Ritergal's Horrible, Awful, Terribly Bad Day

Moan, groan, bitch and whine. I’m entitled to a pity party, and you are all invited. What?! You say you don’t want to come? That you have other more urgent plans, like watching the bread in your pantry grow mold? Can’t say as I blame you. Who wants to attend a pity party? Nobody, that’s who. Including me. I don’t even want to attend my own.

So, why do I write about it? Because it’s real. It’s true. It’s me, and it’s now. Yes, Accuweather.com assures me that tomorrow the sun will shine, but right now I’m feeling bogged down. Word is giving me fits (have I ever mentioned how much I hate Microsoft Word? And like OpenOffice?) as I work on my presentation for Story Circle Network’s Stories From the Heart conference that begins on February 1. I’m in over my head in trying to configure the wireless card for the laptop I converted to Ubuntu. I broke the rules on an Absolute Write Water Cooler forum game thread. I’m tired even thinking about figuring out how to put downloadable files on my website.

Enough of that. As I said, this is real. This day is my Truth. But, how many people are going to write for posterity about days like this? If you’re like me, you tend to paint your stories with a brush filled with sunshine, and paint out the storms and shadows. That’s okay. You may. But why not let your descendants see your back as well as your smile? Let them know that things weren’t perfect every day. After all, my current woes are hardly due to anything I’ve done. I’m simply overwhelmed by technology at the moment. They probably will be too. They may derive hope from evidence that they spring from resilient stock.

So, I choose to write about enough days like this to show them that “S(tuff) Happens,” and when it does, I deal with it. I’ll write about taking a break to read a few chapters of a mind candy novel to distract myself. About going to bed early for a few extra Zzzz’s so tomorrow I’ll wake refreshed and ready to tackle these puzzles anew. I’ll write about writer’s block and other barriers to writing.

In fact, just writing this blog about my horrible, awful, terribly bad day is making me feel better already. Should I delete the file now, or post this? Yes. I’ll post it. You may be having your own horrible, awful, terribly bad day. Yours may be way worse, like losing your job or something, and I wouldn’t want you to feel alone. Maybe readers who are feeling calm, joyful, or energetic will blow some virtual breaths of peace our way.

Write now: about a horrible, awful, terribly bad day, or even a whole season or year. List all the awful things about it, and how it came to and end. How the sun began to shine. If the sun hasn’t begun to shine yet, write about what the world will look like when it does.

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal

A Tangee Treasure Trove of Memories

I’m cleaning out a drawer in the hall bathroom. This bathroom has seldom been used since our youngest left home, longer ago than I care to recall. Searching in the back of the drawer, I find a pink plastic tube that holds a stick of something that looks like green wax. On a hunch, I remove the clear cap, swivel up the stick, and apply a bit to the heel of my hand. The green stuff turns vivid cherry pink.

My thoughts fly back to the year I was twelve. I spent lots of time that year eyeing Tangee lipstick at the Woolworth’s makeup counter. The junior-sized fake gold tube with a slider bar on the side held a stick of translucent, pale orange waxey goo that was said to turn the perfect color for any woman, based on her body chemistry. A barrage of memories connect with this one: secretly putting Tangee on at school and spending the whole walk home chewing it off, wallets and purses big enough for lipstick, comb, mirror, and all your friends' school pics, the girl’s dressing room/restroom in junior high, nylons and garter belts, “DA” haircuts, Eileen swooning over Elvis, dreams of being kissed.

As the mental slideshow clicks off, I return to the present. There has to be a story here, I think. But what’s the story? Is it the yearning of a coltish young girl to race around the track? Is it the allure of makeup for women across generations? Is it the flavor of the fifties?

