Writing Your Life Story Part 6: Collect Memories in Letters

Cross My Heart

Cross My Heart © 2011 Bo Mackison

Write letters for the Memoir Project?

Yes. It’s a quick project with many benefits.

My mother’s only cousin turns 90 in a few days. (Happy Birthday, Cousin Pauline!) I have a card ready to pop in the mail, but I didn’t want to send wishes for her big day without adding a personal note.

It would have been easier for me to scribble a few words and sign a big “I love you!” at the bottom of the card, but while I was trying to come up with the right few words, I realized that this birthday event would be a perfect time to do some life story writing “on the fly.”

That’s mostly how I write my life story – in little projects that add up over time.

How easy would it be to pen a special memory to a special person when it is time to send a special card?  Sure, it adds extra minutes to the card choosing and address writing basics, but a card with a handwritten note is so much more meaningful, especially if it recounts a memorable time for the recipient.

I chose a photo-art card that featured a rose on the cover, remembering that Pauline had a very small yard, but she always had rose bushes flanking her home’s front door. Then I brainstormed to recall a few memories from weekend visits with Pauline and her husband. In less than a half hour I had come up with a few details I thought Pauline would enjoy reading.

Here is an excerpt from the letter I eventually wrote:

I always loved visiting your home in the big city. There were always special trips to the mall. I still remember how fascinated I was that the largest department store in your mall had a roof shaped like a two-story-tall woman’s hat — it even had a pink bow and tiny windows.

But one weekend when we visited, I was too distracted to enjoy myself.

Our visit came a few weeks before the end of the school semester. I was struggling with my math assignments and worried about the upcoming comprehensive exam. Math was never much to my liking, and I talked myself into an inability to memorize the multiplication and division tables.

To make matters even worse,  you were a highly respected math teacher at the junior high school where you taught and the math department head and you had recently completed the coursework for your masters’ degree in mathematics. I was impressed at your math accomplishments, but also terrified that you would quiz me on my math facts and I would be embarrassed, not knowing the right answers.

But you surprised me. When you asked how I was doing in school, I blurted out, “I love school…all but math. I hate math!”

I remember you looked at me, first with surprise, and then you broke into prolonged laughter. Finally you wiped a few tears from your eyes and called me over to your overstuffed chair. You pulled me onto your lap, and whispered, “Why don’t you tell me what part of math you hate the very most?”

Pauline, I remember you gave me a big hug after I told you I was “no good at multiplying.”

You nodded your head, and you said, “There are things that you can do very well and things you can’t. And that is OK. If math is one of those not so good things, maybe I can teach you a few tricks to make it easier.”

You called it “math magic” and you showed me how to maneuver the numbers in my head while I was multiplying. If I was trying to figure out the answer to 8 times 6, and I didn’t know the 6 tables very well, but I did know the 5 tables, you told me how to multiply 8 times 5 (easy!) and just add another 8 for the right total.

Presto! That math trick, and several others, helped me conquer some of my math fear and I went home with a better attitude about math facts.

But, Pauline, this is really what you taught me that weekend – that it is OK if you are good at some things, and not so good at others. Thank you, not just for the math lesson, for the lesson about life.

I mailed the letter, but first I made a copy to put in my memoir container.

I also checked my calendar for the remainder of the year and picked a special event — birthday, anniversary, graduation — for each month.

I put a reminder on my calendar to send a special occasion card with a “memoir letter.”

When I break my life writing into tiny steps and make them serve a special purpose, such as writing a quick story in a card, it is easy for snippets of memories to get captured on paper.

Do you have any special occasions that are coming up in the next month or two? Why not put a note on your calendar to add a story to your card? You’ll document a bit more of your life story, and the recipient will get a special gift, too.

Next: Part 7,  Jump Start Your Writing

Praise the Day – A Poem

image

Tree in Yellow © 2014 Bo Mackison

Praise the day, first light
illuminates tree tops,
then a glow glides through the leaves,
flickers upon the trunk, touches the earth.

Praise the bird chatter.
Cacophony. Praise that word,
such a wild word, a burst of joy.

Praise the velvet acacias, yellow bloom,
yellow fuzz masks the pavement
encircling its shaggy trunk. Bees and stardust.
The tree alive with buzz and bee swarm.

Praise the mountain, a silhouette.
Its face awakens, creased in purple and gray,
shadow and light.

image

Tea Kettle © 2014 Bo Mackison

Praise the tea kettle, the tea, the water.
My cup with tea leaves clustered in the depths,
dispersed into shapes and symbols – a butterfly,
a beetle, a crescent moon.

Praise the ease, the work, the solitude.
Sip the tea and praise.

