Terry Helwig's Blog - Posts Tagged "readers"
The Light & Shadow of Writing a Memoir
When I began writing Moonlight on Linoleum six years ago, I had no way of knowing the outcome of unbridling my family's story and turning it loose into the world. It was a time of blessing and curse, excitement and apprehension, light and shadow.
Cocooned behind my desk, I wrote to make sense of the chaotic life my family and I lived, moving from one oil town to another in the American Southwest. I wrote to piece together the puzzle of our lives, to better understand my mother, to examine the undercurrents than ran beneath my every-day existence. I didn't think much about readers looking over my shoulder as I wrote--which probably kept me from closing too many curtains.
Still, I'm caught off-guard when I realize strangers know me better than most of my friends. If I casually mention something about one of my sisters, I'm often asked which one. Then I realize people now know my sisters by name. I'm literally "an open book."
Writing my memoir has brought much light into my life. In addition to being given coupons for 12 free malts (those who have read the book will understand), I have re-discovered lost friends and family my sisters and I didn't know existed. For decades, I had puzzled over a photograph in my possession of me, my sister Vicki, and a blond, curly-headed child a few years older than either of us. Some fifty years later, via ancestry.com and a chance glimpse of another photograph, the mystery was solved. The child's name was Bonnie; she is my cousin. She's coming to our family reunion this June.
Unfortunately, writing my memoir also has cast a long shadow over my life. One of the persons I most wanted to pay tribute to was not pleased--my stepdad. Even though I consider him to be a hero, he is not happy that I unbridled the past. I have to live with the absence of his approval.
And still...I find myself cocooning behind my desk, continuing to open myself up to the movement of light and shadow.
Cocooned behind my desk, I wrote to make sense of the chaotic life my family and I lived, moving from one oil town to another in the American Southwest. I wrote to piece together the puzzle of our lives, to better understand my mother, to examine the undercurrents than ran beneath my every-day existence. I didn't think much about readers looking over my shoulder as I wrote--which probably kept me from closing too many curtains.
Still, I'm caught off-guard when I realize strangers know me better than most of my friends. If I casually mention something about one of my sisters, I'm often asked which one. Then I realize people now know my sisters by name. I'm literally "an open book."
Writing my memoir has brought much light into my life. In addition to being given coupons for 12 free malts (those who have read the book will understand), I have re-discovered lost friends and family my sisters and I didn't know existed. For decades, I had puzzled over a photograph in my possession of me, my sister Vicki, and a blond, curly-headed child a few years older than either of us. Some fifty years later, via ancestry.com and a chance glimpse of another photograph, the mystery was solved. The child's name was Bonnie; she is my cousin. She's coming to our family reunion this June.
Unfortunately, writing my memoir also has cast a long shadow over my life. One of the persons I most wanted to pay tribute to was not pleased--my stepdad. Even though I consider him to be a hero, he is not happy that I unbridled the past. I have to live with the absence of his approval.
And still...I find myself cocooning behind my desk, continuing to open myself up to the movement of light and shadow.
