Creative writing

Life story in lockdown

My paternal grandfather and his people before him, built a lot of the still standing fine buildings in Birr, County Offaly, including the Post Office

Hi everyone, it’s good to be back and to be writing for Senior Times again. It’s some semblance of normality in these abnormal times. Just before the lockdown I received good news from a friend. Seven years ago, I attend my nephew’s wedding on Long Island. A glorious day, beautiful wedding and wonderful guests. Among them was one really interesting lady, the bride’s grandmother, Walstrout (Wally) Stanton. Wally married an American after WW2 and had a very happy life with him. Indeed, her whole life to date is a life well lived. I featured Wally in Senior Times many years ago but I’d just like to say that yes, her memoir is published Do not be Afraid where she recounts growing up in Germany as a young girl and her transitioning to America when she eventually married her husband.

Memoir is a fascinating subject. We all have stories to tell. .I spent the lockdown researching my paternal grandparents. The Cordial name is associated with building in County Offaly. Stonemasons for generations, my paternal grandfather and his people before him, built a lot of the still standing fine buildings in Birr, County Offaly, including the Post Office. The Cordial name and its association with stonemasonry is mentioned in Jackie Lynch’s My Hometown , a beautiful book of photographs featuring buildings of note in Birr. So because of my lockdown research, I thought it a good idea to encourage readers to explore their family history. Memoir is a wonderful way to pass down the legacy of family lore.

James Joyce was always trawling through newspapers, especially The Courts’ Section. However, for mining family history, it definitely helps to be a hoarder

with lots of really strong websites and if you are going down that route, you will already know that these quests usually begin with documents (birth certificates etc.). Researching old newspaper archives can often yield a gem from a particular timeframe, a gem which will sparkle in your writing. For example: On one of my trips to the States, I came across a commemorative newspaper journal which gives the front page for all the inaugurations of American Presidents. Together with details of these events however, there’s also lovely references to the news of the day, including advertisements. I discovered that some years before the sinking of Titanic, The Duchess of Manchester refused to pay the excise on corsets she had brought in from France and that they were impounded and placed in a warehouse for public auction. Again, these details may be a case of one man’s meat, another man’s poison but there’s often enough ‘meat on the bone’ to feed the imaginative juices.

James Joyce was always trawling through newspapers, especially The Courts’ Section. However, for mining family history, it definitely helps to be a hoarder (not in ‘Hoarder next Door’ mode) but to be able to hold onto papers/objects that are definitely going to help you write your memoir. Letters are extremely important to keep. I purchased a box of ‘crap’ (my husband’s words) recently at a car boot sale. However, in the box I found a letter dated 12th August, 1914 from The Travellers’ Aid Society (a society set up to help vulnerable young women travelling on boats and trains in search of work). I’m chuffed by the idea of having a letter that’s one hundred years old. I may be able to use it in a ‘factional’ way in a memoir. Overall, I keep important things, at least they are important to

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Renoir’s Breakfast of the Rowers, is a particular favourite image of mine, I just adore its colours and vivacity.

me. Some of the ‘papers’ have not been written about yet, the Blasket Islands Ferry ticket from 25th June, 1996, for example, which itemises two adults and three children under 12.

Recording dreams can be very useful, especially when it comes to exploring recurring images/events. The dream symbol and the world of the surreal can often add exquisite atmosphere to the ‘real’ world of memoir. Neil Jordan’s novel The Dream of a Beast, (for this reader at any rate) is a superb introduction to this type of writing.

In 2008, I devised and edited a memoir publication for South Dublin County Social Inclusion Unit, Flavours of Home, (Fiery Arrow Press). The memoir collection is structured around food. Each contributor was invited to submit a family recipe and a memory associated with that recipe. The collection features over thirty contributors from all over the world. Irish writers who contributed include Colm Keegan, Louise Phillips, David Mohan, Thom Moore (‘Carolina Rua,’/Planxty), Declan Collinge among others. At the time, I facilitated a number of workshops based around the theme of the publication, workshops which set the ball rolling as it were and helped the participants to research family history in ways which would produce a good solid piece of writing.

The first piece of advice I gave was that the rose coloured spectacles were to be left off, advice that the writers, to a man, heeded. The gathering of personal history from a family perspective, connected to the sharing of food, proved memorable indeed. After all, food in literature, film art has universal resonance. I bought a roll of wallpaper and used it as my portable storyboard. Incidentally, wallpaper is very useful as a way of writing down the plan of a story/timeline etc. It can be rolled up and put away but it has the ‘mileage’ to allow for extensive, see at a glance, details.

Renoir’s Breakfast of the Rowers, is a particular favourite image of mine, I just adore its colours and vivacity. It was the first item to be taped to my storyboard. I remembered a poem called Quoof by Paul Muldoon which demonstrates how each family have their own intimate relationship with language ( the quoof in question standing for hot water bottle in the poem). One of the contributors to Flavours of Home mentioned a ‘yark’ of butter, a word unique to that family but very memorable nonetheless. And triggered by Muldoon’s poem.

