Something of Value

Since the burglary, I've spent hours searching. First I had to search the house to identify what had been stolen. Then I set off on a seemingly endless soul-searching trek. My advice to myself: When life sends you a lesson, make a lesson plan. It looked like my lesson referred to materialism, and I beat myself up about my attachment to things. I tried to convince myself that I would be a better person if I didn't replace the stolen items. As I grieved over my trinkets and treasures I didn't feel better or wiser; I felt vulnerable, lost, disillusioned, and spiritually impoverished.

When the police detective asked about the extent of our loss, I quoted the prices of the laptop and MP3 player, but I told him that my jewelry wasn't worth much beyond sentimental value.

In the days following the police report, I had to search my memory to come up with an accurate inventory for our insurance claim. Some of the memory jolts stung like a physical blow -- my grandmother's Bavarian crystal necklace, my dad's high school class ring, the Turkish puzzle ring Fred gave me 43 years ago. I had carried these bits and pieces with me all my life and around the world. The hole in my spirit deepened with each addition to the list.

Before my inventory was complete, our insurance claims adjuster asked me for an approximate figure for the jewelry. I couldn't answer. "Would it be less than $2500?" he asked. I felt relieved to reply in all honesty, "No doubt."

Being the person that I am, I entered my inventory in an Excel worksheet. REPLACEMENT VALUE: GRAND TOTAL =SUM(E1:E91). I compressed my lips between my teeth and pushed ENTER. The dollar amount confirmed my growing suspicion: my jewelry had been worthy after all! In a font as clear as Arial Bold my lesson spelled out its meaning. To validate it, I went to my Native American Medicine Deck, shuffled, and drew one card:

"The key word is respect. Learn to assert, without ego, what you are. Respect follows. You must first respect yourself. Walk tall and be proud of the accomplishments you have made."

I take this to heart. My loved ones have told me often enough that I undervalue my talents and accomplishments, just as I had undervalued my jewelry collection. At the end of this search that began with a burglary, I've found a reminder that I am indeed something of value. Now I'm gathering courage to strut my stuff. Maybe I'll check out that interesting listing in New Mexico Kids! Magazine and learn how to beat my own drum -- or start gathering music for the lullaby CD I've dreamed of making. I want to reach out beyond my boundaries, just to see what's there.

Trinkets and Mementos

The trinkets and mementos I gather are physical reminders of what my mind already knows. They elicit the warm feelings, the excitement, or whatever emotion I felt at the time I acquired the trinkets. To me, the mementos have the value of that special moment. But will my children treasure them as I do? They can't experience what I felt.  Yet, the value of the thing is greatly enhanced by the back story, the "provenance", as Antique Road Show calls it. I can tell my children the stories and maybe they will gain an understanding and appreciation of who I am.  Isn't that why we write memoirs? 
 
Photos serve the same purpose as souvenirs and trinkets. They remind us of special times. Do we really remember all those vacation moments, or is it only the moments we photographed that stay in memory? Without photos to remind us of slender bodies and once-stylish haircuts and bellbottoms, can we go back in our minds' eye to "how we were?"
 
Memories are the archaeology of the mind.  We are sometimes surprised by what comes floating unbidden to the surface for us to rediscover.  What remains hidden requires concentrated effort to dig down and reconstruct a time and place and the meaning of our time there. What happens when our mind no longer retains the original memory?  Will the photos and mementos remind us of what we no longer know? 
 
I'll treasure the memories while I can and  leave the mementos for others to discover and wonder.

Memory is a net

     Memory is a net; one finds it full of fish when he takes it from the brook; but a dozen miles of water have run through it without sticking. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.   

      Can we trust our memories? I recently got into a heated discussion with a friend about the details of an event in which we both participated. She became very angry that the version I remembered was different than what she remembered. Neither one of us wanted to budge from our position.
     Beginning the discussion, I had some questions about how things really happened, but her version contradicted what I was sure had happened.  The more she protested, the more amazed I became: not at the difference in details, but in the sureness each of us had of having the "right" recollection.
     And yet, after she hung up on me, I mulled over the conversation for several hours, and conceded that her version could be right.
     And that frightened me.  How vulnerable we are to suggestion, and how easy it is to incorporate someone else's version of what they saw or think they saw!
     When my husband did aircraft accident investigations, he learned that everyone saw something different in the event, often conflicting with each other.  The reliability of eyewitness reports also has an impact in criminal cases. For a further discussion on this impact, see How Reliable is Eyewitness Testimony?: A Decision By New York State's Highest Court Reveals Unsettling Truths About Juries by Michael C. Dorf and The Problem with Eyewitnesses by Finlo Rohrer of BBC News.

Memory

As a memoir writer I have to wonder how my memories relate to the facts. Of all the events in my life that I could have remembered, why did I choose the ones that stick with me? And do I remember those events accurately as exact truth or do I recall them according to some emotional truth as I perceived it?



John Daniel, author of Looking After, a memoir about taking care of his mother as her memory gradually fades with Alzheimer's Disease, has concluded that "Memory is a system of near-infinite complexity, a system that seems designed for revision as much as for replication, and revision unquestionably occurs. Many details are lost, usually in ways that serve the self in its present situation, not the self of ten or twenty or forty years ago when the remembered event took place."



If John is right and my memories are primarily self-serving, I am presented with the challenge of trying to reach the honest emotional heart of my stories while still paying due respect to factual truth as well as to truths remembered by others who were present at the same events.

Nancy