The Momoir Project

For a former journalist, it’s quite embarrassing how infrequently I read the newspaper. But today, I was sitting in a café waiting for a meeting and I was a little early, so I picked up the paper. On the front page was a story a court case currently taking place in Canada investigating the brutal rape and murder of a young girl. The details sent chills up my spine, just as they did when the girl was abducted years ago. She was walking home alone after school and disappeared. At the time, we all guessed the grisly fate that befell her. But the ensuing media onslaught was predictable: the mother was blamed. She had fallen apart in front of the cameras (who wouldn’t?) and her behaviour was erratic.

And yet, before the mother was proven innocent and the real suspects were found, other parents watching this unfold began to realize the horror of this story. Her captors, her murderers were strangers.

This is what we as parents all fear, that something like this is possible. Victoria Stafford was only 8 years old. My daughter is turning 8 this year. I know there are many Victoria's out there and each one is a sickening, heartbreaking story. But as I read the newspaper in a Vancouver coffee shop, miles and provinces away from the town where Victoria came from, I began to feel impossibly weighted down by the responsibility of having a young girl, by my responsibility to protect her.

That morning, I questioned my ability to protect my daughter from strangers who could come up beside my little girl walking on the street on a sunny afternoon and make polite conversation about a dog. That’s what happened to Victoria. One day soon, she will ask to walk to our neighborhood park alone – just like my son did when he was 8 – and I will want to say yes. I want her to live in a country where walking home from school alone is okay.

We are told by the "experts" that most perpetrators of evil against children are people the children know. Not strangers. But it just takes one stranger. It just takes one moment. 

After reading what happened to Tori, I am now very afraid for my daughter and what I will have to teach her in order to try to keep her safe. Children – most of them – live without fear and that is such a beautiful thing. It is adults who bring that into their lives. We make them think about war and violence and hatred. I wish I didn’t have to be the one to burst her bubble. 

But it is my responsibility to keep her safe and knowing what happened to Victoria, I am overwhelmed. I can't stop feeling nauseous, disgusted and shocked. And I don't really know what to do about it. I want to fight against these "random" incidents, but how? It's not a cause. There are no protests or campaigns I can join. The fight is inside myself and I know I'm going to have to bring my daughter into the ring with me. How do you respond to stories like this? What do you tell your children about keeping safe? How do these kinds of "incidents" affect your sense of parental responsibility?
 

This blog post is part of a series on Writing and Permission that that we'll be running here on the Momoir blog over the coming weeks. The topic evolved in one of Cori's online classes in which women started to discuss how hard it was to give themselves permission to write and to be writers. This is one of the stories they came up with. Enjoy!

By Lisa Rich

When I was a little girl, I wanted to be an astronaut.  I dreamed of studying science and someday flying off on a space shuttle and landing on Mars.  And then I found out that most astronauts don’t actually get to fly into space.  If they are lucky, they work for NASA in mission control.  The odds of actually going into space are slim to none. 

When I was a little bit older, I dreamed of being a paleontologist.  Me and Indiana Jones, digging through dirt to find the connection between caveman and modern man.  Then I found out I could dig through dirt all my life and never find a single bone, caveman, modern man or chicken.  

I majored in accounting instead.  The odds were much greater to become a Certified Public Accountant than to be the next John Glenn or Indiana Jones.

That is the story of my life.  Take the safe route.  Do what comes natural and easy.  Not that I was a math whiz when I decided to major in accounting, but contrary to popular opinion, you don’t need to be a math whiz to be an accountant.  That’s what calculators are for.

I call my problem “Paralyzed by Perfection.”  Maybe I read it in Oprah’s magazine, saw it on Dr. Phil, or maybe I just invented it myself.  In any case, it’s a bit of a problem when you want to stretch yourself and push your limits.

And now I find myself a stay-at-home mom of three school-aged children and I’m trying to decide what to do with the rest of my life, or at least what the next phase will be.  I enjoy writing.  I want to be a writer.  I chronicle bits and pieces of my life and want to put them all together.  I have lots of ideas for novels floating around in my head.  I would love to write a book.

