I wonder if my own draw toward others' memoirs and biographies is because I share with you the lack of an accounting of my father's life, which remains mostly unknown to me. Born a first-generation American, orphaned at age 4 in 1920, his life as a child, as a young man in his 20s, and even later, is a blank for me. I know even less about him than you are able to reconstruct from what you learned about your father. Except for his quarrels with my mother, he moved through life mostly silent, never talking about what he felt or had seen in that time and place where a narrative thread might have been discovered, picked up, and offered continuity to a story, his own and mine, in the making. He was very handsome, as evident from a U.S. Army photo and pictures from his marriage to my mother, but I always thought to the day he died, in his early 70s, abruptly at my Virginia home, his eyes betrayed hurts that could never be expressed in words, not to my mother and not to any of his children. His was a life I have yet to be able to imagine with any satisfaction. I did not know how to get close to him. Yet I had so many questions, and had wanted to interview him, thinking that could be un-threatening, objective; his sudden death prevented that.
I think we do, indeed, "become from," chance and curiosity, intellectual need, creativity and spiritual capacity to fill otherwise empty spaces, sending us in one or another direction to find meaning for being. Who knows what he "became from," being orphaned and a ward of the state. The spaces, for me, remain mostly empty, though I like to think I've been able to fill some of them because I write, and because I have never stopped seeking and wanting to know, and understand, and make known.
Maureen, we've been friends for some time now, but I'm still taken aback by our commonalities and how fully you understand whatever I write. Thank you for that.
Your father does seem an even more extreme case. I wonder what role, if any, your mother played. Most of what I knew in the early decades actually came from my mother, not my father, but it isn't as if she was good at accounting for the past herself. In fact, I know even less about my mother's family, but because of the exotic particulars of Mac's, his felt the more compelling to seek to know. Mac outlived your father by two decades, and I learned some very important information in his final years, which it makes it sadder that you lost your father what now seems too early. The next two parts of what I now think will be eight will reveal some of this.
Sorry to hear of your unshakeable belief that the Bolsheviks triumphed because of their greater ruthlessness, compared to Kerensky and the others...balderdash!!!! but this is something we never agree about...beautiful essay...hearing my father share his memories of youth, then the Shoah was quite enlightening...
Glad to hear there are more parts to come. I know the specifics of my parents' biographies, but I feel as if my understanding is still at a surface level. Few people care to excavate and examine their pasts critically and of those, even fewer dare to put it in writing.
I thought, at first, 5 parts at most, but now as this has developed in my mind over the weeks, I have the 8 parts delineated clearly. And yes, that excavation and examination is very much a theme in all this. Thanks for reading along.
I so enjoyed reading this, Jay.
I wonder if my own draw toward others' memoirs and biographies is because I share with you the lack of an accounting of my father's life, which remains mostly unknown to me. Born a first-generation American, orphaned at age 4 in 1920, his life as a child, as a young man in his 20s, and even later, is a blank for me. I know even less about him than you are able to reconstruct from what you learned about your father. Except for his quarrels with my mother, he moved through life mostly silent, never talking about what he felt or had seen in that time and place where a narrative thread might have been discovered, picked up, and offered continuity to a story, his own and mine, in the making. He was very handsome, as evident from a U.S. Army photo and pictures from his marriage to my mother, but I always thought to the day he died, in his early 70s, abruptly at my Virginia home, his eyes betrayed hurts that could never be expressed in words, not to my mother and not to any of his children. His was a life I have yet to be able to imagine with any satisfaction. I did not know how to get close to him. Yet I had so many questions, and had wanted to interview him, thinking that could be un-threatening, objective; his sudden death prevented that.
I think we do, indeed, "become from," chance and curiosity, intellectual need, creativity and spiritual capacity to fill otherwise empty spaces, sending us in one or another direction to find meaning for being. Who knows what he "became from," being orphaned and a ward of the state. The spaces, for me, remain mostly empty, though I like to think I've been able to fill some of them because I write, and because I have never stopped seeking and wanting to know, and understand, and make known.
Maureen, we've been friends for some time now, but I'm still taken aback by our commonalities and how fully you understand whatever I write. Thank you for that.
Your father does seem an even more extreme case. I wonder what role, if any, your mother played. Most of what I knew in the early decades actually came from my mother, not my father, but it isn't as if she was good at accounting for the past herself. In fact, I know even less about my mother's family, but because of the exotic particulars of Mac's, his felt the more compelling to seek to know. Mac outlived your father by two decades, and I learned some very important information in his final years, which it makes it sadder that you lost your father what now seems too early. The next two parts of what I now think will be eight will reveal some of this.
Sorry to hear of your unshakeable belief that the Bolsheviks triumphed because of their greater ruthlessness, compared to Kerensky and the others...balderdash!!!! but this is something we never agree about...beautiful essay...hearing my father share his memories of youth, then the Shoah was quite enlightening...
Chuck, I was blind but now I see. It was the humanistic grace of their vision. Thank you.
Thank you, too, for the compliment. Would love to hear some of your father's memories over a Margherita pizza.
say when Prof Adler!!! Pizzeria Sei is calling!
Glad to hear there are more parts to come. I know the specifics of my parents' biographies, but I feel as if my understanding is still at a surface level. Few people care to excavate and examine their pasts critically and of those, even fewer dare to put it in writing.
I thought, at first, 5 parts at most, but now as this has developed in my mind over the weeks, I have the 8 parts delineated clearly. And yes, that excavation and examination is very much a theme in all this. Thanks for reading along.