My father has spent many months sifting through an attic room—searching for old ice skates, oboes, clarinets, report cards, ribbons, medals, his children's childhoods. News from the past surfaces almost every day. Revisions.
Working with my father not long ago, I came upon my mother's first photo scrapbook, which opens with the commemoration of my brother's birth. It All Began Here, she began, and square photo by square photo she proceeded to tell a story, her white pencil providing the grammar, the memoirist's view.
Lately I've been thinking about how much I struggle to tell stories that will speak to those I will never meet or know. And how finally, in the end, it's these private stories that matter most. The ones our mothers wrote down just for us. The ones we remember to rescue from time for those we see and touch.
