News and Thoughts
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"It's Fruitcake Weather!"
Some of you know that in addition to my editing work with Savvy, I help people write their memoirs as the owner and personal historian at First Edition Memoirs. Some of the most vivid memories people recall have to do, of course, with the holidays: family meals, traditions, gifts, and so much more. Often I help them recall a “sense memory” of a particular moment: not just what it looked like but what it sounded like, smelled like, felt like in a tactile sense, and so forth.
This week I’m rereading Truman Capote’s wonderful autobiographical story “A Christmas Memory.” Here’s Capote’s tremendously evocative opener:
“Imagine a morning in late November. A coming of winter morning more than twenty years ago. Consider the kitchen of a spreading old house in a country town. A great black stove is its main feature; but there is also a big round table and a fireplace with two rocking chairs placed in front of it. Just today the fireplace commenced its seasonal roar.
"A woman with shorn white hair is standing at the kitchen window. She is wearing tennis shoes and a shapeless gray sweater over a summery calico dress. She is small and sprightly, like a bantam hen; but, due to a long youthful illness, her shoulders are pitifully hunched. Her face is remarkable – not unlike Lincoln’s, craggy like that, and tinted by sun and wind; but it is delicate too, finely boned, and her eyes are sherry-colored and timid. ‘Oh my,’ she exclaims, her breath smoking the windowpane, ‘it’s fruitcake weather!’”
I challenge all of you out there in Writerland to sit down and write a few paragraphs about a holiday memory (whether it's from this time of year or any other), bringing in as much detail as you can. Then share what you’ve written with friends and family, especially, if possible, those who were there at the time. When we’re writing our life stories, we’re writing about love. And what could be a better gift than that?
(If you’d like help telling the rest of your life story, find out more at www.firsteditionmemoirs.com.)
Sarah Jane