The I in Memoir

One of the good things about not working on my book is that I've been able to catch up on my reading. My current object of attention is Island, Tasmania's excellent literary journal. I always find its nonfiction strong and this issue (115), which came out in the summer and which has sat on my bedside table since then, is no exception. I'm especially enjoying the essays on memoir and autobiograpy writing. I suppose because this is what is on my mind at the moment.

Robert Dessaix in conversation with Danielle Wood says:

Anyone who talks to you - especially husbands and relatives - knows that you're a writer. They're going to pop up in your books and there you go. If feelings get dented from time to time, you're not responsible. Or only a bit. So long as you don't write out of malice, obviously. I admit there's a grey area - parents, people you knew before you began to write - but you're immortalising them, after all, and that should be worth something.

Now that my book is nearing publication (although not fast enough for my liking), I'm beginning to get nervous about the reactions of people who appear in it. Will my father find my depiction of my mother's behaviour too difficult to bear? Will the aunt with whom my mother feuded take offence at my account of their differences? Will my brothers feel I have misrepresented their roles?

I have done my best to be as honest as I can, but as Elisabeth Hanscome writes in another article in the same issue of Island:

The truth, the real, is fluid not static, though once written it can become static, and in this sense it can distort what really happened.

Hanscome also quotes Paul John Eakin, who has written extensively on memoir and autobiography:

The 'I' of the first person...papers over the fact that we are no longer who we were. Each day we wake up a different person. We constantly remodel the past to accommodate the needs of the person we become in the present.

The back story may well be the true story but its telling almost always involves a degree of interpretation and therefore to some extent the fictional uses of imagination.

Well, notwithstanding the difficulties of honesty and memory and of the writing process itself, I hope I have managed to tell a story that illuminates something true and real and that will resonate for the reader.

Writing as Therapy

When people learn that I have written a memoir about dealing with my mother's Alzheimer's they often ask me if the writing was therapeutic. It probably shouldn't, but the question makes me angry. I find it insulting. For me writing is both a creative endeavour and work; it certainly is not therapy.

Maybe it's the semantics I object to. If you say something is therapeutic, don't you mean it makes you better? Cures you of some symptom? Maybe all these people want to know is whether writing my memoir helped me cope with my mother's illness and death. And yes, it did, but not for the reason they think.

I recently read an interview with a writer who did say that writing her memoir about her mother's death was therapeutic for her. She even went on to add that she didn't need to see a counsellor because she'd written her book. Good for her.

For me, the writing process was engrossing and technically difficult, so it helped me in the way that work is often helpful: doing it kept me engaged and transported me to the place where I am most myself. But as far as being therapeutic, that is helping me to come to terms with losing my mother to Alzheimer's, it wasn't at all. I still found the journey heart breaking and it still hurts now three months after her death. It was an awful way to go and that's all there is to it.

Stage Fright

Late last Thursday night I finally hit the key to send my manuscript to my editor. What a scary, scary moment. It was such a hard thing to do.

Since then I've been reading reviews of other books on similar themes. Some of the reviews are not so favourable and now, although I'm desperate for my book to be published, I'm also dreading its reception. Will it get poor reviews or, worse still really, no reviews at all? Will it sink unnoticed into what's increasingly looking like an overcrowded field? What's so special about my book anyway? Isn't it sentimental and self indulgent? Why would anyone want to read about my specific experience? The publisher accepted the manuscript on the basis of the first ten chapters, which were all I'd written at that time. That was exciting then. Now I worry that they'll hate the rest of the book.

All this has taken me by surprise. I stupidly believed all my self doubt would be gone by now. First there's the worry that you can actually finish your project, then the worry that it'll be accepted for publication. I thought that those would be the big ones and that afterwards I'd be full of confidence, but it's not like that at all. And still to come, I'm sure, are concerns I haven't even thought of yet.

I don't know how long it will be till I receive the marked up manuscript. Meanwhile I remain in limbo, worrying.

