I
like make-believe. Fiction. Making up a story and telling it. I've
been doing that since I learned to talk, much to my parents' dismay.
But I did manage to entertain my captive babysitting charges a great
deal with my abilities – such as they were. But memoirs? That's a
whole 'nuther ball of wax.
I
tried for several sessions to translate what I actually knew about
writing into something these participants could use. And I did –
to some degree. Then one day, as the class was winding down, we
started talking about experiences we've had in our lives, and I told
a couple of stories. One of the women looked at me and grinned.
“You should write a memoir,” she said.
Well,
I may not go that far, but there were a couple of things I thought I
should probably put in writing, just for my grand kids, and maybe
even their grand kids. Because I was witness to some world events
that will still be part of history when those further away grand kids
are up and running.
I
remember in high school reading a book entitled something like “When
FDR Died,' and asking my mother where she was when that happened.
This was history from before I was born, and I wanted to know. And
she could tell me every detail of her day and where she was when she
heard the paperboy's cry.
And
so I thought maybe my grand kids might like to know that their
grandmother was standing in the road that led out of Love Field
Airport in Dallas and was close enough to touch President Kennedy on
the day he died. Actually, I did try
to touch him, but a secret service man looked at me and I backed off
quickly. My mother had taken my older brother and I out of school
and the three of us stood there, not knowing we were about to become
a part of one of history's darkest hours. I remember going back to
school. I'd missed lunch with my class and had to go eat alone.
When I got back to home room, a boy came over and told me the
president had been shot. Knowing he knew where I'd been and why I
was late, I just told him it was a really sick joke and to leave me
alone. Some of the other kids came up and tried to tell me the same
thing – I shooed them away, getting madder and madder at such a
stupid and mean joke. Then my teacher came to my desk, squatted
down, took my hand and convinced me that it was true. It was my
first experience with the death of a person I felt I knew and knew I
admired greatly. I still have the slip of paper the school secretary
gave my mother to get me out of class. It has the date on it and as
for the reason, it simply states, “President.”
Many, many years later, my grown
daughter was in a car wreck on I-35 from Austin to San Antonio during
a bad rainstorm. Her little Toyota Celica was T-boned by an
over-sized Ford F-150. Her head cracked the driver's side window.
Basically she wasn't physically hurt so much as emotionally wrecked.
She couldn't get back on the freeway and, since her job was half-way
between Austin and San Antonio and the only way to get there was on
I-35, she lost her job. I thought she needed a vacation. And to get
her mind off of the trauma, I decided the two of us would fly to Las
Vegas. We boarded a plane at nine a.m. on September 11, 2001. Not a
good way to get over a trauma, you say? Agreed.
We, of course, didn't know what had
happened until we landed. There were little clues – like all the
flight attendants disappearing into the cockpit for longer than
seemed reasonable, and the fact that the people who were taking this
plane on to Los Angeles were told to deplane ASAP. When we got into
the airport, I noticed they were playing the old films of the bombing
at the World Trade Center. When I asked a man standing there why, I
found out those weren't old films. The long and short of it was we
were stuck in Las Vegas for five days, away from home and family,
horrified, in mourning, scared of what could happen next, and unable
to get out as all planes were grounded and all rental cars were gone.
Finally I was able to get a rental car and we left all the seemingly
inappropriate bells and whistles, drunken laughter, and revelry, my
daughter and I singing “Leaving Las Vegas” at the tops of our
lungs as we vacated that city. It was a long drive back to Austin,
but in some ways a cathartic one. Driving through the dessert with
no traffic and watching the changing of the colors from midday to
midnight was soothing on the soul. But that didn't stop us from
jumping out of the car when we got to the Texas state line and
singing “The Eyes of Texas”, again at the top of our lungs.
(Which is not a pleasant thing since I can't carry a tune in a bucket
– even with a wheel barrow attached.) Getting home to where my
husband and her father awaited us was the best part of the trip. But
I think being so close to real disaster helped my daughter put things
in perspective. She never got her Toyota Celica back – it was
totaled – but she got a new car and eventually got a new job, and,
yes, has been able to drive on I-35 since then. It was a bonding
experience for mother and daughter, one we'll always share, and one
her kids and their kids need to know about.
Okay, maybe not memoirs, but I think
I'll write this stuff down.