Here’s the problem:  I want a New York Times best seller.  I want to see my book on the front table of Chapters or Barnes & Noble.  I want it to be featured as a Target Bookmarked selection.  But first I have to write something.  Anything.  And that’s where the hard part comes in.  I have to write something.  You can’t write a novel of any caliber, New York Times best seller or bargain bin clearance at Big Lots, if you don’t actually write one.single.word.

I have to give myself permission to write one single word.  And then another.  And another.  I have to give myself permission to write something that may very well be crap.  I have to let go of the desire to be perfect.  To be the best.  To not fail.  Because writing is a process.  It is not possible to just sit down and type and type and type and then, voila!, publish a best selling novel.

It’s easy to say I can’t write today because there are dishes in the sink, laundry in the hamper, kids needing rides to hockey practice, a book fair to run at school.  It’s easy to say that’s why I can’t write today.  The real reason I don’t write today is because I am afraid what I write will not be perfect.  All those other things are just excuses for why I can’t write.  It’s not that I can’t write, it’s that I don’t write.  The truth is, I can write today.  I can write something.  I can write one word.  And another.  And another.  And accept the fact that the writing may be not very good.  It may be bad.  It may, in fact, be terrible.  I need to give myself permission to write something that is not the best.  Because tomorrow is another day and I can write another word then.  And follow that with another. And another.  And maybe, one day, I will write something that is publishable.  That someone else wants to read.  I just need to give myself permission to begin. 

What holds you back from writing?  What stops you from trying new things everyday?  When I told my son I was going to have my writing posted on a blog today, he said “So, are you going to be an author today?  Are you an author?  I'm going to tell my friends at school that my mom is an author.”  And I said yes.  Yes, I am an author.  I am a writer today and every day.  Are you?

What happens in the The Momoir Project Writing for Moms class:

inspiring writing excercises     laughter     tears     self-discovery  exciting new reading material    connection with other moms   sharing stories


Skills you will learn:   

how to write a memoir  how to tell your story   how to develop self confidence  how to document your memories for your children  how to get published and start a blog


Benefits:   

getting your stories down on paper for yourself, your kids or for publication   improve your writing skills   better than therapy (just ask any former student!)

We are now taking April Registration!


Writing for Moms Online

  Thursdays   

April 19 – June 21, 2012      

 9 am to 3 pm Pacific       $395.00

Registration Deadline: April 15, 2012

Register before March 31st and get 25% off. 

Email cori@themomoirproject.com  to register

Or check out www.themomoirproject.com

For more information.

This is the final story in a series on the topic of Writing and Memories – a topic that evolved in one of the online discussion forums in Cori's Writing for Moms classes. Next week – a new series begins on this topic: Permission. Stay tuned. 

By Lanita Moss

A few weeks ago, I saw a flyer for a county fair and it brought back a flood of memories. I have always loved the county fair, with roasted corn on the cob, cotton candy, funnel cake, livestock barns and Ferris wheels. 

One Sunday morning, when my husband and I were still living in New York, we took a drive up the Hudson River to attend the Duchess County fair.  It was a perfect late summer day, warm and sunny, but we could feel and smell fall in the air. We grew up on county fairs. He was a farm boy and I grew up in a small rural community. In college, we would go to the county fair and watch his nephews show dairy cattle.

Living in the city had limited the amount of cornfields and horse manure we were exposed to on a daily basis, so whenever we had a chance, we would head out of the city to get a taste of home. Tom had been struggling at work because the rumors were flying about his company relocating outside of New York and so, we spent the entire day talking about being back in the country and what it would be like to own a car again, and a house, with a yard. We talked about becoming parents.

We spent the day walking around the fairgrounds, playing carny games and eating pancakes, funnel cake, lemon shake-ups, corn dogs and other artery-clogging food. We sat together in the Ferris wheel. The Hudson River Valley was at our feet. The river was just to the west, and the forests surrounding the waterway were just beginning to lose their summer green.

We talked, and talked. What would life be like if we left New York?  What would it be like to be a parent? What would it be like to live in the Midwest again? Life had been difficult lately. Our daughter’s adoption had been delayed due to the Russian practice of vacationing for the entire month of August. There was uncertainty with his job, and I was fed up with mine. 

