Free Write #1

"I happen to believe that we all have moments that are defining moments for us, and certainly one way to create our art is to write from the emotional complexity that these moments instill in us. In a way, we can’t help but write from them because they’ve left something for us to try to resolve or change or redeem in our writing even if we’re not aware of that fact. Becoming aware of it can expedite our development as writers. That’s why I often ask my students to do a free-writing exercise where they recall a pair of shoes that they wore when they were children. The free-write begins with the words, “I was wearing them the day. . . .” I invite them to fill in the blank and then keep writing as they tell a story of something that they still turn over and over in their minds because the moment is so complex they probably won’t ever be able to clearly define it. Moments where good and evil intersected, where the right thing wasn’t so clear, where love and hate intermingled. Moments where opposites co-existed. Just recalling such a moment and feeling the emotions connected with it again, takes you a step further in the sort of vision a writer must have, the vision that takes in all the layers of human experience."- Lee Martin {source}

The memory stands out from the haze of my past.  My mind, for whatever reason didn't hold on to much.  My mom pretended to fret about it once.

"Why don't you remember anything from being a young child?  This can't be right."

As a teenager I wondered at her concern over it, but not for long.  My mom had a tenancy for dramatics and hypochondriac-ism.  I didn't offer up the one memory.  Not then anyway.  It seemed to be meaningless, why would I offer it up?

I was young, lying on my stomach with a white paper on the floor in front of me.  I recall coloring on the paper but what I was coloring I couldn't say.

And that's it.

Though, from somewhere in the depths of my soul, I felt that innocent memory wasn't so innocent.  That somehow it was connected to my birth-dad.  That feeling made my seemingly meaningless memory pregnant with possibilities.

My parents divorced when I was five years old.

The only memory I have of living with my birth-dad is when he bagged up everything in my dirty room and threw it away when I, in my four year old self, didn't pick up my room.  Perhaps this memory is why it cuts me to the core when my husband now does the same to my own children.  Only, they're much older and perfectly capable of picking up their rooms.  They just don't.  And he doesn't actually throw their stuff out, it's just help for ransom for a while.

I suppose with this memory it can't be said that I don't remember anything.  I remember that.  Though I can't say if I'm remembering it correctly.  A lot of my memories, I've found, have been tweaked by the re-telling of stories of my mom, who didn't re-tell it the way it actually happened.  It came to light to me as an adult that she liked to twist the past to make her look like a martyr in the marriage to my birth-dad.  I've come to realize that the few memories I have I can't fully trust.  They've been tainted with her version of life.

One day, with a new baby of my own in my arms, I ventured a guess on my coloring memory.  It had meaning, I felt it.  I just couldn't grasp what it was.

"I think I remember the day my dad moved out," I said, testing the theory aloud for the first time.

"No," my mom quickly answered, "you weren't even there when he did it."

And that was that.