Becoming Lavinia

I have this idea that I can enter the mind of my grandmother, dead now 30 years or so, and start to tell her story, a remarkable story to be sure and one I want people to read.  But, of course, in order to tell her story I have to become her in a way, and then dredge up memory from almost a century ago!  It looks to me as though I will do a lot of inventing once I get inside her head because her childhood at the beginning of the 20th century has not been documented in any way;  the good news is that I know her really well, so it will be an adventure (one of her favorite words) to spin out the narrative of her young life.  When she chose to deny herself medical intervention after a burn accident at the age of 89, she talked of going on an "adventure" to reunite with her friends and loved ones long gone.  She had such a brave and surprising life, outliving almost everyone who was important to her even though she was in no way a robust and hearty human being.  At least in body...  But in mind - oh yes!

Remembering ... memoir ... recalling ... re-envisioning ... a lot of writers seem to be doing that these days, and they make their stories of the past look vivid and true, as though they had memories that were crisp and picture perfect.  Truth is no one has such a memory.  I have read The Long Goodbye, Let's Take the Long Road Home, Gordimer's Fierce Attachments, and now I am starting H is for Hawk -- all books written by women.   I am driven to understand the nature of remembering.  When I was in Florence, I walked the narrow funky streets and when I smelled the burnt espresso and side-stepped the dog poop on the sidewalk, I immediately remembered being a young girl walking those streets over 50 years ago.  For a split moment I felt as though I were that young and idealistic girl.  And then, boom, something else happened.  I saw a shop window filled with expensive fancy men's shoes and just wanted to laugh out loud at the Italian men's vanity.  Or I decided to enter a leather store to wander amongst the fancy purses and wallets... On my last day in Florence, I revisited my favorite trattoria and I had boiled chicken with salsa verde, and that green sauce rich with oil, parsley, garlic, capers, and such, took me back to living in the old stone house on the hill when I was eleven and being served by our joyful young housekeeper Elda, whose expertise in the kitchen was remarkable for someone untrained from the countryside.  Can we use those fleeting little moments of smell and sight and touch and taste and transform them into story?

What are the gateways in our memory to the stories?  What do they look like?

As my grandmother got older and older and she and I kept on talking to each other, it seemed her handle on the far past was pretty sharp.  And she loved returning there in her mind to relay old stories of family and place.  It was comforting in a world that had changed so much that she had begun to fear it.  Born before the automobile and airplane and of course the computer, she remarked frequently that the speed and dark violence of the 70s and 80s disturbed her greatly.  It was becoming a world that it was harder and harder to navigate in her mind, the only faculty she could use since she had lost her sight in her early eighties to macular degeneration.  If I had know then that I would feel driven to write her story, I am sure I would have tried to record her telling her stories... Now I will simply have to take myself to another place and conjure what was in her mind.

Why tell her story?  Because she saved my life, that's why.  She took me under her gentle wing and the age of about five and loved me categorically.  I was the daughter she never had, after all.  My mother usually needed me to be somewhere else, and it was to grandmother's house I often went.  She taught me table manners, generosity, love of the old, cribbage and dominoes, she opened up music and books to me, modeled bravery and courage, and read stories to me late at night so I wouldn't be afraid in the dark.  She showed me that a life of balance was possible, that I was a lovable person and didn't need to abuse my body in order to forget being abandoned.  I was a little sponge soaking up her heartful-ness and compassion.  She was a woman who never knew her own mother, was physically deformed and also frail, and yet with a personality larger than most and a heart like a Buddha.  When she died and I was in my forties, teetering on the edge of a failed marriage, I felt abandoned and terrified I wouldn't be able to manage my life and take care of what was in front of me.  And some months later, as I sat on the beach looking out at the Pacific Ocean I had a revelation of sorts that she was in fact alive and vibrant inside of me.  Yes, she was.  So I would be alright after all...

Soon I will get to work on this new writing project of mine, the rich and long story of Lavinia's life. I will be talking to her in my mind before I begin and will do a lot of scribbling, and hopefully will not worry about where all the memory gates are.  I'll follow my nose, my eyes, and my ears back ... to Charleston, South Carolina, in 1900 ... and then sit down in her house on Hasell Street and just wait to see what transpires.  It should be a great adventure.