Tribute to My Sister

I remain at home a lot now. At my advanced age I find little entertainment to take me away. However, I feel the pressure to finish family genealogy and write more about my family.  I began family stories in earnest ten year ago. Mostly I write about my growing up front the 1930s until now.  Amazing I can remember my growing up years better than my today time.  I don't keep a journal.  Too much triviality is written there.  My sister faithfully kept her journal for over ten years. I have to read hundreds of pages to glean anything of any importance.  It is through her writings that I find the key.

Sis died December 31 of last year. She passed away on my second son's birthday. How fitting. We'll never forget the date.  Sis was persistent in keeping a journal, even as she lay dying, she'd ask for her "notebook." Barely able to hold a pen she hen-scratched something, unable to follow the lines, weaving her words only she could understand.

She and I had decided a year before to donate our bodies to the local University of Mississippi Donor Program.  We'd never been ones to visit our parents' burial places, change dry flowers to new, sweep off the leaves from their eternal beds. We didn't want our families to feel pressured to honor us by spending thousands of dollars that could help a grandchild finish college or pay for summer camp or  purchase new books to read.  Little did we know she'd be the first to leave.

I gathered her writing books, not the journals, and planned to read her thoughts penned in moments of joy, of unhappiness, of contemplation. I was six years older than she and we never had much in common. I became her little mother, taking care to see she was dressed in the mornings as a child, then walk her to nursery school and later to elementary school. I reminded her of her duties, her responsibilities, and at the same time giving her permission.  I forgot and stayed her mother when she was grown.  Our mother worked full time. We were latch-key kids in the 1940s. Sis never forgot my rule over her. As an adult I gave her advice, wanted or not, about boyfriends( me, with little experience). I felt I was a good critic of guys. What I failed to realize in those early years was that regardless of what I preached, Sis followed her own heart. In her writings she poured her heart into the pages describing her unhappiness with what she had been dealt. She mentioned often my "meddling." I learned a lot about Sis from the words she poured onto three-holed notebook paper.

We became close when we retired.  We made up for lost time in the 20 years left of her life. We traveled together to writers' conferences, to historical points in the South, to western US to see the national parks in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico.  I showed her places we as kids accompanied our parents when they took us "out west" in their new Ford Station wagon with "real wood sides," as the advertisements stated.  She was eight years old, I fourteen. I still had memories of the places we stopped and when we revisited these sites, she had no memory of them.  Through my oral travelogue I reminded her of our young lives. We laughed about how we fooled Daddy when we wanted to go to Sun Valley, Idaho, to see where Sonia Heine had made her movies. We let him sleep in the car, after having driven all night, and Mother took over and steered us to Sun Valley.  In those days before air conditioning, traveling in the cool of the night was preferable.

She critiqued my writings and rejoiced when I won an award. She was always ready to go places. She volunteered one year at Ghost Ranch in Santa Fe (a Presbyterian conference center), and shared her experiences. She went on to Abiququi, NM to help out and she felt she was at the end of the world. She and I went hiking in Santa Fe with Elderhostel.  She proved a better hiker. I was there for support. If I didn't go with her to a destination, she went alone. She attended plays in Montgomery AL several years I couldn't accompany her, driving the four hours there and four back alone. One year we saw all the movies up for Academy Awards, a feat difficult for Jackson, Mississippi, where choice movies are often missed. We attended history lectures and drove hours to visit a grave or a cabin or a road mentioned at these lectures. We'd drive out of the way on one of our trips so she could photograph some famous musician, writer, or historian.

                                                      Me and Sis

We made up for lost time in the twenty years we had together. Then the old scourge returned and took her life.  I'm lonesome. I have no place nor anyone with whom to travel. With Sis' death my original family is gone. She is at peace. Wonderful memories sustain me.

RECOLLECTIONS & REFLECTIONS

   In the last years of my life I’ve had to make sacrifices. The material kind. Moving out precious memories in the forms of travel items, writing materials, cooking vessels — about anything I’ve accumulated in sixty years of marriage and eighty years of living

   Today I spied a white box sitting in the living room.  I intended checking the contents and discarding any and all within. Inside were the best annuals I’d collected from my own school and college attendances. Also were a number of yearbooks from the various school in which I’d taught.  For the next hour I revisited those schools, remembering the students I either taught or  with those I came in daily contact. I mulled over each photo on every page.  I searched the faculty and could count most of them had passed.  Only a few like me were still functioning. 

   Yearbooks are memories we want to cling to.  High school was a remarkable experience. In her article “Why You Truly Never Leave High School,” published in New York Magazine (Jan. 20, 2013), Jennifer Senior makes these observations based on studies by sociologist, developmental neuroscientists and psychologists:

   “Not everyone feels the sustained, melancholic presence of a high-school shadow self. There are some people who simply put in their four years, graduate, and that’s that. But for most of us adults,s the adolescent years occupy a privileged place in our memories, which, to some degree, is even quantifiable: Give a grown adult a series of random prompts and cues, and odds are he or she will recall a disproportionate number of memories from adolescence.”

