You Can’t Go Home Again

Few people talk about the dangers posed to your memory when you return to places you used to live. Depending on how long you’ve been gone, changes are likely to be huge, and the shock of the new may overwrite or change what you recall of the past. At the very least, for better or worse, your past memories will carry the stamp of the new. Sometimes changes may be better than you recall.

That’s how memory works. Each time we replay a memory, we embed a fragment of the present to what we recall from before. This fragment may be comprised of things like feelings evoked by the memory, further evaluation and insight, comparison with current conditions, or all of the above.

Sometimes, particularly if you haven’t been gone long, or you return to a spot in nature, you may find things more or less as you left them and you will feel an exciting sense of reconnection. But you may be disappointed.

I’ve experienced shocking disappointment a few times over the last several years, especially in my hometown of Los Alamos where fire destroyed trees on the mountains forming the backdrop for the town. The business district has been changed almost totally, to the extent of running a street through the middle of the pedestrian area. My high school has been torn down and replaced with a shiny new facility more like a college campus than high school as I remember it. Even the canyon where I spent vast amounts of girlhood time has been pruned, thinned, and otherwise fireproofed. I hardly recognize it.

Right now I’m in Richland, Washington where  my husband and I lived for nineteen years when our children were young. We’re here to visit my father, not revive memories, but still, change is apparent. Yesterday we drove past “our” house, the one we designed and built over forty years ago. That was a  pleasant surprise. It looks even better than it did when we lived there, at least from the outside. I took two granddaughters to play on the bank of the Columbia river their mommy enjoyed. That was sublime.

But the school our kids attended is almost entirely changed. My daughter was shocked, as I was in Los Alamos. The old ferry landing is gone. Egad! That was my place of solace. The river is still there, overflowing with spring run-off. The view is much the same. The basics of the old business district remain intact, though the inhabitants of stores come and go. But it's no longer home.

Part of the difference is people. At 93, although still proudly self-sufficient, my father is really old. My mother is gone. My best friend here died a year ago, and I have not stayed in touch with others. I'm a stranger in town.

When I return to my current Pittsburgh home after a trip like this, my old memories do resurface, only slightly marred by recent developments. But at least for me, physically returning to past locations has never enhanced old memories. I'm better off looking at photos, listening to old music, or talking to people who were there.

However, after all the above, I do journal my thoughts about changes, and may include some of that in a story or two.

Write now: contribute to a conversation on this topic by leaving a comment about your experience in this regard. How has it worked for you to "go home" or return to places from your past? This may include both fondly remembered places and those where you've held traumatic memories.

When Your Story Flips Upside-Down

A high school acquaintance recently pulled me into a Facebook group for people who grew up in Los Alamos – my tribe! They have posted pictures of historic scenes around Los Alamos and a lively forum-type discussion has sprung up about who remembers what and how. A fascinating sort of collaborative story is emerging with a type of shared, collective memory, unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.

One of the members is a retired LAHS chemistry teacher who arrived soon after I left. At some point I posted this comment:

Was Mr. Etherly still there when you arrived at LAHS? Or Mr. Cooper? Mr. E taught all the chem classes except the one I took from Mr. Cooper my senior year. I did not understand all the fuss from Mr. Etherly's students about how hard chemistry was. Mr. Cooper made it sooo easy! Then I took Chem 101 in college and had a seriously rude awakening. Alas! Mr. Cooper was a delightful man, and I always thought of him when my kids began watching Mr. Rogers. But a chemistry teacher he was not. Fortunately I was not meant to be a chemistry major, so no harm done, at least to me.

With gentle kindness, she replied that she had the highest regard for Mr. Cooper, and his students had loved him. “He was a fine teacher,” she said. Several of his past students agreed.

That’s when my mind went into spin mode. I felt a bit awkward and … confused. I pondered. I journaled. What was true? Was Mr. Cooper really a bumbling beginner who had been unable to control his class? Had I missed something? Suddenly I realized that not only had his class been genuinely fun, but everything I remember about chemistry traces back to his class, not the one at Texas Tech. Mr. Cooper made chemistry come to life and seem approachable. How many teachers can do that? I suddenly recognized his gift. He allowed the natural leaders in class to emerge, and let us feel engaged with it at our own best levels.

