Reading and Writing Memoirs

 

I read two memoirs this week.  The contrast between the two books and the two lives was great.  The first one was titled Bookends and was written by Zibby Owens.  It was offered as a free download through Amazon Prime and was billed as an account of how reading was a help through a life of losses.  Zibby took care not to write about her first marriage and divorce out of consideration for her family and her four children.  But she wrote about several other traumas in her life--the loss of a very good friend when the planes hit the World Trade Center along with other deaths of friends and family.  The losses continued to the present time when the mother and grandmother of the new love in her life died of Covid.  Zibby struggled to find her role in life but ends with an upbeat chapter about her podcasts, publishing firm, and the new love in her life.  Her book was exhausting to read.  She admits that she does everything fast.  Her present husband says things can unfold organically without pressure so that may slow her down!  I hope that she does find peace and happiness.  

The second memoir was called Chasing the Wind and was by Pastor Douglas Brouwer.  I had read Pastor Brouwer's post on the 12Blog (Reformed Done Daily) on Sunday when the short biographical note mentioned his memoir.  I downloaded it also from Amazon paying a minimal amount.  Douglas Brouwer wrote about his long career as a pastor.  He wrote with great honesty about his regrets and about what he called the "holy bits." Unlike Zibby's life in a wealthy NYC mileau,  I could identify with much about his life.   He was raised in a Dutch immigrant community as we were, attending a Christian Reformed Church as we did, graduating from Calvin College as we did a few years later, and then going to Princeton Seminary and becoming ordained in the Presbyterian Church.  As we now live in Princeton and worship in a Presbyterian Church next to campus that also rang famliar to me. 

I emailed Pastor Brouwer to thank him for his book and he responded with gratitude  saying it was the kind of response every author wants for his writing.  From his response, I found even more points of contact in our lives.  I may have been his brother-in-law's 6th grade teacher in Grand Rapids, Michigan--but that remains to be seen.  When you are raised in a fairly closed community, that tends to happen! 

Both writers inspired me to look for a document I had begun writing last year with my 10 year old granddaughter in mind.  She had asked questions about how her grandpa and I met.  Her older brother had just asked recently about our earliest memories.  It took a bit of searching but I found the document on my laptop and wrote some more on it adding a few photos.  

As I wrote, it brought back more memories as I wondered what might interest our grandchildren.  A TV with just three channels to choose from?  A telephone "party line" with our next door neighbor listening into our conversations? A doctor making a house calls to a sick child?   The threat of polio?  

It made me wonder how my parents survived financially when my father spent a year in a Veteran's Hospital when I was four years old.  How did they survive emotionally without long distance phone calls and email possibilities?  Friends and family drove my mother the three or more hour ride to see him in the VA hospital but they could not have had much privacy.  But these are questions I did not ask when those who would have had answers were alive.  

Douglas Brouwer told me that he teaches a course in memoir writing and encourages folks to write for their grandchildren.  I hope to continue to give it a try!  It will be one step beyond blogging!