I ponder the difference between just writing about Tangee lipstick and how it worked, how I was only allowed to wear it for special dress-up, like Rainbow Girls formal meetings, and how I graduated to more garish colors, and turning the facts into a story. Stories have a beginning, middle and end. They go beyond the facts to make sense of them and breathe life into them. Rather than elaborate, I suggest you click over and read a super story about Tangee lipstick by Amy Kennely. Amy's story is a masterful example of how to turn a couple of facts into a compelling story that shows her personality, her mother's, her friend's, and even that of the cosmetic's salewoman at the dime store.

Maybe my story today will be about how the yearning of that young girl engulfs every area of her budding life, stifled as Amy's was by a mother who wasn't ready for a daughter in lipstick and high heels. Or ... maybe it will be about the way finding one small artifact can open a fire hydrant of memories, and the challenge of finding “the story” within the resulting pool. I'm waiting for my muse Sarabelle to nudge me one direction or another

Write now: pull out your kitchen “junk drawer” or a seldom explored box and find a story in it. Check out more of Amy Kenneley's stories for further inspiration.

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal

One Memory (Link) Leads to Another

Not long ago I discovered Write Your Life, written by Seniorwriter, aka Marlys Marshall Styne. (I just added her site to my Links list.) The post I landed on, Teddy Turns Fifty, was about a teddy bear she bought as a gift for her newborn niece, Cynthia. Cynthia and Teddy just passed the half-century mark.

The post is delightful, and so are the comments. One comment mentioned what appeared to be a pile of diapers behind a shoulder. Seniorwriter replied, “Yes, Karen, I imagine that is, indeed, a stack of cloth diapers. I don't suppose that any other kind existed back then.”

My monkey mind hopped from that comment to a personal memory about disposable diapers. I had extensive experience with cloth diapers at an early age. I was eleven years old when my baby brother was born, so I was thoroughly familiar with every aspect of changing, rinsing the messes in the toilet, washing, hanging the wet rags on the clothesline to dry, then folding them. Changing diapers can’t be avoided, but the rest of that routine was a nasty drag to be avoided whenever possible! Not long before our first child was born, I heard of disposable diapers, and found the idea tantalizingly attractive.

Our first son was born in Boston in 1966, and the day he turned four weeks old, he and I boarded a plane to fly to Philadelphia as the first leg of an adventurous trip we would undertake as we relocated from Boston to Richland, Washington. Using cloth diapers his first four weeks were easy, thanks to a generous gift of diaper service from a compassionate grandmother. The fifth week was also easy, with Grandmother’s washing machine and dryer at hand.

Realizing that cloth diapers would be a problem during the drive across the country, Hubby and I searched stores around South Jersey for disposable diapers. Both selection and stock were meager, but we found enough to serve the purpose. The day he was five weeks old, we hit the road, with Baby happily ensconced in a folding canvas car bed/bassinet in the back seat. He was no problem at all on the long drive. When he was hungry, he joined Mommy in the front seat for a soothing swig of milk while Daddy drove. How simple! (How do parents manage to get anywhere today when children must be anchored firmly in the back seat at all times when the car is moving?)

Diapers weren’t a problem on the road. I could easily change them while kneeling backward on my seat. They became a problem the evening we spent in Omaha. Fortunately, we had nearly finished eating our dinner in a family restaurant near our motel when our wee tyke answered an exceedingly urgent call from Nature. I’ll spare you the details, other than to mention that the disposable diaper he was wearing might as well not have been there. Suffice it to say that I grabbed him, Infantseat and all, and ran to the car while Daddy paid the bill. We went straight back to the motel where Baby had a bath. When he was asleep in his car bed, I hand-washed all his clothing and blanket, and scrubbed the plastic Infantseat shell and liner. (That infant seat, baby carrier of choice in the 1960s and 70s for cars and everywhere else, appears in the photo.)

Even if cost hadn’t been a factor, this single experience was sufficient to allay any temptation to bypass the washing machine. My rinsing, soaking, washing and folding expertise came into play. Thank goodness, my dryer was a welcome change, and I didn't have to deal with a clothesline.

