Why Not a Memoir?

It all started when I was examining my skin in the mirror one night, as women of a certain age are wont to do, and I noticed the crepe-paper-like texture of my neck.

By dint of DNA (thank you, Nannie), I tend to look younger than I am. I do not mean to brag, but it is true that people generally peg me anywhere from five to ten years younger than my actual age.

I don’t really dwell on it because, to me, most working adults, at a glance, could be anywhere from 30 to 55. It’s only when you talk to them and learn their cultural touchstones that you figure out where they stand in the generational landscape. Do they make references to Van Halen and Diff’rent Strokes?  Or is it Nirvana and My So Called Life?  Or, God help us, The Backstreet Boys and Felicity?  What you talkin’ about, Willis?

Anyway, so everyone “of a certain age” pretty much looks the same to me . . . except, I have recently discovered to my chagrin, the necks. 

Necks don’t lie. With all the bending and stretching, especially in our smartphone age in which we are all looking down all the time, they cannot lie. They tell people you’ve been looking down and around for a long time.

And mine is a brutally honest neck. My neck, an over-50-year-old neck, tells you it has very much been looking down and around for more than a half-century, thank you very much.

So when I was examining my neck the other night before bed, contemplating buying neck cream (which I did do, but have not yet opened because I have a generally slovenly skin care regime — more on that later, in a to-be-written essay) . . . . When I was looking at my crepey neck, I remembered a book by Nora Ephron called I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman.

I remember when it came out in 2006 and, I confess, I didn’t really get it.  The When-Harry- Met-Sally-Silkwood-Sleepless-in-Seattle lady wrote a book about her neck. Weird. I didn’t read it. 

I didn’t read it because my neck and I were only 35 years old at the time and, while not quite swan-like, my neck certainly was no turkey-waddle either. It was an early-middle-aged neck, and it and I were unconcerned with fine wrinkles and horizontal creases at that moment in our history. 

Flash forward 17 years and here we were, contemplating neck cream. I finally understood the title of that book. 

So I bought it on Audible. And I started listening. Not only did I relate to Nora Ephron’s essay about her feeling bad about her neck. I related to a great many of her essays on what it’s like to be an aging woman.

I related so much to her essays that I started telling my slightly more middle-aged husband about Nora Ephron’s essays and how funny and relatable they are. I even related to the essay in which she talks about not being able to read maps and phone books anymore — even though we do not have maps and phone books anymore —  because I related to needing readers. (And . . . the essay made me nostalgic for maps and phone books. Remember Mapsco?)

So anyway, one hot Texas summer afternoon, after I’d shared with my husband Nora’s love for John LeCarre (whom we both also love), he sent me a text, a writing prompt of sorts. It went like this:

Meredyth writes the next Ephron memoir: 

"After 15 years of marriage, there seems no point to renewing any vows. Marriage vows have always seemed to me unnecessarily prolix and frankly unnecessarily vague. The terms of our marriage, I tell my husband, reduce to one fundamental rule: Our lives must never be so penurious that we’re forced to buy store-brand salad dressing. We must be sufficiently comfortable that I can guiltlessly buy Newman’s Own."

I sent this true gem to my two best work friends with this comment:

I feel like, perhaps, no actual memoir is needed, for he has perfectly summarized my views on our future retirement. I do not ask for much. Only that we are wealthy enough to afford non-store brand salad dressing in our dotage.

Then I added, “Perhaps, though, a memoir would be appropriate, after all, to explain how I arrived at this modest life goal. Hmmm.”

And then I dismissed that idea as nonsense. Who would read my essays?  I did not marry Carl Bernstein, nor have I written many famous movies and books. I mean, I would like to do that. I would love to write novels. I would love to write engaging novels that people can’t put down. And I’ve tried. I get writers block. But I find my own stories trite, tired, derivative. I bore myself. The characters are wooden. I grow to hate them and do not want to spend any more time with them, let alone create them and their stupid lives. You get the idea:  While I may have that one great novel in me, as the old saw goes, I am not sure that I have the capacity to get it out of me. 

