Long Line of Love Memoirs

Preserving Your Past

 

Examples

 

 

 

I looked at my grandmother's hands.  The age spots, the freckles that became more ubiquitous after every summer, the creases carved by years of cleaning and caring and caressing.  They were my mother's hands, I thought as I gazed, and one day they will be my hands.

It was my grandmother's last night of life.  My grandmother from whose mother (Marin Alice) I inherited my middle name.  My grandmother Alice who gave her daughter her name Alice, who in turn considered Lisa similar enough but not exactly the same.  Lisa Maren.  Now on this night I had brought my camera and wanted to take a photograph of the three generations of hands, compelled by my observation, the previous time I'd been at home and visited her, that in her limp hands I could see my mother's hands and thus my own.  Morbid, my mother thought.  But the refrain was stuck in my head, had been ever since I shared what I'd seen with a college friend and she'd given me my words back on a card of comfort: They were my mother's hands and they will be my hands one day.

My mother Alice Anne admits today that, as a teenager and with that age’s limited vision, she saw her mother play bridge and plan community luncheons and she felt, somehow, that it was not enough.  And so she herself has become a wonder woman of power, giving more of herself to our community than I can fathom.  In her hands she has juggled raising seven children, working in numerous (and never-ending) church capacities, chairing a sister-city organization which has gathered 100,000 pounds of medical supplies for Uzhgorod, Ukraine, coordinating local sponsors for orphans in the same city, raising funds for the building of a Boys and Girls Club facility and a local history museum, starting a pre-kindergarten safety program, and many, many more.  Most importantly is what she offers in her hands to forming a relationship of love, respect, and cooperation with my father.  Her particular activities and responsibilities have shifted, but her commitment to making a difference in her every community has not.  She says this is her year to cut back and work on her favorite hobby – researching her ancestors – but so far her hands have not been able to shake completely free of their other activities. 

I wanted the likeness to be there, to have some portion of her reserves of power within me, behind my own hands.  My hands were bare where my mother and grandmother's held rings, symbols of their commitment, joy, sacrifice, and love.  I hoped to one day share their experiences as I had started to share their hands.  But somehow, at least at that moment so proximate to my grandmother's death, my mother could not deal with the likeness I saw in them.  My grandmother's hands were limp with age and her disease; my mother's were active, attending to all.  But the likeness stayed, imprinted on my mind. 

So I took the photographs, three hands intertwined: my grandmother's, soft and aged; my mother's, mighty and agile; my own, bare, naked, still waiting.  I developed and framed them, placing the refrain on the back: They were my mother's hands. . . .  I gave them to my mother for Christmas, one week after the death.  She cried, the death too near, and hid the frame from her sight.  I was hurt, but I had no choice but to respect the pain and loss and combination of raw and sometimes conflicting emotions.  I went back to Stanford and my studies and my world, the likeness fading from my mind. 

She never said anything, but when I came home six months later, the frame hung near her bathroom mirror.  I wonder sometimes, at the combination of things which brought the reconciliation.  Time, the great healer – of course.  But I think it was also, for my mother, all that she had discovered about Alice Virginia as she searched for her past, uncovered all that she had contributed, remembered that her own mother's hands had not been slack, had added and given and blessed.  My mother realized that her mother's greatest gift was her universal and unconditional love.  And now she felt the vacuum left by the absence of those hands, and missed them dearly.  She saw, though it may have taken some time to sift through the memories, just how deep that legacy of love ran: my grandfather gently two-stepping with his wife's limp, soft body; my sister's vigilance, spending sleepless night's of her senior year in high school next to Grandmother's bed; the presence of all four daughters and sons-in-law on Grandma's last night, comforting, holding, stretching the bonds of love and matrimony; my aunt – my mother's eldest sister -- mourning the moment when the body was taken away by curling up, fetal position, in the sheets that still smelled of her mother; friends who missed the laugh and the wit she added to every interaction; the chords sung by her grandchildren at her memorial service as they had been sung at her 50^th wedding anniversary: Forever's in our heart and in our blood / You see we come from a long line of love.

A long line of love.  A continuous line of outstretched hands.  Could my mother have that likeness, inherit that quality of unconditional love as she was inheriting age spots and creases?  Can I?

Contact:  650-388-8881  *  info@longlineoflovememoirs.com

 

 

 

As my clientele grows, I will post additional examples of memoir writing I have done.  At this time, I wish to include a piece of my writing about my grandmother and my mother, which was published in the Fall 2003 issue of Exponent II, a journal for women.  This piece reflects my voice, but when I am working with your memoir, it will reflect your voice.  By the way, in addition to the photo to the right, my Grandmother Alice is pictured twice on this site — can you find both photos?  Hint: Start by reading “About Us.”