We were tired, physically, mentally, and emotionally. Our life felt like a powder keg that was going to blow, we just didn’t know when or how. The best we could hope for was the ability to deal with the fallout, and we knew we could manage, as long as we were together.

We left the fairgrounds reluctantly, soaking up the last smells of frying batter and cow manure. It had been the perfect day. It was late Sunday afternoon, and we faced a hectic drive back to the city and a hectic week ahead. We walked to our car holding hands and sucking the last bit of lemonade out of our glasses. 

I don’t know whether anything would have changed if I knew that was Tom’s last visit to a fair, his last tour of a barn or his last corn dog – his last Sunday. 

Three days later, he died in a plane crash, never getting to experience being a father or moving back home.  I knew the day was perfect, a perfect last Sunday. 

There are so many things about the day that is so vivid, almost as if they happened yesterday, but I never spoke about them or told anyone about it until I started writing.  As the anniversary of his death approaches, I feel an overwhelming need to write about that day.  As I set my hands on the keyboard, the words begin to flow as the memories flood my mind.

I no longer have him, but I still have the memories and now the words of that day locked away for safekeeping.

Do you have memories that have been ”released” by your writing?

This is the fourth story in a series on the topic of Writing and Memories – a topic that evolved in one of the online discussion forums in Cori's Writing for Moms classes. 

by Kelly Coyle DiNorcia

“Mommy, tell me again about when Sarah was a puppy and she ate your school book while you were in the shower and you were so mad at her and you had to go buy another one?” my daughter asks at least once a month, usually in the car on the way to or from one of her extracurricular activities.
 

I’m not sure why this particular memory is her favorite; it was never really that meaningful to me. But perhaps for my daughter, knowing that our beloved dog remained beloved even when she was naughty gives her comfort. Or maybe she understands the irony that once, my dog actually ate my homework.
 

My own memories of childhood now seem yellowed, the color of old paper, brittle and fragile and far away, untouchable. No happy thoughts of Thanksgiving football games or picnics in the park come to me when I try to recall my youth. Mostly, they are not memories at all, but rather a general sense of loss, of things absent – the feeling borne of spending Christmas Eve with one parent and Christmas Day with the other, or having to choose whether to have my high school graduation dinner with my mother or my father, and always being betwixt and between and never at home.

My daughter’s memories, on the other hand, all seem to spring to mind in vivid color and rigorous detail at the slightest provocation. She tries to engage me in frequent games of "Remember the time…" but usually I don't remember, or not as well as she does.

She relishes the retelling, and rakes over the recollections for nuggets of meaning. It is in the telling and re-telling, the rolling over of images and words in her mind looking for a glimpse of a larger truth, that allows her to own these memories. I love being able to give my son and daughter the sweet memories that go with a childhood well-lived. But I also want to claim some for myself.

I don't want my identity to be defined by scarcity. I want to understand the past so that I can build a different future. I want to be able to offer my children, and me, a scaffolding of history within which identity is built. I want to understand the ways in which events come together to create a life. 
 

In her book The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion asks these questions: “What was the meaning and what was the experience? To what thought or reflections did the experience lead us?”

This is the third story in a series on the topic of Writing and Memories – a topic that evolved in Cori's online Writing for Moms classes. 

By Patricia Ann Savage

I am 58 years old and until the summer of this year, I had never considered writing about my first experience of motherhood. This is unusual because I write all the time. But it wasn’t until I took an online class called Writing for Moms that I thought about writing about conceiving, carrying, birthing and caring for my oldest daughter who entered my life when I was 16 years old.

All through the brief courtship with my daughter's father, who I met when I was 15, I wrote the usual teenage odes to love and betrayal, rife with hope, good intention and fear. And when I read them now, I am shocked to see that there is no connection with what should be the obvious gravity of my situation. I was 16. I had had sex twice and I was pregnant.

So now, all these years later, I ask: is memory reliable? What was that moment really like?  When I think about my adolescence now, I infuse the reflection with experience, education and expectations based on social norms. I "think" that it must have been an untenable experience for an adolescent to be in.  It must have been.

