Post #23 – Women’s Memoirs, Writing and Healing – Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler
We are so often admonished to “stay in the moment,” to “be in the here and now” that it’s become a cultural cliché.
“Don’t look back,” we are urged, slightly frantically. “Forget about the past,” and even, “get over it!”
But for memoir writers returning to the past is staying in the moment, as we breathe brilliant color into shadowy scenes of yesterday.
Historian and memoirist, A.L. Rowse, wrote: “To hear about the old days and the old people, sitting by my father… opened a window into the realm of the mind away from the present which I never liked much. It needed to become the past before it had much savor for me.”
I’ve always felt guilty about feeling this way, but I’m glad Rowse said it, loud and clear, and unapologetically. I cannot appreciate the “here and now” in all its fullness and complexity until it begins to recede into the past. I need time to play with the moment, to see it up close and then faraway, from one angle and then another.
In her children’s book Arthur for the Very First Time, author Patricia MacLachlan writes about time and perspective when Arthur goes to the country to visit his great-aunt and great-uncle during a difficult summer at home:
“Uncle Wrisby handed the binoculars to Arthur.
“Look in the little end if you want to see things close up,” he said. “The other end makes everything far away.”
“Far away? Why would you want to see things far away?” asked Arthur.
“Sometimes you see just as well,” said his uncle. He looked at Arthur thoughtfully. “Sometimes better.”
Although, like A.L. Rowse, I appreciate the present more fully when it becomes the past, there have been rare instances when I recognized a timeless moment while it was unfolding. It happened once in 2005 when my family and I were living in Florence, Italy. Our daughter, Annelise, was eleven at the time. One April afternoon
the two of us went on a hike in Fiesole, a hill town above Florence. On top of Monte Ceceri we met Anita, a German woman, and trekked with her to the neighboring town of Settignano. We walked up and down gentle hills, through orchards and olive groves, past fields and farms with red poppies blooming against ancient stone barns. I looked at Annelise running and laughing, seeming to skim weightlessly over the shining fields. As I watched her, I thought, I will never forget this moment. In that fleeting instant, I entered a new realm of time. I was watching my daughter run through the fields in the past, present, and future. Time stretched and touched all three dimensions simultaneously.
Maybe because I’m a memoir writer, I love time-travel movies, rich with possibilities for contemplating overlapping dimensions of time.
In Somewhere in Time Richard Collier (Christopher Reeve) uses self-hypnosis to travel through time back to 1912 to find his lost love. He does find her, but he loses her again when a 1979 penny accidentally drops out of his old-fashioned suit pocket, shattering the illusion of living in the past, and hurtling him forward to the harsh reality of modern-day 1980.
In Peggy Sue Got Married, Peggy Sue, played by Kathleen Turner, goes back to her high school days with her adult sensibilities and perspective, and discovers the secret sorrows and ambitions of her estranged husband. Inevitably, the movie makes you wonder what you would do if you could return to an earlier era in your life? What would you say to your family and your friends? To your little sister, your first love, your ex-husband? Would you speak up, or would you simply watch and observe, keeping the delicious secret of time travel to yourself, while perhaps choosing another fork in the road? Most importantly, what would you say to yourself?
Big starring Tom Hanks reverses the Peggy Sue premise. In this film, Josh acquires an adult body while remaining a thirteen-year old inside. Ultimately, he makes the choice to return to his childhood and live the years he missed. In some sense all of us are children in adult bodies, longing to go back to savor or reexamine the years that went by too quickly and with too little consciousness of the irremediable passing of time.
All three films play with time and urge us, each in their own way, to go back to the past to unearth its secrets and bring back wisdom. And the wisdom is for now – it’s for the present.
For memoir writers returning to the past is the ultimate way to be in the moment – long ago, in the here and now.
Memoir writing and healing prompt:
What methods do you use to make the past come to life in your memoir? Do films, music, or books play a role? What about journals, photos and old letters? Please leave us a comment and share your adventures in time-travel.