   Senior goes on to state the music sung and danced to as adolescents remains with us throughout life.  Oh,  I’m happy to know that music of the 1930s and 1940s I still enjoy listening to is okay.  I can sing almost every line of every song written and performed over the radio. I’m okay, the writer says, since neuroscience has proven this.

   To round out my family stories I searched Google for a list of 100 songs of the 1940s and spent  time going through the list singing as many lines as possible.  I thought printing that to include with my memoirs would tickle the readers who take my place in this world.  

   Who writes songs with titles like “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree,” Ac Cent Tchu Ate the Positive”, “Shoo, Shoo, Baby,” or “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy?”  These songs covered all aspects of living. Also during WWII love songs and patriotic songs kept our spirits high.

   So it is with the yearbooks I’ve kept from 1949 until 1994.  They comprise pictures of life which swirled around me as I grew to became an adult.  They comfort me, more than reunions with people I don’t recognize but once taught or shared a classroom.  My hope is my descendants will hold onto these memories as a keepsake of what life was like in “the old days.”

MIning Your Memories

I began a free class in writing family stories back in September at the local library. The last meeting is Thursday, December 13. Like the teacher I once was, I've given class exercises and homework to 14 adults.

As examples of experiences, I used my own writings, far from being the kind that sells at Barnes & Noble, but my own exploration into my  family life. This was done so the participants could see that getting the words onto paper were most important first of all. No editing at this time. We talked about the time from  birth through elementary school. By handing out dozens of questions to prick their memories, I've led them through a process of exploration. And I've been surprised how much the participants remember about their early school life. Perhaps it's because they are much younger and still have their memories available.

Once I was told to think of our brains as arranged with "shelves" stacked on top of each other as in a post office. As we experience life the "notes" of memory fit into the shelves. As one ages, the shelves get stuffed and the earlier notes get pushed so far back a person has trouble finding that one experience. Of course, that's not true, but I use that in my thinking about how we shove some memories aside and it takes constant weeding to find some small incident we want to write about.

The reactions from participants has been pleasing. From drawing the floor plan of an early home to mapping or to writing an obituary, the challenges have been enjoyable. A wonderful group meeting for one and a half hours has created the incentive to write now.

Imagine in the 30th century a kid  fumbling though a box in the attic picks up a notebook titled "Family Stories". He thumbs through the pages yellowing with age and begins to read. He carries the notebook downstairs and settles  into a comfortable chair and flips the pages. Mother walks in and says, "What's that you're reading, Son?" and he replies, "Stories written by somebody named Vivian Newkirk. Who's she?" and his mother says, "Oh, you found those wonderful stories written by your fourth great-grandmother! She lived back in the 21st century. There's a lot to learn about the past, Son, in those pages."

Meeting Mr. Smith, Part 3

Mr. Smith sits in my class as I guide him and  another 16 participants down memory lane. The course is "Mining Your Memories -- Writing Family Stories." Although I am still checking his earlier writings, Mr. Smith is anxious to record his life experiences. He is one of three men in the class, all  having written something pertaining to their life's experiences.

In class, consisting of four one and one-half hours the second Thursday at a library, I give keys to finding the path to remembering what is on the bottom shelf of their minds. I was told once to imagine the mind being like a group of stacked shelves, with the bottom ones filled with early experiences and as we live, each line of shelves filling with remembrances of our sadness and gladness. The class is working with material from the bottom shelves.

So far I've read Mr. Smith's greeting cards and some poetry. He knows how to express Godly love, compassion, and thoughtfulness in his words. All are typed on a manual machine; I recognize the imprint. I can imagine him punching the keys as many early writers have done on their non-electric Royals and Smith-Coronas.. He carefully places each line on the page as though he is planting a small flower. He capitalizes where I wouldn't expect, but my remarking that he shouldn't is again taking away his creativity. I have to be careful to understand what is emphasized.

Here is a partial quote from one of his writings, entitled "Live Inside of Creation".

"Look at the Whole of what's going on
And learn to receive the life of its
Being. Move into the inside of what's seen,
And understand what's there to help us.

Be open to Who we are."

This is from a book entitled The Breath of God.  Beautiful, isn't it? As I wrote earlier, he is 71 years old and is an ordained minister. Whether or not one believes in a Holy Being, his words  resonate with truth.

I'm anxious to read his biography. Like many from the South, he moved to Chicago to live and eventually returned to the state and married. He is pleased with what he has done to help others in his life's work with alcoholics, and especially proud of his family. Knowing him enriches my being.

His work is an every-day enjoyment. He splashes the oils onto his plywood canvases  as though he has no care in the world. In the woods near his home he's found twisted vines growing around tree limbs. He hacks them into walking sticks and sculptured pieces and paints them glowing colors.

Even if he doesn't see people and flowers as you do, his paintings are as one of my friends says, "  . . . are quite different from each other and seen together in a group, they compliment each other without being the same painting over and over." That's Mr. Smith's gift to the world.