And yet, I write essays. I write them nearly effortlessly. The words just come. I’m just talking to you, see?, telling you my opinions, my prejudices, my observations and frustrations. I’ve been doing it for years in a blog only a handful of people read. But the handful seem to enjoy my essays. So why not a memoir in essay form?  Maybe more than a handful would read it. Maybe?  Worth a shot?

Hmmm. 

YA Think?

Before I begin, I should confess something:  I’ve read all of the Harry Potter books.  I’ve listened to all of the His Dark Materials trilogy on books on CD.  I’ve tried to read a couple of Lemony Snicket books.  And I’m presently listening to The Hunger Games in my car.  I’ve never read anything to do with Bella Swan, not even a fan fic.

And, I have to say that the Harry Potter series really captured my imagination and I really wanted to know what happened next.  (I also wanted the books to continue to be as well crafted as the first three, but was continually disappointed by what seemed to be a substitution of quantity of words for economy of story-telling.)  I would eagerly await the next book and would devour it in a weekend.

Still . . . .

Why do adults, and mostly adult women, read these YA books?  Why is there craze after craze for these sorts of books, but it’s not just teenagers and prepubescents; it’s their moms too?  Why is that?

This question occurred to me on my Friday morning drive into work as I began listening to The Hunger Games on CD.  The language was simple.  The narrator was ever-so-slightly self-important.  As I listened, I imagined a teen girl staring meaningfully into the middle distance as she spoke with a hollow, distant ring.  It seemed so very perfectly created for the mind of a young person.

But not perfectly crafted for me:  I’m 41.

There's no denying, though, that there are lots like me, me included on occasion, who lap up these sorts of books like sweet cream.  Why?

Why, when there are such meaty novels written for bona fide adult-adults out there to read, do we retreat into the Young Adult section?  I hate to think that the reason is because the YA books are easier to read, and that it’s a symptom of the dumbing down of America.  And, in fact, I know that this can’t be true because the His Dark Materials trilogy is some dense and complicated stuff, and Philip Pullman does not talk down to his readers.

So why?  Why do adult women want to follow the exploits of teenagers?  And, indeed, why do they write their own fictitious versions of what those teens get up to?  Why?

Honestly, there’s what I anticipate to be a fantastic new Hilary Mantel book out, now, Bring Up the Bodies, a sequel to Wolf Hall, her tale of Thomas Cromwell in the Court of Henry VIII that won the Man Booker Prize in 2009.  If you know history, you know that this is a sexy, political, violent, and intriguing story.  It is every bit as engaging as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, so why aren’t we grown-ups drinking more deeply from that cup?

For me, I can say that I picked up all of these books – Harry Potter, His Dark Materials, Lemony Snicket, and The Hunger Games – out of curiosity.  Because the furor had already risen, and I wanted to know why . . . .  (I was never curious about Twilight – seemed to be your standard damsel in distress tale with an overlay of the paranormal.)  My general feelings were that Harry Potter started out brilliantly and then became turgid, bloated by the fame of its author and editors who could no longer afford to tell her "no."  The His Dark Materials trilogy started out with such an interesting premise (essentially, “what if physics was never divorced from metaphysics and the Church retained all authority?”), and then fell into the trap of trying to send a message, such that the message was swallowed by the effort.  Lemony Snicket bored me from the start; I can't exactly articulate why.  And The Hunger Games has not so far grabbed me in the manner in which I have been informed that I should be grabbed.  (But I’m only one chapter in.  Perhaps it will lasso my imagination yet.)

I don’t think I’m typical in how I've gotten into these books.  Maybe, as The Boy grows and begins reading these books himself, I will find myself on the cutting edge of YA fiction.  But, so far, I have followed along behind the masses, scratching my head and saying, “What’s the big deal here?”

Is it that these YA books allow us to slip back into the simpler times of our youths?  Do they remind us of our teenaged selves?  If it is the pull of the drift back into our innocence, why, then are these pretty violent, dystopian stories the path we take back to our own pure hearts?  (And, do we want our kiddos to be dragging their actually pure little hearts through these dark valleys?  Then again, have you read The Brothers Grimm lately?  Maybe these stories are just the modern outgrowth of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty.)