But how can I transcend my perspective today and allow myself to become immersed in that time in order to write about it? Is there value in trying to tear down the defenses that graced me with the strength to live through this? And if so, what part of the "memory" would be "true"?

This is a common dilemma in memoir writing. But this is also the underlying complexity of shared memory. I am often flabbergasted to hear my daughters' recollections of our shared experiences because they can differ so much from my own version. On the other hand, our personal interpretation of memory can be the sustaining underwriters in situations of loss, grief, rescue and choice.

Because of this, I am giving myself license to peel into the multi-layered onion of my life in my writing. I want to look at my memories of early motherhood and sift through the experience to find the essence that vibrates something inside me, because that resonance is vital and seeks to be heard

My unplanned, teenage pregnancy was shrouded in secrecy, suppressed by feelings of shame. I discounted myself as so many people discounted me for making such bad choices, for playing Russian Roulette with a child’s life, for throwing away all the potential I had to make something of myself.

So when I remember things and give voice to what I lived, I am re-living the experience for the second time. This, like breathing, is essential.

Patricia Savage is writer, dancer and psychotherapist. She lives in northern Ontario on a river that tumbles over a set of rapids and flows into the Mighty Magnetawan. She has two daughters and three beautiful grandchildren. Her dog and horse are her daily companions and she feels truly blessed to be living surrounded by nature.

This is the second story in a series on the topic of Writing and Memory – a topic that evolved in one of Cori's online Writing for Moms classes. 

By Kate Barry Oliviero

I write because it makes me a better mother. 

As a stay-at-home mom to three children under the age of four, I spend the majority of my time taking care of other people – cooking meals, changing diapers, doing laundry and kissing boo boos. But the time I give myself to write is mine. There is something delicious about the companionship of a blank page. With each word and emotion that spills out, I feel more like myself, the woman I used to be before I became forevermore a mother first. For the length of an afternoon nap, my thoughts are my own. I emerge refreshed, clear-headed and smiling. Writing is a gift I give to myself. 

But writing is also a gift I give to my children. I am the keeper of their memories, the person creating their childhoods and the one charged with remembering the important parts: first words, favorite lullabies, Halloween costumes, birthday party themes and favorite foods. 

When my daughter Lucy was two years old she suddenly hated sleeping alone. She asked why her twin brothers got to sleep together, and mommy and daddy slept together, but she, Lucy, was all alone every night. My solution was to buy Lucy a fish to keep on the nightstand next to her bed. For a couple of days, the fish worked its magic. And then one night Lucy came downstairs shortly after I had put her to bed. “Mom,” she said in her raspy young voice. “I want a real person. With legs.” These are the moments that I cherish. And the moments that someday I want to be able to share with her. But if I don’t write them down, I might forget. No, I most definitely will.

All of my childhood memories are infused with my mother. My brother and I orbited around her (though, maybe, in retrospect, it happened the other way around). All I have to do is close my eyes to remember how her eyes twinkled when she laughed, how she held her soft hands on the steering wheel of our grey Volvo and the way her hair smelled like lavender. Mom remembers that I had chicken pox on the bottom of my feet when I was ten and that I lost nine retainers in a single year. She remembers that I thought my name was “Dear” and kept all my crayons in a pink plastic purse. For all I know Mom might be making it up. But whenever I have a question about my childhood, she has an answer.

I live in constant fear that someday I will look back on this period of my life – newly married with three small children – and only remember the struggles: the days when I resent my husband or yell unnecessarily or check email when I should be sitting on the floor with the kids doing puzzles. Capturing the small, sweet moments is my way of guaranteeing that this doesn’t happen. Writing has the power to make memories more vivid. And on the page, beauty, humor and understanding can be found in everything.

Why do you write? 

Over the next few weeks, I'll be running a series here on the Momoir blog about Memories and Writing and how the two converge and transform each other. These blogs were originally created for a series on SheWrites, but they were so good, I wanted to make sure to share them here as well. Hope you will follow along and comment and participate in the discussion about how and why we turn our memories into stories and for whom. Audience…audience…

Here's my story to start it off:

I lie in bed and stare at the pictures on my dresser. My daughter’s six-year-old face stares back at me. I examine her slight smile, her crooked tie, her straight, dark hair carefully tucked to one side. Suddenly, I am overwhelmed with sadness. She’s now in Grade 2 and I haven’t been paying enough attention. Days slip by and I’m constantly overwhelmed and distracted by work, deadlines, groceries, meals, laundry, doctors appointments and homework that I’ve forgotten to play with her for weeks now, forgotten to slow down and just sit with her, to stop what I’m doing and just be with her.

Months have passed and I haven’t written a thing about her. That’s really what this sadness is about. I can give myself a hard time, but really, I have paid attention. I have played with her, read to her, held her, kissed her. It’s just never enough.

My real sadness is about the undocumented passage of time. If I write it down, I have a written record to return to in moments like these, in moments of forgetfulness – something that will transport me back to times I don’t remember, moments of intense awe and bliss or struggle that become a general haze. Without words, my memories are like a fog, bereft of the details that matter.

I started writing about my kids when they were born – and for that, I’m so grateful. I can go back anytime through the scrapbooks I made for them and read about lazy summer afternoons at the beach with my first baby, or walking under the falling leaves with my daughter in her sling until she fell asleep.

I go back to those books often. I am more sentimental and nostalgic than I ever thought possible. But I wish I had had more direction in creating those books. I wrote all my feelings onto scraps of paper – feelings of resentment about my work, struggles with sleep and nighttime feedings — stuff my children don’t ever need to read.

I wish I’d known then what I know now: to keep two books, one for me and one for them. In mine, I now write all the sentimental memories, the marital struggles, the challenges with parenting. In their books, I write stories for them – stories about amazing things they said or did, stories that show the people they are becoming, stories of growing up and exploring the world. 

It wasn’t until I started teaching other moms to write their memoirs that I understood the importance of “audience” – even in scrapbooks. As a professional writer, I understand its value in memoir writing. But it’s a value that applies across the board.

I’m so glad I got a chance to correct my mistakes and start keeping two records while my kids are still young. What about you? Do you keep two records? How do you record your memories of motherhood?

One morning a few weeks ago, I walked into my daughter’s grade two classroom at lunch to bring her the pair of rain boots she had accidentally forgotten at home. When I peered in the doorway, I could see her sitting at her desk, her long, straight brown hair falling across her face, opening her lunch box. I walked quietly and gave her my million-dollar smile and leaned over to give her a kiss when the boy beside her says, “Awkward.”

But it’s not just the word, it’s the way he said it that made me want to slap him across the face. I would never do that, of course, and I tend to love all children but the word awkward and its new pervasive use in our culture is driving me mad. I hear it all the time when my kids watch those horrible shows like Suite Life on Deck and Shake it Up! There’s a whine associated with the word in its popular usage, an emphasis on the first syllable that grates at the ear. 

What was really infuriating – beyond the interruption of a beautiful moment – was that it wasn’t awkward. I was a mom visiting her 7-year-old daughter at lunch. Seven-year-olds kiss their moms. They’re still small and cute. It would be awkward if I walked the same way into my son’s Grade 5 classroom. That would have been more than awkward. It would have been mortifying. But this innocent trip? Nothing awkward about it.

And yet, the result of his inane comment was that my daughter was embarrassed to see me. She kissed me shyly, not enthusiastically. She looked around at her friends and I could see that she was gauging their reaction. I think they all saw the daggers in my eyes and didn’t say anything. I hope they understood how rude it was and how inappropriate.

My daughter is at that age when our culture starts to push hard for independence. She’s at that poignant crossroads, preparing for the time when I let her go to the park alone or to the store. But not yet. She’s not ready to push me away. Not because she’s 7, but because of who she is. She can clean her room, get herself a snack, play on her own in her room, but she still likes it when I’m there to pick her up from school at the end of the day. And she likes it when I surprise her in the middle of the day with a surprise visit. Not anymore. One word ruined has ruined that possibility forever.

My seven-year-old is not a teenager. She doesn’t need to feel embarrassed when her mom pops into her classroom. She should feel honored that I took time out of my busy day to make sure she had her boots, to give her a midday kiss. She doesn’t need the word awkward in her life. And neither do I.