Then I remembered hearing that Chem 101 was a washout class at Texas Tech, intended to thin the herd and deter all but the most robust students from pursuing careers in science and engineering. That may not be all bad. In fact, it served me well. For a brief few weeks I actually considered majoring in chemistry. It did not take me long to see the folly of that decision.

When all was written and reflected upon, I realized that my attitude toward Mr. Cooper had been wrong-side out, and I owe both him and his compassionate colleague a debt of gratitude.

This group has sparked several re-visions and trance-formations in my Story, beyond many that have already occurred (see Your Own Magic Crystal Ball . Writing memoir becomes especially challenging when memories and perceptions are in such flux. Power tools for continuing to analyze and re-evaluate experience, then anchor it in story are especially valuable at times like this.

I collect power tools for life writers that are fun to use as well as enlightening. I will share a few of my favorites in February in Soaring High, Digging Deep, a three-week NAMW teleclass. This class will be an ideal opportunity to connect with others who may be helpful in shaking loose the shackles of assumptions and memory habits you’ve become accustomed to. Click here for more details and to sign up.

Write now: about a long-standing assumption you’ve had about someone . Challenge your beliefs about the person and see how they may change. Look for any silver linings in the cloud – or perhaps feet of clay in someone you’ve had on a pedestal that may have been a bit high.

Photo credit: Jason Rogers

Searing Memories

Photo: Aaron Wagner

We all have them, those memories that are so vivid they blaze in our memories forever. We remember exactly where we were, what we were wearing, the time of day, and all the details — although we may not remember the specific date.

One of my searing memories takes me back to one wintry Saturday in eighth grade. The phone rang about eleven in the morning. It was a boy — calling me! History was made that day. I’ll save the details for my memoir, and tell you only that it was the hottest guy in our class, asking me to meet him at the ice rink that afternoon. No! This was too good to be true. Besides, my parents wouldn’t let me date until I was sixteen. Besides, he sounded just like my best girl friend, who had a rather husky voice, and I kept trying to get “her” to admit who she was.

When I called her immediately after hanging up, she assured me she hadn’t called. I believed her. The voice didn’t sound quite the same. When I got back to school on Monday, I was apparently invisible to Hunky Dude. Just as before, he never looked my way, even though our lockers were near each other. Had it really been him? Or was someone pulling my leg?

I’ll never know for sure, but I do know that I felt good about the way I played the game. I had a strong gut feeling that if it had been him, I was being set up for some awful humiliation at the rink. I can only guess what that might have been, but I didn’t need it and was blessedly spared. I felt strong and capable of taking care of myself. This searing memory is a turning point in my relationships with boys. The concept of actually having a boyfriend turned from the theoretical into the possible that day, even though I suspected it would be a good long while before anything tangible came along.

Searing memories, defining moments, turning points. In The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing I refer to them as watershed memories. It doesn’t matter what you call them, they are mileposts along our journey through life. We all have them. Some are joyful and mark advances. Some are traumatic, some may be quietly profound. All are significant and provide strong pillars for organizing related memories as you develop stories.

Taking time to list your watershed memories and arrange them along a timeline will  pay enormous dividends are you organize your life story or memoir, whether you are just beginning to write, or grappling with final organization.

Write now: review your list of watershed or turning point memories if you have one, and make an inventory of stories that remain to be written. If you don’t have a list, start one. Add to it as more occur to you. 

Photo Credit: Simon Harriyott

Untangling a Memory Knot

Do you remember how you celebrated Memorial Day when you were a child? And what difference does it make to know? Traditionally, for me, Memorial Day marked the end of the school year. It was the official beginning of Summer Vacation, and worthy of celebration for that reason alone, especially since, rather amazingly, none of the many veterans in our family lost their lives while serving their country.

