From the Garbage Can
‘We all grew up with this thing that my mother said to us over and over, and over and over again, which is ‘Everything is copy.’ You’d come home with something that you thought was the tragedy of your life – someone hadn’t asked you to dance, or the hem had fallen out of your dress, or whatever you thought was the worst thing that could ever happen to a human being – and my mother would say ‘Everything is copy.’’ - Nora Ephron
My old school is closed now but my memories are wide open for business. About a year ago, I began to think about my first days at Jefferson Elementary School and this is what emerged:
In the summer of 1966 my parents sold our house right out from under my four siblings and me, piled us into the station wagon, and drove north about 300 miles until they reached Jefferson, New Hampshire. We went from living in a Connecticut town within easy commuting distance to Manhattan to a town of less than a thousand people, less than two hours from the Canadian border. I went from being the winner of the courtesy award at Our Lady of Fatima school, to the girl Buddy Nickerson stuffed into a garbage can outside the lunch room at Jefferson Elementary.
We were in fifth grade. I was the new girl. He was the biggest boy in my class. In fact, he was bigger than most of the sixth grade boys and girls who occupied the other side of our shared classroom which is why I heard every question the teacher asked of them and began to mouth the answers. I made sure the teacher saw me. She made just as sure to ignore me which couldn’t have been easy because there were only 12 of us on the fifth grade side of the room and there I was twitching in my seat, sending messages to her with my eyes, because for the first time in my brief academic career I felt really smart.
I was not smart. I just knew stuff because I dove into books to escape the world and, until a few months earlier, a convent full of wimpled nuns with high expectations had been in charge of my education.
Now Buddy was.
That’s the beginning of a short essay I drafted about a year ago when I needed to take a break from the novel. It’s a true story even though I’ve changed the name of my one-time tormentor and his friend (below). One of these days, if and when the essay is ready, I’ll reach out to him and ask if it is okay to use his name. I know where he lives.
Right now, I’m still trying to figure out why I wanted to write this story down in the first place. Even now I can still feel the faint heat of humiliation despite all the years — decades — that have since passed. Still, I need to go there.
He spied me and my new friend Debby on the playground a few weeks into the school year while we were all waiting outside for the bus to come bring us home. For reasons that escape me, Debby and I strayed from the pack of fifth grade girls by the swing sets. Buddy swooped down on me like a peregrine. His brown eyes glinted above his high cheekbones, his ten-year-old arms already had muscles which rippled as they powered him towards me. Glen, his shorter, blonder, chubbier sidekick was right behind him. They raced after us as we ran to hide behind our brick school building. They cornered us next to a garbage bin, a brown barrel sitting lidless, gaping at the sky. Debby edged away but they weren’t interested in her. They’d known her since first grade. It was me they were after and it was me they grabbed first. Then they spied the barrel and immediately grasped the possibilities.
Each boy grabbed an arm and a leg and hoisted me above the rim of the barrel. They did it so quickly I couldn’t land a kick or a punch. They kind of folded me into a “V”, shoved me in, and watched as I sank, ass-first, into the papers, pencil shavings, that red saw dust used to mop up the cafeteria when someone puked, scraps from the school lunch, and whatever had come out of the trash receptacles in the bathroom. I couldn’t reach the rims with my hands. My feet kicked uselessly above me. My skirt hiked higher with every move I made. I don’t remember what I yelled or if I yelled at all. All I knew for sure is that I wasn’t getting out of that barrel by myself and as long as Buddy was there, no one was going to help me.
Something interesting happened when I started to set these words down — I realized I was glad for the minutes I spent in the garbage barrel. There was a story in there and maybe now I was ready to tell it. Whether someone will want to read it is another thing altogether. That will depend on whether I’m able to turn this scrap of memory, this material, into story that connects with at least one other person or at least entertains her for a few minutes. I stopped paying attention to the things that have not happened in my extraordinarily ordinary life and began to look more closely at the things that did happen, how they hurt me, helped me, showed me who I was — who I am.
It’s all material, right? Every writer says this, from Nora Ephron to Robert Greene to Garrison Keillor to Alice Munro. Writers are said to be thieves, scavengers, collectors of material. We are only original in how we stitch the scraps of material together. Writers of fiction can blend pieces of truth with imagination to write anything from Sense and Sensibility to paranormal romance.
Writers of memoir are not as free. I can’t, for example, lie about being in that garbage can. If I am not in the garbage can, there is no way out, no lesson learned, no possibility of change. Even though I love fiction first, I am drawn to memoir, especially at certain times of my life. Memoirists mine their experiences to create stories that inspire, amuse, touch, or challenge. They must observe their own lives with the same attention of a writer of fiction who strains to eavesdrop while standing in line, say, at the DMV. They must sift through the scraps to find patterns, loose threads, to see what they have missed. Although they can choose which facts to share and how to write about them, they cannot lie.
I haven’t finished the essay about me, Buddy, some others, and the garbage can. There are parts I’m still sifting through, trying to figure out. More and more it’s not about that one incident but the years that followed and how they shaped me. I feel like I’ve opened a bit of a Pandora’s Box and I’m not sure where trying to write things like this will take me. I’ve got a kind of ending though it I’m sure it will change:
I left Jefferson the summer I turned seventeen. I’ve moved further away with every decade until I finally stopped in California. I’m a visitor now to Jefferson now, a flatlander, an outsider. But then I always was. Maybe Buddy and his friend understood that. They knew I was going to leave. So they gave me something to remember.