Or perhaps it is that these books seem to more clearly define good and evil than “grown-up” books.  In the Mantel books about Thomas Cromwell, we see that he was a complicated man.  He was a loving father.  He was a horrendous torturer.  He was smart.  He was amoral.  You cannot fully line up behind him (or behind Thomas More) and say, “I am Team Cromwell!”

So I still don’t know exactly, and still don’t understand really, why YA fiction is all the rage with the middle-aged.  But I do imagine that I will read a lot more young person fiction as The Boy matures.  I will want to know what’s going into his head and will want to be conversant enough with it to chat with him about it.

In the meantime, I think, though, that I’m going to make an effort to take my personal reading list chiefly from the Man Booker list (at least until another YA craze piques my curiosity again).

I miss taking the train.

When I was single, and before I met my husband, I had a house in Dallas.  It was built in 1963.  It was on an enormous third-of-an-acre lot with a gorgeous oak tree in the back yard and crepe myrtles so large you could climb them. (I did.)  It was a fixer-upper with a mish-mash of floor coverings and a foundation problem.  (After over 40 years, the load bearing wall wasn't bearing the load so well anymore.)  It was too much for me.  I never fixed it up.  I did a few cosmetic things:  painting, mainly.  And my mom, dad, and I converted a screened porch with a sauna (seriously) into a screened porch with bar and a sink.  It wasn't perfect.  But it was mine, my little third-of-an-acre.

And when I lived in Dallas, before I became a suburban wife and mom, I took the train to work.  And it was awesome.  Dallas has light rail.  I have always been enamored of urban rail lines.  Maybe it's because I'm from a small town in East Texas that commuter trains seem very glamorous and modern to me.  Maybe, though, it's simply because I hate to drive.

So, even though it sort of smells, I love The Tube in London.  DC's Metro is so slick.  Chicago's El makes you feel nostalgic for a life you never knew, as you wind around the buildings at mid-level.  And the subway in New York?  Well, even though I've visited the city more times than I can count on my hand, I've never actually been on the New York Subway . . . but I love the idea of it . . . and Grand Central Station is cool.  (My husband, who did live in New York for several years, swears that he damaged his hearing on the Subway, but I digress.)

I like everything else about my life in the suburbs:  the fact that the city is small enough to walk just about anywhere, the parks, the running trails, the school district, our house.  And, of course, my family.  Even the fact that my home is far away from my office downtown makes me happy.

But we're not on a DART Rail line. So when I moved to the 'burbs, I gave up my rail pass and, with it, an hour or more of my day in which I would read books.  I would read one or two books a month on the train.  It was my decompression time.  It was my time to explore the paper world.  I felt smarter and more well rounded.  I am sure I was more interesting to talk to.

I also liked that I wasn't clogging the freeway with one more tin can, that I wasn't burning all that fossil fuel, and that I was participating in Dallas's urban-ness.  Taking the train makes you feel differently about the city you live in.  Dallas seemed smaller and easier when I took the train.  Need to get downtown?  Just hop the rail line, and you're there in less than 30 minutes with no traffic snarls or hassels with parking.  You're less likely to head downtown if getting to your destination involves a long drive on a hot and crowded freeway followed by a frustrating search for a $10 parking space.

Now, I drive to work.  I've tried books on CD to fill the dead time in the car.  It's not the same.  I'm not nearly as engaged in the text when I'm listening to a book on CD for all the obvious reasons, not the least of which is that I'm paying attention to traffic.  In fact, often, I'm not listening at all.  The book is just a sound to cover up the road noise . . . might as well listen to the radio.  And the 45 minutes to an hour I spend at the end of each day trying not to die on Interstate 35 exhausts me so much that I am less likely to do the things I need to do to be a healthy human:  cook meals, exercise, read books.  And it makes me less fun for my husband and son too.  I also feel badly about the gas, the pollution.  That's the air my boy will breath for the next, let's hope, 100 years or more.

There's a new rail line that extends to a neighboring suburb.  I would still have to drive to get there, maybe 15 minutes or so.  And then the train ride would be another 40ish minutes.  Is it worth it?  It might be.  Maybe, one week, I will try it . . . .

I miss taking the train.