Post #38 – Women’s Memoirs, Writing Prompt – Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler
Matilda Butler
Tax Time Really Can Be Fun
I suppose that title is an exaggeration. It certainly is for me this year because an organization making a distribution to us inadvertently (almost a fair statement) began paying taxes to a state where we do not live and not paying taxes to the state where we do live. Trying to straighten this out is not a lot of fun. I imagine I will soon have two states coming after me.
Current problems aside, let me share with you some fun that I had recently. While working on this year’s taxes, I decided to take a break and go back to my tax files for 1985. I have all my tax records since 1970. And by that I mean I have all the backup information for every single number on my filed tax documents. I’ve tried to throw them away numerous times. But the person who helped me with taxes for many years told me that it would be better if I kept everything. So, here I am working on taxes for 2009, adding even more inches to my file drawers full of years past.
Just for a bit of relief, I pulled out all the records for one year to see if I could start getting rid of some of the supporting documents. Don’t ask me how I happened to choose 1985. I think my fingers just landed on that folder in one of the metal file cabinets. I threw away all the monthly phone bills, bank statements, car and house insurance papers, etc. I even found a letter from my mother wedged between two records. Since I have few of her letters, it was interesting to find this one and read it with the psychological distance that time brings. My mother died five years ago and we had never been especially close. I think I gained an insight into her from this letter. But that’s not the point of this blog.
At the end of burning these assorted papers in the fireplace, I got down to the final element, my checks. I started going through them:
Check #1641 Drapers $76.15
I wondered, “Did I have some drapes made? Did I get drapes cleaned?”
Check #1642 N.F.I.P. $123.00
“Oh yes. I’d forgotten. Our previous home was in a flood zone and we had to have insurance from the National Flood Insurance Program.”
Check #1643 Palo Alto Medical Clinic $8.00
“Twenty-five years ago, a reasonable medical cost for a test was $8.00.”
Check #1644 Albert L. Schultz J.C.C. $147.00
“Our after-school day care solution for our youngest son was a great program at the Jewish Community Center located not far from his elementary school.”
Check #1645 Great Western $430.20
“One more S&L that got swallowed by another financial institution that eventually became known as Washington Mutual (I think their executives testified before Congress last Friday) and more recently was rescued by Chase. My mortgage payments seem definitely reasonable by today’s standards.”
Check #1646 Brentwood $36.59
“That was our local grocery store. We used to walk over there. It was adjacent to a Chinese restaurant where we’d eat once a week. When our youngest son was small, we’d read his fortune cookie to him and it always said — ‘You will have a Chinese dinner and go straight home to bed.’ The fortune never came true as he was a night owl from the moment he was born, but we kept trying. The grocery store is called Piazza’s now.”
Check #1647 Liquor Barn $203.73
“Boy was that a long time ago. We no longer drink at all. Just think of all the money we are saving.”
Check #1648 Drapers $76.15
“Oh wait. I remember. Drapers was a music store in Palo Alto. Our youngest son took guitar lessons there. That was before we hired a neighbor’s son to teach him. Julian had graduated from Boston’s Berklee College of Music and taught our son music theory and notation as well as playing techniques. Years later, when our son taught at a private high school, he developed a music course for the students around some of the principles that he learned from Julian. I’d forgotten all of that.”
It is checks #1641 and #1648 that got me thinking about a different type of writing prompt. When I teach, I talk about many kinds of records that prove useful for research. But only with these checks in my hands did I realize that they are great writing prompts. I thought of many stories as I leafed through my stack. So here’s the writing prompt for this week, unusual though it may be:
Memoir Writing Prompt
1. If you have saved checks from past tax years, get out one year’s worth. Since you probably keep them in date sequence, start with the first check for January and go forward until the voice that is always talking with you begins to tell a narrative. A long forgotten story will suddenly seem full-blown and well remembered. Write 300 or 400 words about the story that the check tells.
2. If you don’t have checks from previous years, try going back to January of 2009. Most of us now have electronic records rather than physical checks. My bank charges extra to return the checks, so I don’t get them. However, I see maintain a handwritten transaction register. Look for names and places that trigger a strong memory. Write 300 or 400 words.
Hope this prompt gives you a bit of fun as you finish this year’s tax filing. Many of you are already finished. Meantime, I’m still trying to figure out if I have to file in the state where taxes were paid even though we have never lived there and if I should over pay in the state where we do live even though they don’t know about the income. Hum.
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