Saturday, May 26, 2012

You and Your Siblings Had Different Parents



For almost three years now I’ve been submitting essays monthly to a print magazine called Black Lamb. (http://www.blacklamb.org/) Some of these articles have been opinion pieces, some book reviews, some humor; but most of them have been memoirs of changing points in my life.

I intend, when the time is right and before I forget, to self-publish a collection of these pieces in a small edition for my children, and for my grandchildren and future descendants. Over the years as a teacher of life-story-writing classes, I have stressed the importance of leaving behind a written record of our times, our choices, our changes, and what we have learned from our successes and failures, our good calls and our mistakes. I wish, and my students have agreed with me, that my own parents, grandparents, and ancestors from generations past had left me books like this to read.

Speaking of mistakes, though, let me tell you about mistake I made last week. This month’s issue of Black Lamb has an essay by me about my father, a man I never knew, because he died when I was two years and one day old. I told of the many fine things I had learned about my father, from friends and family members who knew him well. I also mentioned that he was occasionally beset by lengthy stretches of melancholy, which my mother called his “Welsh moods.”

I made the mistake of sending a tear-sheet of the article to my older brother, who knew our father well, because my brother was fifteen when our father died. So well does my brother remember our father that he wrote back and corrected me. Apparently our father was not moody, but was always cheerful.

My mistake was not that I got my facts wrong. Maybe I was mistaken about my father’s alleged moodiness, but I was only reporting what I had heard. My mistake was not that I chose to include dark news when I talked about my father; as writers we’re supposed to explore the dark side, just as we’re expected to celebrate the bright. My mistake was to send this essay to my brother. What was I thinking? I should have suspected that he would be disturbed to read that his hero might occasionally have been gloomy.

The lesson I learned from this mistake: choose your audience carefully. And remember that memory is a creative, inaccurate record. If you have siblings and you write about your parents, the chances are your memories will not match theirs. No two or more siblings remember the same parents.

17 comments:

  1. You are definitely right, John--memory is a creative, inaccurate record. That's also why witness accounts are taken with a grain of salt by the law.
    In my other profession as a genealogist I often run up against such 'mistakes,' generally passed down as family legends. Many are surprised, some actually angered when evidence proves the legend to be false.

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  2. Truer words were never spoken. My siblings and I have spirited discussions from time to time because our memories are so different, as are our ages. But sometimes you just have to write what you have to write and hope for the best. You can't please everyone. Thanks for sharing.

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  3. No two siblings remember their parents the same way, nor do they react in a similar fashion to an identical childhood environment.

    Take for the example an alcoholic father and his two sons.

    As an adult, one refuses to drink a single drop. His sibling, however, follows the same self-destructive path of alcohol excess. What's fascinating is both ask, "What choice did I have?" to explain their clearly opposite codes of behavior.

    Great post, John!

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  4. Thanks for your comments, John, Marja, and Anne. Memory is a slippery thing, and I wonder why when we're asked to testify in court, we're instructed to tell "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." Nobody can do that. The most anyone can promise is to refrain from lying intentionally.

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  5. John thank you for this post, when my mother was alive each of her seven children thought that each one was her favorite until after her death and three of us were talking and realized that she was indeed a remarkable lady for we all thought that we were the favorite. Memorial day is a wonderful time to thank those who have protected our country, but also for those who made a difference.

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  6. How true! We lost my father a year ago this month. To say I was a "Daddy's girl" is an understatement. Not only was I close to him but, in many ways, I'm a lot like him. I know my Dad wasn't perfect but I "got" him, maybe because we were so much alike.
    However, I've learned not to talk about him with my siblings. They say I overlook his shortcomings; I say they never understood him. It's not worth the argument!

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    1. You're right, Patricia. Not worth an argument, because nobody's going to budge. It is interesting, though, to compare notes and find out how perceptions differ.

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  7. There's a little hagiography that comes into play as well. People seem to get wiser, kinder, bigger than life, in death.

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    1. Bill, you're right: hagiography happens. Also demonology, because sometimes we inflate the injustices we remember suffering. Part of writing about the past is to glorify it. Another part involves getting even.

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  8. I have 8 original brothers and sisters and 5 half sibs. When we get together we do talk about Dad. None of our memories match when we talk about the same stories. We have agreed to disagree. It funny, some of our memories are the same, like cliff diving when camping in Canada (okay we ranged from 4 yrs to 9 yrs, the babies weren't born yet). No mom and dad wouldn't let us cliff dive back then, but that's my story and I'm sticking with it. Bill is right, the longer they're gone, the bigger than life they become.

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    1. Kat, maybe we writers have a way of turning memories into stories, and we writers tend to make our stories bigger than life.

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  9. Interesting post, John. As an only child without children I'm always interested in "sibling" insights. My hubby has three sisters, so I'm not completely ignorant--but hearing and being there are certainly different things. So interesting your perspective on point of view, and what you took from it.

    On the light side, as an only child, I can see and say whatever I want however I want without reality calling me to task. It's my world alone--right or wrong. Most probably wrong! (smile)

    Always enjoy your posts!

    Madeline

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    1. Thanks, Madeline. I enjoy your posts, too. Even though you don't have siblings with whom to compare notes about the past, I expect you have old friends with shared experiences that are remembered differently.

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  10. I write memoir and personal essay all the time, John, as I think you know, and I run many workshops related to this. No, you shouldn't have shared that essay with your brother. If your brother has a different memory of your father, he should write his own essay. This sounds like something William Zinsser said or wrote, and maybe he did. I live by that rule and encourage students to do the same. There's a wonderful freedom in knowing you don't have to censor yourself, you don't have to run the personal essay past all the siblings or, if they're alive, Mom and Dad. If there's an essay about childhood that I publish that might offend one of my surviving cousins or stir up conflicting memories among them, I simply don't tell them about it, nor do I post it on my website. Eventually, I'll collect and publish these pieces if I can, but I have lots more to write. Thanks for another great blog.

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  11. I agree with you, Eileen. Years ago I had the pleasure and honor of publishing a collection of memoir pieces by John Espey. Espey had already published dozens of such pieces in The New Yorker, and they had been collected into book form and published by Knopf. But the ones he brought to me, which we published as STRONG DRINK, STRONG LANGUAGE, were the essays he couldn't publish until after his parents were both dead.

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  12. My sister swears I was an only child!

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