This question arose just just now as I wrote about my high school graduation in my journal. I graduated from high school on May 28, and the next day I went home with my grandparents to spend the several days between graduation and the first day of my summer job. My parents came to pick me up ... when? Memorial Day weekend? That didn’t seem possible. There isn’t time for Memorial Day weekend if I graduated on May 28.

My compulsive need for accurate details kicked in. I set my journal aside, reached for my nearby laptop, and googled over to a perpetual calendar to refresh my memory regarding the day of the week that May 28 fell on that year. Although perpetual calendars are enormously valuable for unraveling many mysteries, it didn’t help with this one. A few more clicks turned up the explanation that Memorial Day was always celebrated as a stand-alone holiday on May 30 until the passage of the Uniform Holiday Act in 1971 that created all the lovely three day weekend holidays we enjoy now.

Thus Memorial Day was not a long weekend back then as I’d been thinking. It was the First Day of Summer Vacation — unless it fell on a Sunday, in which case it was the Second Day of Summer Vacation.

What difference does all this make? It’s a prime example of how memories morph and blur. I forgot that we didn’t always have that three day weekend. It probably blurred together with Labor Day, which marked the official end of summer vacation — it was carved in stone that we return to the classroom the Tuesday after Labor Day, which has always has always been celebrated on the first Monday of September, ensuring a three day weekend.

If I had written in the Los Alamos Years memoir I’m tapping away on that my parents came up to pick me up over Memorial Day weekend, nobody would ever have thought twice about it, and it would have been true enough. That claim expresses personal truth, supported by the reality of memory. If anyone checked a few decades from now, at worst they’d figure I’d gotten a little wifty and let it go.

Since tools for determining factual truth are easily available, with about four minutes of searching, I was able to set the record straight. I can keep my account accurate, and perhaps insert a little historical insight by including half a dozen words about the history of the holiday date change.

Although this is a personal decision, when accurate facts are readily available, I feel better when I make the effort to find and use them. When the facts are not available, memory and considered speculation will suffice, though if I have serious doubts, I may qualify such statements with a phrase like as I recall... .

Write now: click over to a perpetual calendar and use it to determine the day of the week for significant events in your life. For example, do you remember what day of the week you were born? How about your children? What day of the week was JFK assassinated? Conversely, if you remember the time of month something took place, for example, the third week of August, you can probably find the date using the perpetual calendar. You can file these dates away for future reference, or just know that this tool is always there.

Alternatively or additionally, write about your feelings about technical accuracy in matters like this. How important is it to you?

You Can Go Home Again— Virtually

I got sucked into the parallel universe of Google this morning, which is way too easy to do. I’m working on The Los Alamos Years, a sequel to The Albuquerque Years, and wanted to check the elevation of Walnut Street relative to Villa Street on the other side of the mesa top our house stood on. Google Earth answered that, but then another question arose about where someone else’s house was, and that led me into GoogleMaps, and that led me to Street View, and I ended up virtually walking home from high school. The virtual walk went a little bit faster than the actual one would, but not much, by the time I swung around to look at things, and eventually made it “home.”

During the time I lived in Los Alamos, we always lived on Walnut Street, but we lived in two different houses. I have been back in person, but not since 2000, and I’d vowed not to go again, because it was too heart-breaking to see seared mountainsides where a lush ponderosa and aspen covered panorama towered above the town, before the devastating Cerro Grande fire in 2000. Today I had a chance to view those stark slopes in a fresh light. They are skinhead mountains now. They look like they survived chemo, but survive they have, and they exude strength. Their contours are clean and far more dramatic than they ever were when covered with flora. I can bear to look. I respect their strength and tenacity at the same time I grieve for the ignorance that devastated yet another portion of the planet.

Getting my virtual feet back in gear, I hit the corner of Walnut Street and 32nd and visually slammed into the second house we lived in. I already knew about the bizarre alterations that were made more than twenty years ago. Someone added a third level to the house, and did not tie it in well. They have now removed the doorway that opened into space, nearly twenty feet above the ground, but the chimney still tops out several feet below the roof, with a pipe stuck in the top to extend it. Oh, what a mess! I didn’t dawdle there.

