What possesses a person to write a memoir? In my case it is most definitely not for myself.You see,life just happens from my perspective. I've never really stopped to think that others might find it interesting or informative.To me,I'm just living my life,day by day and year to year and I usually don't take the time to reflect on it as much as I likely should.For the longest time I just never gave the living of life much thought.
But by now I've lived quite a number of years and I'm beginning to get more reflective.I'm at an age now where I've lost both parents and at least two best friends,both of whom left much too early.Years could be ,are in fact, winding down,though I'm in reasonably good health.But I find myself confronted more than ever by some of life's bigger questions.So a big part of writing for me is just trying to make sense out of a lot of different things.
Once when we were really young,I asked my grandfather to read us our bedtime story,but he declined.It's not that he didn't know any stories,but he would have to tell them.He declined on this occasion and later,my mother explained to us that he couldn't read.I'm guessing he didn't write either.But he was a larger than life sort of a character,a bootlegger in the 1920's,said to be wealthy for a while at the end of prohibition,and,to the best of my ability to observe,a rather tortured individual with a great passion for the bottle.Had he told his life's story,had he had the skills to do so,it would no doubt made for a great read.But he never did.There are,of course many larger than life stories about him,and I'm certain to include a few here,but they are stories he never told himself,for reasons known only to him.But I must say,he had no small part in inspiring me to begin writing my own history,first in numerous journals,then in memoir form.You see,it's nothing short of a great tragedy when history is lost,and most any life is worth the telling.So I vowed not to let my own go unexplained.
I am a big proponent of taking ownership of ones own history too.Not to do so is dangerous.It leaves you to be defined by others and that is unacceptable to me.History just tends to get explained in the macro sense by media,by historians and politicians.Those are the sort of things that wind up in history textbooks.But really,I've never really found that history texts explain much about my life,or the lives of people I've met along the way.
Everyone comes into various sorts of conflict in their lives too.It's unavoidable.The result of not addressing that reality is that you may come to be defined in less than flattering terms by others.It's not that I crave flattery,but I've had some downright untruthful,mean spirited and even evil things said of me by others over the years.I cannot address these things in any other way but by telling my own story,from my own point of view.To me,memoir is kind of like voting.If you don't vote,you don't have much of a right to complain.If you don't write down your own history,you don't have much of a claim on other people getting it wrong,be they historians driven by political agendas,or by those pretenders in life that presume to tell the story of someone they really don't know.At least as intimately as they presume to.
For the most part,I've undertaken memoir writing for others.But why? At first look my life doesn't seem that compelling.I'm not a professional athlete,or The Prime Minister of Canada. I've never walked on the moon,discovered a cure for cancer or been in a war,or prison,or a hostile nation.In my own view,my life has been kind of ordinary.But that's just from my own point of view.
The older I get,the more I find others ask questions.The 1960's and 1970's are interesting to a lot of people,because they've not lived through those years.Easy enough to overlook if you have.Likewise,I suppose,an ordinary city,like the one I grew up in is exotic to someone somewhere.In fact,my favorite stories,be they faction or memoir,or anything else are the ones that immortalize a particular place and time.So I guess I should expect that of others as well and try to do that with my own life and times.
The world I grew up in and in which I find myself today is characterized by change.I only have to think about all the things in the world today that were not there when I was younger.Personal computers,GPS systems,CDs,Pokemon Go,the list is endless.I'm surprised I don't look back at those early years and think them primitive. But others might There is likely a greater difference between those years and now than there was between 1900 and 1960..From that angle,alone,the telling of ones own story is a worthy undertaking.Every once in a while I'm reminded in some amusing sort of a way that not everyone understands those years.When I make mention of driving a Pinto or living someplace where there was outdoor plumbing,or a hundred other little things that tend to date me.I don't really mind though.The trip back in time is as fascinating to me as it could ever possibly be to anyone else.
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