I could have forgotten to write again today, but I'm making myself remember before I start catching up on last night's TV. Actually, I've been writing some this afternoon, just writing something else.I guess I've been inspired a little by the other diary folk who are putting books together, along with some requests I've had recently, and the trip to Florida. In fact, I wrote a book in 1998, which I've mentioned before, a family history, which I wrote as if my kids had just picked up pictures out of my mother's picture box and asked me about them, and I just told them the stories I'd always heard, and remembered. At the time, I made about 15 copies -- with the help of the library's laser printer and Kinko's -- and sent them out to my cousins and niece and nephews, and of course, my kids. My sister's lost her copy over the years, and asked me to make her another one. I know that some of the others have lost theirs, too. My aunt in Florida was apparently so taken with it that she's shown it to everyone she knows. As a result, people I don't even know have told me how much they enjoyed it; for example, when I was in Florida earlier in the month.
So I'm going to get some more printed, I'm thinking through Cafe Press. Or maybe some other self-publisher. I need to reformat it anyway, so I'm working on that. It was also in serious need of an epilogue, which I started to put together before. I've never quite decided whether or not I want to try to sell it, or at least, offer it to others, because it uses everyone's real names; there's a family tree in the back with real names because even relatives reading it have trouble keeping everyone straight. (There's the little matter of my parents appearing to be related to each other before they were married, which they totally were not, but because they were introduced by the Florida aunt, who was my mother's cousin on her father's side and my father's cousin on his father's side, it kind of looks that way. She's my relative on both sides. Oy, I've been here before.)
The problem with reformatting is that the whole thing is chock full of pictures, which is pretty much the point of the narrative, which is called, btw, The Picture Box. I've also considered re-doing it as a website, which I may yet get to -- there's a retirement project -- but it's a pretty big undertaking, and I've never come up with a layout for it that I like.
Anyway, I've got last night's Big Love to watch, and something like 45 SVU's, but I thought I'd give you a taste of what I'm talking about. This is the dedication and the introduction. (I replaced the kids' names with their initials.) Remember, I wrote it in 1998.
Dedication
Because I am a storyteller, I was always hungry for stories. Because I was hungry for stories, people were happy to tell them to me.
I began to tell these stories to you and to your cousins as soon as you were willing to listen to them. I thought of this as passing on a tradition of storytelling, something to say out loud and listen to.
When I was about twelve, I searched boxes and drawers and put all the family pictures I could find into albums. But not until I was past forty did I see the white cardboard box in which my mother kept the old pictures. It's a big box, the kind that might hold a thick, fluffy bathrobe being given as a gift.
Many of the pictures are labeled with names and dates. Some of them are in frames. I first saw the box and the pictures in it a few weeks after we learned that my mother had breast cancer. This was just after her 75th birthday. We looked through the pictures together, and she explained who some of the unfamiliar faces were.
Within a few months, she underwent a course of chemotherapy and painkillers that left her groggy, and that made conversation difficult. I took the picture box out of her closet one day and brought it home, and she never knew. I wanted to scan them into my computer to save forever, and to make copies for other people.
Then one morning, just recently, we sat together and looked at the pictures, and I began to tell you the stories, as they had been told to me. I decided that I would write them down the way I told them, so that you would always have them alongside the pictures.
I have another purpose. When all the stories of the picture box are written, I want to bring them to my mother. Now that she has been off chemotherapy and most of the painkillers for over a year, I think she'll enjoy reading them.
These stories have been written for:
R and K, who have heard them more times than you can remember, and who will humor me when I tell them again,
J1, J3, and J2, who have listened to me more often than you should have had to, and who have seen me draw the tube-shaped family tree on napkins and placemats,
B, who listened and laughed one night in Colorado,
and
Shirl. She's a good egg.
The Pictures
You say you want me to tell you all the stories of all the pictures in Grandma's white box. You know I've probably told all of them already, at least, all the ones I know. But probably I told you some of them when you were little, so you don't remember them. I don't know if I can still remember them myself. I never used to think that 45 was so old, but I'll admit I don't remember as well as I'd like to. Something like Grandpa.
Okay, not so much like Grandpa. When you see him tomorrow, you know he'll ask you again what classes you're taking this year and if you have a boyfriend yet. I know he asked you last week. He'll ask you next week, too.
But you wanted to know about the pictures.
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I'm watching Seinfeld
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