Story Learning

I had a bit of an A-Ha moment yesterday, a very little one.

I attended the poetry/fiction reading yesterday afternoon. One of the participants read a fictional story about suffering through cancer while dealing with an alcoholic mother. I do not have a terminal illness, nor do I have (or have I ever had) an alcoholic mother. But some of the things that this young lady was talking about (through her character) I could relate to. I had cancer at one time, so I know what it's like to come home from the doctor's office in a daze, not quite sure what to do with yourself. Because of her story, I reflect on my own relationship with my mother before, during, and after my treatment. This is actually helpful, because a large part of what is going into my personal essay is my struggles and my mother's struggles with the medical field.

I suppose the A-Ha moment was the realization that we really do learn through stories.

Family Photos

I have realized how little I know about my family, including my immediate family. Maybe I’m just a little self-centered, being the baby of the family and all. I never thought too much about the life my family had before me. How did my parent’s meet? What kind of pets did they have? What was the old house like?

My family existed as a family before I was in the picture, literally. There is an official family photo of them. We never retook a family portrait, and I never let them forget it. I don’t even think we have a snapshot of all of us together.

I have never been big on pictures. Only recently have I noticed that the only pictures I have of my mother and me (here in Corpus Christi with me) are the one that I was given for Christmas last year after she passed away and one Polaroid of her and me in the hospital when I was born, off-center and washed-out.

***

I have decided to write my final paper about my mother. She was a housewife/homemaker/stay at home mom. I don’t know what the theme of my paper should be. I want to honor my mother, but what do I write in and what do I omit? I mean, I have 24+ years worth of experiences that we have had, but which of those will fit together to make up an overarching theme for my paper? Maybe I bit off more than I could chew with this assignment.

Maybe my focus isn’t my mother, but my relationship with her. Or the issues that we as women struggle/d with. Unfortunately, I can’t just pick up the phone and ask her what it was like to be a young woman in the late sixties/early seventies, to get married at age seventeen, to raise three girls and never finish high school, to be married for 37 years; I suppose that I have to show all of this with the stories.