Babette’s Feast (Isak Dinesen) was important to my research. It brought to mind that food has nurturing elements and how eating well in convivial company can erase the ‘greyness’ which envelopes us at times. Food is both evocative and sensual. No mention of literature in relation to food would be complete without Joanne Harris’s ‘Chocolat,’ or James Joyce’s ‘The Dead,’ from Dubliners. I have already mentioned the section from Brian Keenan’s ‘An Evil Cradling,’ which describes his sighting of the colour orange. All of these elements provided vital opening discussion, a general introduction to the personal while also providing themes.

Opening the storehouse of memory required certain triggers, best meal, worst meal, ‘three telling things about family life,’ (snapshots) ‘a ritual or a celebration,’ (ritual is an extremely interesting process to bear in mind when any family activity is being remembered). Family photo

graphs/documents (food receipts in this case) were all taped to the storyboard. It’s absolutely incredible how one avenue leads to another when memory is being mind. The world of radio, what music played while in the kitchen and of course, the weather (steamed up windows or clear blue skies). On the subject of music, it’s good to research the music from a particular memory timeframe. In my case, Horslips and Thin Lizzy were my favourites and of course I would mention those.

Because I gave each writer a word limitation, it was essential to know what to leave in and what to leave out. The resulting memory pieces were all excellent. The best advice was the removal of the rose coloured spectacles. One of the themes which emerges in Flavours of Home,’is how food can be used as a political tool. Consider this small excerpt from Brian Kirk’s A Small Tyranny:

How did I live back then? All week I scoffed the thickly buttered heels of homemade wheaten bread or snacked on stolen biscuits while my mother was diverted by her never ending chores. I am a bloody fool. How did I live with myself? All week I acted like a spoiled brat, a boy who cared nothing for his poor mother’s feelings. I sat before her with creased lips firmly shut, arms folded, unbreakable, unflinching. For a while she scolded, then she begged, next she screamed. Eventually, she cried. I remained aloof however. Little by little I ground her down, and so began the small tyranny of mince and gravy.

Colm Keegan’s French Toast, has a wonderful opening which broadens the personal into the universal:

For best results, your first experience of French toast should be when watching the film Kramer vs. Kramer, the old movie that depicts the break-up of family. Ideally, you should be about five years of age or so, with your own parents already split up. When Dustin Hoffman tries to make everything alright for his small son by cooking French toast and it ends in tears, you should feel bad for them both, and somehow for yourself.

Leave the memory to steep in your subconscious, along with things like your first kiss, or the first time you felt grass tickle the soles of your feet. Let it sit until you don’t even know it’s there. Then, when a friend cooks French toast with maple syrup for you in his beautiful new country home, you should get impressed by the woody surroundings and the glorious conservatory instead of making connections. When you take the recipe home, you should hardly recognise its worth.

Weather is an opening detail from Long Hallways in Wroclaw, by Anna Sudol:

When I was maybe ten years old, I remember a freezing winter’s day. My mum let me go out to play to a nearby hill with my best friend and her younger brother. My dad gave me the sled and mum dressed me up warm to go out. With my friend Julia and her brother we were told we should go to a really close by little hill (man-made), which was beside our apartments in a street called Sliczna (which means ‘beautiful’ in translation). Instead we went to a forbidden high hill, far away from home. So we had to walk a long while and when we got to it, we enjoyed ourselves one hundred per cent. There was lots of snow around us and sleds on which we slid down the hill for hours. But after a long while had gone by, our parents started looking for us and we started to freeze. When our parents found us, we were in big trouble. However, Mum saw how cold we were and set about preparing our favourite, pierogi.

Beckett said that the ballast of the ordinary is what keeps us going

Having a healthy, investigative curiosity

Wherever I go, I always make sure to bring away a map, whether mental or physical. I actually like the ‘look’ of maps, tracing pathways through landscape, giving me place names. The last country I visited (in May, 2014) was Malta and taking a leaf out of Anna Sudol’s curiosity, I found out that the meaning of Malta is ‘honey-sweet.’ As it happened, I didn’t much like Malta at all so, if I ever come to write about my experience I will invert ‘honey-sweet,’ to ‘bitter-sweet.’ Yet, I still went on all the tours and visited exhibitions etc. My curiosity will always come to my rescue and even if my interest is diminished, I will always want to know the whys and wherefore’s. Travel is very good for curiosity BUT, and it only occurred to me recently, I’ve never taken a city tour bus of my home city, Dublin. It’s on the next to do list. On that note; explore a part of your neighbourhood/ town/city that you’ve never been to before.

Being curious has many guises. Healthy curiosity of course. Take people. I love to learn about peoples’ lives, how they get through the day. Beckett said that the ballast of the ordinary is what keeps us going. Yet, there is always a spark of something different in other peoples’ circumstances that makes us want to read the memoir genre in the first place. And you must be alert to what makes the characters in your story tick. You must be curious enough about them to observe and listen, to dredge from the subconscious a piece of unusual flotsam that washes up on your shore. A good listener is always rewarded, I’m of the opinion. Also, in keeping with ‘Flavours of Home,’ eat something you’ve never tried before it’s a taste sensation that may enter your memoir in ways you can’t even imagine.

Prompts:

Tell about a document you have in your possession, of interest for some reason.

Or

Using a map, retrace your ‘memoir footsteps’ through a place where something wonderful happened to you. This can be a real experience or a dream sequence.

Or