This week was a struggle. Our dog has been sick with what has turned out to be Addison’s Disease, now diagnosed and being treated. My husband and I are seriously sleep-deprived, and no amount of caffeine seems to produce the desired alertness. Every news headline sends tremors through me. I want to run and hide but then I realize I am already in hiding. Many of us still are.
I wonder sometimes what I will remember from this period. What are the pieces that will come back to me and what, if anything, will I be able to make of them?
What about you? As you look back on your life, or even yesterday, is there something you want to keep, study, maybe turn into a story? Even if you only share it over Zoom the next time you visit together over a glass of wine, it’s a story and it’s yours. If you’d like to share it here, let’s talk. I’d love to give your story a home.
In the meantime, stay well and tell me all about what you are reading now and what you will be reading next. Some of you have already told me that you’re reading some great memoirs. I’ll be adding those and all books you mention to our list at bookshop.org so we can help raise money for literacy and for independent bookstores.
Short Reads, True Stories
I’m enjoying Memoir Monday - a weekly newsletter and quarterly reading series, brought to you by Narratively, The Rumpus, Catapult, Longreads, Granta, and Guernica. Each essay in this newsletter has been selected by the editors at the above publications as the best of the week, delivered to you all in one place every Monday morning. Browse the list of books on Memoir Monday’s booklist too.
McSweeney’s offers compelling mini-memoirs in real time with A Force Outside Myself in which citizens over 60 speak about life in the the time of coronavirus and with Flattened By The Curve, short accounts from those working the front lines in hospitals and in healthcare.
File This Memoir Under the Category of Books I’m Embarrassed I’ve Not Yet Read
Tessa Fontaine is author of The Electric Woman and the only woman I ever met who swallowed fire for a living. Here’s a little chat with Tessa who put on sequins and lipstick for the occasion. The chat is one of Reading Group Choices Live Chats , a great resource by the way for folks searching out their next read.
Memoirs I Have Read and Am Glad I Did (a very incomplete list)
Becoming by Michele Obama - I saved this book and read it just a couple of weeks ago. Obama’s strong, wise, honest voice was a balm to my soul.
Magical Journey by Katrina Kenison - Timing is everything with some memoirs and so it was for me. I read this book after losing a dear friend and finding myself grappling with milestone birthdays. A lovely read.
Free Fall by Rae Padilla Francoeur, a surprising, honest, and beautifully written account of discovering love late in life and all the passion that comes with it.
Books and Resources for Writing Memoir
Handling The Truth by Beth Kephart is one of the best books I’ve ever come across for anyone who wants to write even one true story. It is also really fun to read.
Marion Roach writes and teaches memoir. I’ve followed her blog for years to glean tips and glimpses into her work how to turn a scrap of life into material for a story.
Would you like to win this book?
I have a new copy of Anne Tyler’s just-released novel Redhead By The Side of The Road. I will be reading a copy that I received as a gift for Mother’s Day but would like very much to share the one I purchased with one of you. If you are interested, just hit the button below and leave a comment on this post.
Doesn’t have to be a big message, just a little hello, what you’re reading, and if you’d like to win the book. I’ll enter the folks who commented into a list as I have done in the past and use random.org to select the winner at 9 a.m. PST on Tuesday, May 19. If you are having trouble for any reason, just shoot me an email and that will work too. Please feel free to share!
That’s it for now. Thank you for your notes, your messages, for sharing your own thoughts with me, and for making this a fun place to hang out. Be well.
Betsy
P.S. Your moment of Zen…
John Malkovich demonstrates how to pronounce “memoir” in this scene in the Cohen Brothers’ Burn After Reading.
Calling for Your Contribution to “Moment of Zen”
What is YOUR moment of Zen? Send me your photos, a video, a drawing, a song, a poem, or anything with a visual that moved you, thrilled you, calmed you. Or just cracked you up. This feature is wide open for your own personal interpretation.
Come on, go through your photos, your memories or just keep your eyes and ears to the ground and then share. Send your photos/links, etc. to me by replying to this email or simply by sending to: elizabethmarro@substack.com. The main guidelines are probably already obvious: don’t hurt anyone -- don’t send anything that violates the privacy of someone you love or even someone you hate, don’t send anything divisive, or aimed at disparaging others. Our Zen moments are to help us connect, to bond, to learn, to wonder, to share -- to escape the world for a little bit and return refreshed.
I can’t wait to see what you send!
(And if you’ve gotten here, liked something, and still haven’t hit the heart below, now’s your chance! )
Betsy, It's wonderful to hear your voice, to read your memories (of Jefferson, no less!), and to reconnect here. This is such a kind and generous offering -- your beautiful writing, the links to good things, book recommendations, all of it. Yes, it's all material, but not everyone handles what they've been given with such eloquence and insight. (Thank you for the Magical Journey shout out, too!)
Hi Betsy, Please add me to the book lottery for Anne Tyler's book. I thought I would share my Trashcan Memory. It's sort of funny and somewhat embarrassing. Back in 1978, I was 13-years old and my sister was eight, my parents uprooted us from Hillcrest to... gasp... rustic Escondido. We went from urban dwellers to rural residents. Instead of lovely summer days spent at Mission Bay we were stuck broiling in the boonies on 2.5 acres of farmland. Mission Bay was now "too far away" for an afternoon outing. Instead, my father came up with the idea of filling two (clean) trashcans with water so that my sister and I could cool off. So there we were, two skinny kids, bobbing up and down in our very own trash can pools.