Shepherds' Lunch

Since we've been sheep and goat farmers we've stopped buying meat. We used to swap lamb for beef with a local farmer, but these days we don't even do that. We know our animals graze on grass, that we don't overstock and that they live good lives. They have the run of several large paddocks - and sometimes, as in the case of the lost goats, they range far and wide.

The main reason we keep animals is weed control. Goats relish the weed species we have here - blackberry and sycamore especially. And thanks to the sheep we have no ragwort.

When the time comes we kill them ourselves as quickly and humanely as possible. We do our own butchering too. I can't say I love that part, but if we're going to eat meat at least we shouldn't be in denial about it.

Today for lunch I made a shepherd's pie, using minced goat meat and our own potatoes.

I think the secret is in long slow cooking of the mince. Yesterday I chopped an onion and some garlic into a splash of olive oil, and then added the meat, a handful of chopped herbs, some water and a dollop each of Worcestershire sauce and tomato sauce. I thickened it with a little flour and then simmered it for hours. This morning I mashed some potato and spread it on top and cooked it some more. Deelicious!

Add some share farmers, some guests who'd travelled an hour to be with us, sunny autumn weather after a day of rain, and you have the recipe for a perfect shepherds' lunch.

Desperately Seeking Goats

Well, we still haven't found the lost goats though we have seen evidence of where they've been - walking in single file along the outside of the Truck Paddock fence and wandering down our driveway to the front gate.

Yesterday morning we walked our share farmer neighbour's boundary to see how the goats escaped in the first place. The fence between her and her neighbour on the other side is in pretty poor shape so that's the answer.

We'll get them sometime in the next couple of weeks and meanwhile we've seen some pretty autumn sights.
Cobwebs shimmering in the sun on the grass of the Truck Paddock,

unusual fungi,

and vistas that after more than six years living here still bring me joy each time I see them:

After the search Farmdoc and I continued on down to the village to the post office and to the Laurel Berry for fish and chips. Ho hum, another hard day's work in Mole Creek.

In Search of Lost Goats

Goats are such escape artists. They find all the weak spots in your fences, or simply jump them, and then look surprised when they land on the other side. How did I get here? they say.

And when they've gone missing and you find them - or they find you - they look so innocent. Who me? they say.

Yesterday we went in search of a mob of fifteen that had breached the fence between our share-farmer neighbour and her neighbour, and then made their way via another neighbour's property in a long loop back into our sycamore forest.

We haven't really been panicked about them; this time of year when the leaves turn and fall there's plenty of feed in the forest for goats.

We didn't find them, but there can't be too many nicer ways to spend an autumn afternoon than tramping through paddocks, bush and forest with your fellow farmers. And we didn't come home empty handed: one of our neighbours has a laden pear tree he was happy to share with us. As for the goats, they're holidaying somewhere on our land and we'll look for them again later in the week.

One potato, two

When I get back to Mole Creek the first thing I do after I've kissed Farmdoc and dumped my backpack is to check out what's growing on the farm.

When we built this house an important requirement for me was a herb garden right outside the kitchen; now all day I'm in and out of the kitchen door, tipping water, tea leaves or coffee grounds onto the herbs, or cutting fragrant leaves for vases or cooking. Because everything here has to be fenced off to protect it from wallabies, possums and wombats, the herbs have their own little house inside which they grow like crazy and need to be constantly pruned.

Yesterday I picked lemon balm for the house. It makes a delicious tea but I love the look of it too.

Second stop was the vegetable garden inside its own enclosure at the side of the house. I pushed open the gate, carrying secateurs and a container and wondering what would be ripe. Yesterday afternoon I dug up a bed of potatoes. We grow mostly Dutch Creams, which are delicious boiled, roasted, baked or mashed.

Last night we ate sweet corn and mashed potato sprinkled with chives for dinner. Ahh, home sweet home.