More on memoir and on small things. I’ve been off blog visiting. The oft-quoted here Susan Albert at Lifescapes discusses smallest things—the importance of the tiny things in her outsized countryside of Texas. She shares a picture of a tiny lichen.
I referred a Massachusetts friend to the site. She replies with enthusiasm. Her neighbor is a lichen expert—showing I suppose that among other small things is the world.
Susan’s picture sent me back into the garden camera in hand. Instead of stepping back from my glorious plum tree, I moved in closely and saw a whole new world. Made a new friend while I was doing it.
Tiny things are important not just in nature. I’m nibbling away at working on my childhood memories. I’ve chose the summer I turned eleven. It was a summer of decision for my family, particularly for my writer-dad. I find if I focus on tiny details—what did we eat, what books did I read, movies did I see (easy Show Boat-over and over), what did that lonely rent house look like—then I see the bigger picture more clearly. The story I want to tell, the story that wants to be told emerges.
I’m looking for help on the details. I went to the library and read ancient Time magazines, bought a cd of the great hits of 1951, and asked my sister. I was eleven that summer, she was fifteen. What different worlds we lived in! But as we talk (“I didn’t know that!” I exclaim, and a few minutes later she echoes me) we are pleased to fine that while the tiny things differ, we are together on much. We are talking about things we’ve never discussed before.
That is no small thing.
Neither is the help Susan Albert gave me. She’s a good teacher and taught me how to insert a proper link. Here’s the way to get to Story Circle Network and read Susan’s great talk! http://www.storycircle.org
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