Our first house, a long block down the street, still looks good, as you can see from this screen shot I grabbed. That huge tree on the left was not there, nor were the trees on the right end. The windows are new; originally all but the living room windows had panels on each end that opened with a crank gizmo. Otherwise, it looks the same. It is a duplex, and from my seventh birthday until I was twelve we lived in the right end. My sister and I sledded down that hill. We walked our bikes up and down that hill. I slid down the railing by those seventeen stairs.

That’s my bedroom window on the right center, second floor. Mine and my sister’s, until our brother arrived and we were moved to the back right corner. I liked that better. I could climb out the window on the end and hang out on the roof of the back porch. Not that there was anything to do there, but I liked being able to do it. Seeing that house brings back way more memories, and I need to get back to my writing.

Yes, it is satisfying to take a look and see how much some things have changed and how little others have. Why not take a virtual trip of your own? The price is right!

Write now: spend half and hour on GoogleEarth or GoogleMaps. Wander around an old neighborhood with StreetView if it’s available and check things out. Write about what you see, how it’s the same, how it’s different, and what you remember.

Take Me Back To the Fifties (and Sixties)

One of the great things about a blog versus a print publication is the ability to include links. Today I came across a super link that’s guaranteed to bring back lots of memories for those of us who came of age in the fifties and sixties.

My odyssey began with link from Thelly Rheam in a post to the Life Story Writing YahooGroup. Thelly sent us to the When Life Was Black and White page, which features a flash video about black and white t.v. This site has buttons along the bottom that take you to lots of other memory trigger sites. The one that appealed to me the most linked to the Old Forty Fives page, which has lots of links of its own. Rather than describe it to you, I’ll simply urge you to surf on over.

As I write this The Big Bopper is on that website speakin’ about what he likes: “Chantilly Lace, a pretty face, and a pony tail, hanging down…” Suddenly I’m back in 1958 (verified by the Top 100 Songs of 1958 list on the site). I’m in my freshman year of high school, wearing a 100% wool sheath skirt (slacks were never an option for girls at our school in my day, not even on the snowiest days—but we could wear leotards to keep our legs warm), an orlon sweater and black flat shoes with no socks or hose (pantyhose and knee highs weren’t even a dream yet, and nylons were far too expensive to wear to school). I’m walking down the hall between the wings of classrooms during a break, heading to my locker to change books, and hating the stares and adolescent noises from the line of boys sitting on the window sills along the way. But I do keep my eye peeled for a glimpse of a certain sophomore fellow….

I think of fresh snowfalls in the mountains, and how much I loved the snow back when it meant sledding, snowball fights and ice skating, but not shoveling, and not freedom from school. In the mountains of New Mexico in the fifties and sixties there was no such thing as snow days. Snow was a fact of life. We put on extra mittens, head scarves, galoshes and tire chains and dealt with it. Thinking of blowing snow and winter winds, I remember my red corduroy car coat with the corded toggle button closing, my zippered three ring binder with the orange plaid cover design, and the piles of textbooks I piled atop it.

I think of the excitement of after school activities, whether that was drama club, foreign language club, orchestra or any of the other dozen things I was involved in. Then there was walking home from school, alone or with friends. This was way before iPods, Walkmen, or other personal entertainment devices (although I did get a pocket-size transistor radio for my birthday in 1959 that ran on a 9-volt battery), so I had half an hour to think without distraction if I walked the two miles alone.

Other songs bring back memories of parties, people, clothing, classes, daydreams and so much more. I nearly always had the radio on when I was alone in my room, studying, sewing or reading. I haven’t listened to it so much since, but the hit parade was a defining element of my life back then.

What about you? Did music shape your youth? What memories does it trigger for you? Find out more about music and demographic data of the times at Old Forty Fives.com, Take Me Back To the Fifties, and associated pages on this glorious site. That should get your fingers flying and ink flowing!

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal