Random Autobiography: Notes from a few members of the Thursday Morning Writing Circle

A group of writers gathered in my studio on Thursday morning (August 27, 2015) for the third session of the new writing season. During the first 20 minutes we each wrote notes for a "random autobiography" and some of us decided to share excerpts from our memory lists right here.

I love to read mystery novels but I can't stand the suspense so I read the last page first, for reassurance, which doesn't really spoil things because I usually forget what I read within an hour.

When we were children I was in awe of my sister's ability to burp on demand at the dinner table, and equally amazed that she never got in trouble for doing that.

When I was 14 years old my parents bought me an expensive guitar for my birthday, and I used my allowance to buy the Joan Baez songbook. I'd sit on my bed for hours at a time, strum-strum-strumming my way through the book. I thought I sounded amazing. My mother said that every song sounded the same and my father said I should sing "inside my head" instead of out loud.

I remember struggling with math in school but my mom helped me, and  I actually discovered that I like logic proofs, geometry, and algebra.

I remember begging my parents for puppies and when I finally got them I learned what the frustrations of parenthood would feel like — two puppies, and every time I turned my back they'd relieve themselves. There was hardly any time to sit for a second to collect my thoughts.  

I remember rolling down the green, green slope of a hill until I was dizzy and when I landed at the bottom, still laughing, I had to spit grass out of my mouth. Then I did it all again.

I remember when parking meters only cost $1.00 an hour, but then, I remember when a phone call cost a nickel. In fact, I remember those phone booths, but now I’m thinking the Port-A-John industry has taken over the design.

I remember penny postcards that arrived from friends and family announcing the Grand Canyon was a sight to behold, or how it had rained everyday but one for a week in Nova Scotia. No one ever used the word “awesome” on a penny postcard: it had not yet entered the world of the vernacular.

I remember a song with lyrics that said “I forgot to remember to forget you” — an appealing verbal somersault. 

I remember my first teaching job: the only "Yankee" on staff; the only woman whose husband wasn't an Army officer; the only person in the school who spoke without a southern twang.

I remember the ocean. Green and gray and so much more emotionally developed than I am. I wanted to throw myself into it, not so much to eviscerate my experience but to make it so much more meaningful. 

I remember crying on the roof at 5 in the morning. The sun was rising over the Manhattan skyline and something about the series of orgasms and revelations I had experienced the night before had left me utterly dismantled. The overwhelming orange light brought acute awareness to the fact that we were two women, naked and drunk on a rooftop for all the world to see. Her body was so beautiful but I spent most of that time staring at her laugh lines. Abruptly, she sat up and lit a cigarette, before studying me intently. “Sometimes, when I look at you, I feel like Woody Allen."

I started out life as an introvert and ended up as an extrovert. The change was miraculous.

I grew up in a family of immigrants. We thought we were better than everybody else. My father was a big man. He worked hard. He died when I was young. I was merged with my mother. I spent my life trying to get away from her. Then I took care of her for 5 years before she died.

In college I did political Guerrilla Theater. I played a Vietnamese peasant woman with a baby. I fell down dead in the faculty cafeteria.

I went to hear Ram Das speak in Berkeley, California in 1969 when he had just returned from India and it completely changed my life.

I find myself dancing whenever and wherever I can.

The first time I stood at the edge of the ocean, the water rushing back into the sea around my feet made it feel as though I was running backwards though my feet were completely still. I fell over.

I remember trying to eat a baloney sandwich while sitting on a blanket, but we were at the beach, and the sandwich was full of . . . sand.

At 19 I stared at the ocean’s vastness and decided, just like that, I didn’t need my big sad problems anymore, that they were tiny enough to disappear in all those waves. That same summer I learned from my mother and aunties that they thought peeing in the ocean was quite acceptable and normal. I was shocked and disgusted.

I remember sitting on a rock jetty letting the water bash my legs into the rock, wondering whether it could turn them into a mermaid's tail.  Or back into a mermaid’s tail.

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THANK YOU to these contributors:

Lottie Sweeney

Louise Vignaux 

Stacey Murphy 

Susan Lesser  

Yvonne Fisher 

Zee Zahava

Zeffi Walsh

Random Autobiography: notes from 8 women (Wednesday Circle)

A group of women gathered in my writing studio on Wednesday morning (August 26, 2015) for the second session of the new writing season. During the first 20 minutes we each wrote notes for a "random autobiography." We want to share some of these with you here. 

I remember the sense of victory when I finally managed to squeeze out a sound on a kazoo.

I remember a dream where my grandmother appeared, shortly after her death, and presented me with a huge piece of chocolate cake on a plate.

Before I had siblings, I had the cows in the barn. I'd make mud sandwiches for them, which they never ate.

I remember playing beneath my mother's ironing board as she listened to the McCarthy hearings.

I remember auditioning for the high school musical, so nervous I could hardly hold the sheet music. Luckily the director was my French teacher. She smiled at me, I took a breath, and I got a part in the show.

Summer vacations, school over for the year. My reward to myself was hours in my geologist aunt's jungle hammock, hidden from the world, reading science fiction.

The best present I ever got was my grandfather's collection of rocks and minerals, which he brought to me on one of their rare visits to our house. It wasn't even my birthday or Christmas.

I remember my grandmother's molasses cookies which I loved and which my grandfather ate every morning at breakfast. I'd never heard of such a thing.

I remember every library of my childhood.

I remember when my boots filled with the salty water from a wave pummeling in from the Sound at Orient Beach when I was 4 years old, and it made me so mad.

I remember looking at family photos with my dad just before he went to Hospicare.

I remember playing the part of Aunt Polly in the 9th grade musical, Tom Sawyer.

I remember sneaking out at night at Girl Scouts Camp and hiding from mean Mrs. Gillespie.

I remember eating a banana split for dinner.

I could never do a broad jump; just had no lift at all. One year at summer camp it cost my team, of which I was captain, the Decathlon. All we needed were a few more inches, but I just didn’t have them. And I just realized, after 50+ years of feeling responsible, that no one else did either.

I’ve never understood why we remember the things we do, and don't remember the things we don't.

Last week my grandchildren were visiting from suburban Maryland. One evening in the pouring rain the sky was an unearthly orange-green. I thought it wasn’t even worth telling my grandson to look. He’s a hyperactive 10 year-old, addicted to electronic devices. He wouldn’t care, and how sad that was to me. Just then he walked into the room and yelled, “Look at how beautiful the sky is! What’s that color?” Bad me.

Two trees of my childhood: the crabapple I climbed down to sneak out of my bedroom, and the weeping willow my parents had ripped from the earth because it dared to break our kitchen window during a hurricane.

Forty years of being in my pond, enveloped by cool water, birds complaining about my presence, dragonflies as my insect repellent, ripples reflecting sunlight on the grasses.

The old Rothschild Building was a very cool place to work — so many interesting people to meet. I remember taking the creaky old elevator to the second floor where they made the best egg and green olive sandwiches.

I remember Sunday morning polkas on the radio and dancing on my father's feet and singing in Polish.

I remember having a breakdown when I found my birth family after so many years.

I remember Summer Jam Music Festival in Watkins Glen

I remember developing a successful career at Cornell that lasted 25 years.

I remember my father calling my name as my mother died in his arms.

On cold winter nights I remember my Bubbe’s cabbage soup, seasoned with sour salt, thick with cabbage and meaty bones. 

I remember my first jumbo-sized kosher hot dog at Jack & Marion's in Coolidge Corner.  

I remember the first meeting of the Brookline High School Folk Music Club: Jim Kweskin was there, a tall scrawny man, years before his Jug Band albums became so popular.

I remember going to the Young People’s concerts on Saturday afternoons with my beloved Mema.

I remember the first time I put on tap shoes.

I remember that dreadful co-ed party in 10th grade when I called my dad and asked him to come get me and take me home.

I remember teaching my 4-year-old brother how to swear, and the taste of Ivory soap in my mouth when my mother found out what I had done.

I remember my first baby-sitting job for the Bernstein twins, both impish and adorable.  Their father used to keep Playboy magazines in the bathroom.

I remember riding the indoor trike around in a circle, from the kitchen into the front hall, to the living room, and then the kitchen again.

I remember the safer swings at the park that were very uncomfortable compared to the old rigid hard-rubber ones.

I remember the way sounds carry across a lake in the early evening.

I remember the fun of swinging back and forth on the "rings" in gym, feeling so powerful, like a monkey swinging on vines in the forest.

I remember wondering why the doctor didn't mention to my mother, or to me, that I was a pregnant teenager.

I remember my husband saying my parents should move to New York so we could fill their final years with the presence of family, and how he would build an addition on our garage so taking care of them wouldn't be as much of a burden.

I remember all the times we opened our home to our children's friends, helping them stay in school or deal with undesirable home situations.

I remember waking up and hearing a voice inside my head saying "Don't Eat Meat" and I believed it was the voice of God. But I didn't listen.

A purple glass bauble hung at the entrance to my home for the last four years, and I liked it, until one day this past July when I decided I no longer liked it and I said to that bit of glass "Your days are numbered." When I returned from my early morning walk the glass bauble had fallen off its hook and shattered into dozens of pieces. How can I know if something is a coincidence of if I have super powers?

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THANK YOU to these contributors:

Anne Taft

Deirdre Silverman

Grace Celeste

Kathleen Jackson 

Leslie Howe 

Linda Pope 

Nancy Osborn 

Zee Zahava

Random Autobiography: notes from 9 women (Tuesday Circle)

A group of women gathered in my writing studio on Tuesday morning (August 25, 2015) for the first session of the new writing season. During the first 20 minutes we each wrote notes for a "random autobiography." After going around the circle, reading these out loud, some of us decided we'd like to share them more widely. So here they are . . . .

We lived with my grandparents in a railroad apartment until I was two. The reason given was that Mom couldn't boil an egg, let alone be trusted to prepare baby formula.

One summer our extended family stayed at a bungalow colony in the Catskills. There was a parade for the 4th of July and my mother dressed me up as an Indian maiden. One of my aunts kept calling me Princess Potch in Tushie. All day people patted me on the behind but I couldn't figure out why.

I won a Lindy Hop competition, dancing with an older girl who I didn't know before she asked me to be her partner. The whole experience was thrilling. The prize was a bag of pretzels.

In junior high school I played the tuba in music class, except I never actually managed to squeeze a single note out of the instrument, and the band director was so fed up with me he ordered me stay away, to go to the library instead. The school librarian said I was the best volunteer helper they ever had. The band director gave me an "A" for the class.

When I was 14 a counselor at camp called me a hippie and I thought he was being mean about my big hips. But later, when he explained himself, I was flattered.

I remember standing on the back porch with a monarch butterfly poised on the tip of my finger, opening and closing, drying off, readying for flight. 

I remember when the elevator doors opened and we were getting off, and the kids getting in said, "Did you guys hear about Princess Diana?"

I remember when mine was the only bedroom on the first floor and how lonely i felt at bedtime. 

I remember the first lines from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn: "Serene was a word you could put to Brooklyn, New York. Especially in the summer of 1912."

I remember when my parents let me go on vacation to Maine with my high school boyfriend, and how when we got there we went grocery shopping and he bought new shampoo and said that way he would always remember the smell of the trip. 

I remember being surprised by a lemon shark gliding 10 feet beneath us as we snorkeled and how we froze and how all the brightly colored fish scattered so quickly.

I remember how my baby brother called flies "yies" and would say, "Go away, yie!" and how I still find myself thinking the same thing — "Go away, yie!" when there's one bothering me. 

In the mornings sometimes I sit and chat, luxuriating in relaxed togetherness time with my parents, friends, cousins, sister, lover — whoever is there in the living room. I love connections with people.

When I was very young, maybe 5, I had my father promise that once the Grassroots Festival office moved out of our basement he would fix it up for me as a dance studio. I subsequently forgot about that agreement, only to remember it years later and not mind.

I have one sister and we share a middle name. 

I am part of a clan of strong women, my six female cousins are really my six other sisters.

As a child I always figured I'd be in federal prison by the age I am now, 26, because my mother was.

I love salad. Lettuce. Vinegar. Give me a pickle or some sauerkraut any time of day and I'll be happy. You will find a bag of almonds in my purse, backpack, drum case, coat pocket. I love to cook.

It's really no secret that I love shoes. I remember sitting Indian-style (or, now, the more politically correct criss-cross-applesauce) on the floor of my grandmother's closet, completely enveloped by shoes. Glory be to the highest!!

I remember the endless days of summer on the farm in Mecklenburg: the cool, soft carpet of grass under my feet, riding bikes pell mell up and down the lone road in front of our house, unfurling the butterfly blanket with a snap and lying out in the sun, dripping with Bain de Soleil, reading Rich Man, Poor Man.

I remember when embroidered gauze shirts from House of Shalimar were all the rage.

I remember one of the first stories I wrote about a cat who travelled the world and all she saw and did and everyone she met along the way. I sandwiched the written pages between construction paper and bound them together with yarn. I wish I still had that small bundle.

I remember putting Vaseline in my hacked-up hair; I wanted it to look like Keith Richards's. It was weeks before that Vaseline washed out. My mother ranted over ruined pillowcases.

For some strange reason I love to feed people.

I love to read and can tune out just about any noise and focus on a book.

I love dead people, they know more than we do.

I think about my mother every day.

I have learned to have boundaries with people but I'm still open.

I am struggling with grief every day.

I have always loved dogs more than people

I remember the 1960s — dances like the boogaloo and the twist; graduating from college; participating in the Civil Rights Movement and the Peace Movement; having an illegal abortion.

I remember sitting with my mother, in the summer, on our front lawn and no mosquitoes bit us.

I remember standing next to the singer Odetta at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.

I remember my first car, a two-door red Corvair that was my college graduation present from my parents.

My first apartment in New York — June of 1968 taught me how to live in small spaces. 

I remember being robbed at gunpoint on the first day of 1979 in my feminist bookstore in New York City, and closing the store and going home. 

I remember holding my mother’s hand when she died.

I remember sand between my toes as small waves slipped past; writing my name — the "S" backwards — in indelible ink on the bed sheet at hated nap time; a pair of blue corduroy pants with an elastic waist — when they got too short my striped socks showed.

At 5 I picked a Holstein cow from the herd, pretending that she could/would be my 4-H project. 

I remember the smell of baking oatmeal bread coming in through the open school windows.

I had two toddlers when we lived at the Hasbrouck apartments. There was no insulation in the walls; frost on the inside of the windows; wet squeaky toys on the bathroom floor.

I remember my first bike ride on the dirt road in front of my grandmother’s house.

I remember when I knew Darryl liked me, he pushed me off my bike! — age 8.

I remember my first adult bike — a heavy 12-speed Royce Union.

I remember fixing flats, adjusting brakes, and oiling chains.  

Yesterday I wore an old sock on my hand, used the orange cleaning fluid to clean the chain on my Trek hybrid, the bike that I’ve ridden  for the last 15 years.

Just yesterday my husband and I were in the bike shop regaling the mechanic with bike stories.  As customers began to line up behind us we knew it was time to calm down and come down off the mountain of memories.

I remember most of the places where we pitched our tent and spent the night on our 3048 mile ride across the USA. I relive and remember details from that trip as I try to fall asleep on sleepless nights.

I buy an alarm clock only if it has an excellent snooze button.

I like numbers divisible by 3 because they are usually the most curvaceous.

I could swim underwater before I could walk on the ground.

I hope I'm a lot like my sister and will keep a sense of humor even if, someday, I can barely get from my bed to my wheelchair, which will soon be the scope of her mobile reality.

I reason with insects, politely asking them to go away. If they won't, I escort them elsewhere or smash them, if they're especially irritating.

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THANK YOU to these contributors:

Leah Rose Grady Sayvetz

Linda Keeler

Marty Blue Waters

Paula Culver

Sara Robbins

Sue Perlgut

Sue Norvell

Summer Killian

Zee Zahava