Isn’t it funny how reading one little thing like that comment, or seeing one seemingly insignificant detail in a photo can bring back a gush of memories? I could go on for pages with other diaper stories. I share this snip of one in hopes it will trigger similar memories for you — that one memory link will lead to another.

Write now: memories of diaper-related experiences, whether they be with your own children, children of friends or relatives, children you babysat for, or anyone else. Let the memories go where they will — potty training, washing clothes, hanging them on the clothes line, types of diapers, diaper-changing avoidance, etc.
Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal

The Quilter's Legacy

Some of the most poignant truth about life comes from novels, and that truth can have deep relevance for life writing, about our own life and others. Although I am not a quilter myself, I am attracted to the art, and recently became hooked on The Elm Creek Quilts series of novels by Jennifer Chiaverini. I just finished reading The Quilter’s Legacy, and a short passage on the final pages rings so true as it sums up the heart of life writing:

"Sylvia looked up from the guide, her gaze fixed on the New York Beauty quilt, but her thoughts far away. Whoever this Amelia Langley Davis was, she must have known Sylvia's mother. The details from her journal could not possibly have referred to any family but the Bergstroms. But if she was such a “dear friend,” why had Sylvia's mother never mentioned her—or had she, and had Sylvia carelessly allowed the stories to pass by unheard?

Her mother had confided little about her life before coming to Elm Creek Manor—but Amelia Langley Davis had also lived and worked in New York. Could she have been Sylvia's mother's nanny? Could she have been that distant relative or family friend who had taught her to quilt?

Grief came over Sylvia, for the stories lost, for those pieces of her mother's life she would never know. Now only her quilts remained, silent and steadfast testaments to the woman she had been.

And yet one other part of her legacy remained: Sylvia herself, and all that she recalled, and all that she had yet to discover.

Gazing at the quilt that had so long eluded her, Sylvia resolved to gather the precious scraps of her mother's history and piece them together until a pattern emerged, until she understood as well as any daughter could the choices her mother had made. She had no daughter to pass those stories along to, but she had Sarah, and she had Andrew’s children, and among them she would surely find one who would listen, so that her mother’s memory would endure.

She would begin by setting the record straight."

I feel Sylvia’s resolve as deeply as if she were a flesh and blood person. I also wonder about some of my female ancestors. I am intent on gathering precious scraps of their history and piecing them together with what I do know and remember, to create a historical legacy for my generations to come. Those women are our roots from which our current strength and being emerges. I honor the sacrifices and tribulations their lives required and the strength those experiences developed. I want their memories to live.

If you’ve already begun writing your own stories, you may take as much heart as I do from realizing that you are sparing your descendants from the need to solve these mysteries.

Write now: an overview of a parent or grandparent whose memory you want to keep alive. Get the basic facts recorded, then go back at your leisure and fill in the details and breath life into the memory with fully developed stories. Make that person as real for your descendants as she or he was for you.

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal

Brain Dumping

The story I started in the last post about story catching goes on. I learned that Stephanie and I needed to go beyond that interview. My understanding was that it would be a great help if I’d just write down a few memories from my childhood. That seemed simple enough. Or so it seemed, at first glance.

In a post about six weeks ago I mentioned that having finished The Albuquerque Years, I was moving on to The Los Alamos Years. Many readers may relate to my report that I’ve been feeling a little stuck with that project. Aside from life getting in the way over Christmas time, I was getting bogged down in detail and doing battle with my Inner Censor.

Yesterday brought an amazing breakthrough that benefited both needs: Stephanie’s project, and my own “stuckness.” I was ready for a quick break from the intense concentration I’ve maintained for a couple of days as I worked to prepare my presentation on “Picture Perfect Pages” for a session at the 2008 Stories From the Heart conference sponsored by Story Circle Network in Austin on February 2. I sat down at the keyboard and began a brain dump of my childhood. I covered the first six years in a single paragraph, because she can read about that in The Albuquerque Years.

