The Painful Chiseling Out Of Marbled Beliefs

My Family’s Last Reunion

This is the last picture taken of me and my family of origin less than a year before my brother Miguel died. I am the only surviving member of that group.

In my newsletter “Word Sketches,” I have been updating my readers about my struggles to write the story of my mother’s life versus my own memoir. Here are more details about that effort.

Back in 2014, I participated in NaNoWriMo, a national race to write 50,000 words during the very-short-because-of-the-holidays month of November. Being an overachiever, not only did I surpass that goal, but I also did a Writer’s Digest challenge to write a poem a day during the same month.

The poetry challenge provided me with many of the poems in my award-winning book Alborada: a Poetic Memoir Across Cultures. I also ended up with 60,000 words about my mother’s life and this poem about the experience of writing about it.

Halfway Point

Thirty-two-thousand words into my novel,
my heroine is about to fall in love.
I have described her happy childhood,
her doting father, her desire for perfection,
how her own life-threatening illness
destroyed her mother by an excess of faith.

I showed her miserable adolescence,
trying to make up for being alive,
her yearning for freedom,
her desire for fun and love and lightness.

She sits in front of the mirror now,
combing her hair and primping
before the "Fiestas Patronales,"
her patron saint’s festivities.

She can almost taste the music
and hear the pungent smell of the fritters,
feel the twinkle in the dark brown eyes,
smell the smile under the thin black moustache.

Her world is about to change.
Her prayers will be answered.
She will get married, have children,
run away from her mother’s abuse.

But I hate to bring her there,
dressed in her favorite blue cotton dress,
the color of the Virgin’s mantle,
because I know she doesn’t know
the worst is yet to come.

At the time, I did not have the emotional fortitude to write how my birth and that of my two brothers had affected my mother’s life and the writing came to a screeching halt. Years later, I still could not, did not want to, write about my youngest brother’s death of AIDS at 33 years old or my other brother’s kidnap and murder at 57.

Time went by and I wrote more poetry and felt guilty about the work tucked away in the recesses of my computer. After the publication of the second edition of my book, retitled Alborada (Dawn): A Cross-Cultural Memoir in Poetry in 2023, I sought help reviving that old project when I enrolled in Jule Kucera’s “Memoir Mastery” class. (Read more about Jule at https://julekucera.com/)

My reluctance to write my painful history was quickly shot down by the fact that, by definition, I cannot write anyone’s but my own memoir. I resisted it so much that I realized I needed to attempt the writing for the sake of my emotional healing. Luckily, Jule created a safe and nurturing space to do the work of organizing my thoughts in a creative and enlightening way.

I don’t know if I’ll ever publish this as yet untitled work. My main challenge is to tell my story in an honest and profound way that does not demonize the people that have been complicit in my pain. Jule’s method is shining a light on the possibility of doing that. This is what I’ve learned so far:

Thanks to this three-and-a-half-month-long exercise I have been able to verbalize my motivations to write my story and it’s underlying theme: “Living in fear and guilt is a terrible, confusing, painful, exhausting way to live. It leads to poor decision-making and actions that harm ourselves and others. It is impossible to truly relax and enjoy life and to have deep and honest relationships.” This is shown in many ways throughout the story and it's my motivation to exorcise any remaining ghosts from my past through my writing.

To help me along I taped to my monitor these two important insights: "I did the best I could!" and "I am the one I've been waiting for!"

Finally, in my many conversations with Jule, I was able to put together these thoughts:

“A palimpsest is a rare find, a manuscript with traces of overwritten text that reveals the multiple layers of history within its pages.” --- https://www.wordhippo.com/what-is/another-word-for/palimpsest.html

You could say this story is a palimpsest, my story written over my mother's story written over my grandmother's story written over my great grandmother's story. I wonder how my daughters' stories will be written over mine.

This is not a biography based on historical fact. It is an artfully arranged description of what I remember about a long period of my life that sculpted my way of looking at the world and living in it through the painful chiseling out of marbled beliefs. The reader might identify with some of the experiences depicted here or feel strong emotions against my painting style. Just remember, this is not a snapshot of past events but a language-delimited portrait of the scars of a lifetime. I hope my choice of colors and shadowing reveals something of value to you. I am intrinsically a poet after all!

Doesn’t that sound like I might publish the book after all?