It is said that an autobiography comprise the story of a life and that memoir consists of a story from a life. A life can hold, and a person can write, many memoirs. But we have only one telling of the factual events constituting our life.
As a story from a life, a memoir consists of scenes from that life, or more importantly, moments from the aspect, area, or slice of our life that one is focusing upon.
The dimension of life on which one chooses to focus must have a message, or rather we must distill or as in my case exhume that message. And along with this message we must resurrect or uncover the theme of that message.
The area of my life I would focus upon, were I to write a memoir would center of my suffering as the daughter of a mother of whose love I was and still, if I am honest, I am not quite certain.
In one moment of recollection I can see her love. And then in the next I am not so sure, the acceptance and understand that I so craved and try so diligently to provide my children eludes me. I am at once ambivalent.
And in being so I am not sure. And love is lost, only for me to see it once more and it to disappear in the next second.
In that yearning for my mother’s love would constitute the focus of my memoir, if I were to write one–the thought of doing it frightens me so, embarrasses me–the message would be one of finding forgiveness and developing compassion, not only for myself, the child, a daughter, not so certain of her mother’s love, but also for my mother.
For in my uncertainty, the lack of assuredness of her love, I sense roots the roots of her ambivalence towards following through on all that is required of mothers.
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