Moving quickly through the turbulent year I attended four different first grades, I settled into Los Alamos. My fingers flew. I wasn’t concerned with format — paragraphs ran together, and I double-spaced between major thought clumps. As Natalie Goldberg would put it, I was simply "writing down the bones," and that’s best done at a goodly clip, without pausing for serious thought.

At first I’d thought I could finish this dump in, oh, maybe a couple of hours, tops, hopefully less. The clock said it had been six hours when I saved the file for the last time, but I had taken advantage of the astonishing 70º weather to do some quick yard clean-up and tend to other chores. Altogether, I spent about four hours on this brain dump. In the end, its 6750 words filled eleven pages.

This account barely scratches the surface of what I remember, but it does a good job of skimming the surface. If I were to die tomorrow and leave only this, at least my descendants would know there is an iceberg in the sea, even if they see only the tip. I feel very good about getting this much done. It’s a huge relief. Now I can go back at my leisure and write flesh onto these bones.

I think it will be much easier to fill in blanks in this framework than to have done it the way I began — trying to remember everything from a single year before moving on to the next. I should have known to do it this way to begin with. That’s how I began The Albuquerque Years, with a fast and furious brain dump (though that one took many hours longer). Later I went back and found the holes, more than doubling the length.

So, if you are feeling stuck, try doing a brain dump. Use broad strokes, and write as fast as you can. I used the computer. I have more endurance at the keyboard than with a pen or pencil, and had to get the product to Stephanie right away. You may do better writing by hand.

Write now: do a brain dump of something you’ve been putting off writing about. It doesn’t have to take hours — even ten or twenty minutes will give you a powerful start.

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal

My Story Has Been Caught

Story catching seems to be catching on these days, especially across generations. Just before I wrote the last blog post, I received an e-mail from my granddaughter out in Oregon. Her sixth grade class is doing a legacy project to record family histories and she asked to interview me. Of course I was more than happy to oblige.

What an interesting challenge this is turning out to be. She included the following list of interview questions in her e-mail so I could think about answers before we talked.

1. What were your goals and dreams when growing up?
   
2. Why did you choose those goals?
3. What kept you motivated to follow your dreams?
4. Who was your mentor or inspiration?
5. What obstacles occurred when you were trying to reach your goals?
6. How did you overcome these obstacles?
7. Did your goals and dreams change along the way?
8. Did you help change anyone else's life?
9. What were some life lessons that helped you along the way?
10. What events in your history stand above others?
11. What has been precious to you your whole life?
12. Do you have any regrets from your past?
13. If you were young again and could live your life over, would you keep the same goals or change them?
14. What are your dreams now?
15. In one, phrase, or quote, how would you describe your life?

Optional questions:
How did your childhood home affect your life?
What kind of education did you have as a child?
How did war affect your life?

As you can see, these are challenging questions, and well thought-out. I found some especially challenging. As much as I do remember about my childhood, I do not recall having dreams for the future beyond marrying someone tall, handsome, brilliant and rich. My dreams were centered around him and what he could provide: status, security, comfort, and (oh yes!) love! We would have a beautiful home, amazing children, drive new cars, entertain all the time, and travel to exotic places. I would be an important fixture in the community, respected and admired by all.

My answer to that question sounds very strange indeed to young girls two generations later. The idea of building a future based on a man’s ability to provide for them is almost beyond their comprehension. But in my day, that was the norm. I had nothing to base dreams of personal achievement on. The only women of achievement I knew were . . . old maids! With one exception: Elizabeth Graves, a noted physicist who had been on the team that developed the A-bomb,, was the mother of a good friend. She was such an exception that the idea anyone else would follow her example was beyond my imagination.

Yes, my answer sounds strange, but that’s all the more reason I need to articulate it (which has not been easy) and publicize it. How else are young girls going to know things weren’t always as they are today? Just as darkness means nothing to a blind person, freedom and opportunity mean much less to those who have never been constrained. Our stories matter!