The tree a storyteller; the bees her audience.
The tea a refreshment; the tea leaf a message.

Writing Your Life Story Part 5: Finding the Perfect Container

Open For Business
Open for Browsing © 2010 Bo Mackison

Awareness is not the same as thought. It lies beyond thinking, although it makes no use of thinking, honoring it’s value and it’s power. Awareness is more like a vessel which can hold and contain our thinking, helping us to see and know our thought as thought rather than getting caught up in them as reality. ~~ Jon Kabit-Zinn

The Memoir Project invites you to take a writing break. Go on a treasure hunt instead.

This is a treasure hunt to find the perfect vessel to “hold and contain your thinking,” those bits of memoir writing and projects you are collecting as the months pass by. (Although if your schedule permits, you could both write a story or two and go searching for that special container.)

Your container can be as plain or fancy as you wish, as decorative or functional as suits your own temperament. Of course, you may already own a special container and simply need to re-purpose it. Or a trip to the local shops may inspire you to examine boxes, baskets, and bags.

Leather Bag - Antique ShopAntique Leather Bag © 2010 Bo Mackison

I scoured the antique shops for a sewing basket to hold my growing stash of memoir projects.

My grandmother, a seamstress by profession, had a varnished wicker sewing basket, maybe fourteen inches in diameter, with a flat wicker lid. The top was decorated with a tassel of threads and buttons. I record many memories of my early years when I lived with my grandparents, and it would be meaningful to find a similar basket for my memoir storage.

What kind of container is right for your memoir collection?

A cookie tin for the baker in the family? A pink vintage suitcase for the traveler or wanna be traveler? A picnic basket for the outdoors enthusiast?

Set of Pink Ventana Suitcases - Antique ShopPink Vintage Luggage © 2010 Bo Mackison

Maybe an old-fashioned doll trunk to hold a trunkful of childhood memories? A bamboo box for the naturalist? A quilted bag to hold an accumulation of old letters and memorabilia? Or one of these great hat boxes to hold reminders of the “good ol’ days?”

Marshall Field Hat Boxes - Antique ShopMarshall Field Hat Box © 2010 Bo Mackison

What container will you choose for your memoir stash?

When you find the perfect container to contain your collection of writings and other memoir media, why not take thirty minutes to write about your choice and how it relates to the life story you are recording.

Then gather your memoir projects and put them all in their new home.

Next: Part 6, Collect Memories in Letters

Desert Art – Chihuly Night Show at Desert Botanical Gardens

Red Reeds at Twilight

Red Reeds at Twilight © 2014 Bo Mackison

Chihuly’s art glass on exhibit at Desert Botanical Gardens in Phoenix.

After dark, the installations are illuminated , and offer a totally different viewing experience.

Illuminated Purple Reeds

Illuminated Purple Reeds © 2014 Bo Mackison

Summer Sun by Chihuly, Night

Summer Sun by Chihuly, Night © 2014 Bo Mackison

Yellow Octopi in the Cacti

Yellow Octopi in the Cacti © 2014 Bo Mackison

Blue Sapphire Star at Night

Blue Sapphire Star at Night © 2014 Bo Mackison

 

Writing Your Life Story Part 4: Why Write Your Story?

Polyvitro Chandelier and Tower

Polyvitro Chandelier and Tower © 2014 Bo Mackison

Friends, family, even strangers ask: “Why should I write down my life story?” “I haven’t anything important to share.” “Who would want to read about my life?”

So . . . why write my life story or memoir?

Different writers have different reasons, but here are a few:

Memoir writing can be therapeutic.

Writing your way through a difficult period of life, or writing about the learning of a challenging life lesson can help put the experience into perspective.

Memoirs provide teaching moments.

A good memoir focuses on an event or series of events that evoke a change in the author — perhaps a change of view, a change of feelings, a change for better (or worse.)

Memoirs provide for personal sharing and keep moments alive.

This sharing need not be for a large audience; the writing may only be written for family members or friends. It is a way of documenting a part of their lives, too. I recalled a poem I recently read that described a moment by a writer as he watched his words being read by another.

A day will come I’ll watch you reading this.
I’ll look up from these words I’m writing now—
this line I’m standing on, I’ll be right here,
alive again. I’ll breathe on you this breath.
~~ excerpt from the poem The One Certain Thing by Peter Cooley

Ask yourself. Why write about your life, your memories?

This makes a great writing prompt. Are you writing to resolve an old issue? Are you writing to share a major shift in your actions or way of thinking? Or like the poet, are you writing your story, even in a small way, for posterity?

Consider writing down your reasons and making it a part of your memoir collection.

Next: Part 5, The Perfect Container