Working my way down through the rest of the questions, I realized that fully answering those questions would require a sizeable volume. For her class project, Stephanie got the "Cliff Notes" version. Over time, my challenge is to fill in those blanks. We had a great time gabbing for awhile, and she learned many things I may never have thought to tell her without this project. I'm delighted they are doing it, and I hope the idea spreads. I also hope we can encourage the kids to keep it going beyond the interview they are assigned to do. Collecting the stories themselves creates a great opportunity for learning about the past and about people in a uniquely effective way.

This list makes a great starting point for creating your own legacy, even without the involvement of a grandchild. I invite all of you to take them and run with them. Or rather to write with them.

Write now: a story or essay based on one of the above questions. Or write about your hopes and dreams and how they've changed through the years.

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal

Story Catching

Two years ago, they were strangers. Then a chance encounter led to a deep friendship and a 100-page biography. Now, Bob Sather may know Al Vaicius' story better than even the Plymouth resident does...

So begins a wonderful tale written in the Minneapolis Star Tribune by Jenna Ross. The article does a fine job of telling the drift of the story, but after I read it, I was suffused with curiosity. I recognized that Bob Sather was applying the fine art of lifestory writing in the role of “story catcher” to immortalize the life of another person, and I wanted to know more.

The fact that I found this article illustrates one wonder of the Cyber Age. The fact that I was able to track Bob down via an email to Jenna Ross was another. During a recent phone conversation I asked Bob how he handled the interviews with Al. His account was close to what I'd read in the article, and included these points:

• They met over coffee once a week or so, a good way to keep the atmosphere relaxed and the story flowing, without distractions.
• He let Al set the agenda and keep the story thread moving.
• Bob just listened and made a few notes.
  
• He did not record the interview sessions, because he felt that would be intrusive.
• After their meetings, Bob went straight home and wrote down what he recalled. His wife then transcribed that to the computer.
• He reported things a close as he could remember to the way Al told them.
  

As you'll learn if you click over to read the article, Bob had a surprise as the story wound to a close. Al disclosed a secret that he'd never told anyone. This sort of revelation is a fairly common conclusion to examining your life, whether you write about it yourself or tell it to someone else, and I've only heard people express relief and a sense of closure from divulging their secret. It often results from healing anger, resentment or other negative emotions that have built up over a lifetime. Even stories that begin for other purposes can have that effect.

Bob’s experience is strong evidence that following your instinct, whether you’re writing your own story or someone else’s, will generally put you on the right path. In one sense though, Bob got lucky. Al sounds like an easy person to work with, in the sense that he was a good story-teller and his story poured forth easily. Bob didn’t have trouble following the story, remembering it, or keeping Al focused.

It’s not always that easy. Some people jump around, leave out important facts, and with some you have to dig for information, because they don’t consider it worth telling, for one reason or another. Should you be inclined to initiate an attempt to record someone’s life, presumably a relative, it will help to be armed with questions to keep things focused and make sure you get the whole story. You may also need to ask more follow-up questions to clarify points or flesh out terse accounts. If they are willing and comfortable with the idea, a recorder is also a terrific resource.

The craft of turning your notes into a finished story is much the same as writing your own story. The two main differences are that you'll write in the third person, and you won't be able to rely on your own memory for as many details. If the person you are writing about is available, as Al is, you can consult them as you fill in the details. If you are writing about someone long-gone, you'll have to do the best you can, making it clear where fact departs from assumption. The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing guidelines cover the rest of the bases.

I greatly admire Bob’s story catching project. Even though it wasn't planned for publication, it's a great tribute to a life that demonstrates perseverance survival against the odds. I eagerly wait to hear that it’s finished and suspect that many people beyond Al's family will want to read it. That may be a few months down the road though. The project has not yet been completed. Final edits await, as does the choice of printing method. Should it become available via Lulu or a similar service, I'll let you know.

Write now: a story that a friend tells you. Let the friend read it for accuracy, then share the results.

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal