Writing Your Life

Tonight, my class on Writing Your Life met on my front porch--I think this was their fourth meeting, and they are really coalescing into a tight-knit group. I've found this happens with other small groups of women who meet regularly--they bond as sisters. It happened with the contributors to Grace & Gumption: Stories of Fort Worth Women and to the cookbook that will follow in a month or so. But it probably happens more often with this group where we share intimate details of our lives. I contributed an essay for general consumption tonight called "The Horseless Carriage," about how I felt about being single at 71 and the men I've loved in my life. One longtime friend praised me for my openness but said, "This just isn't the Judy Alter I've known as director of TCU Press." Others shared equally unknown secrets, and we laughed over the cookbook chapter of one member who recalled the '60s when we all drank cocktails--remember Gimlets and Manhattans and Salty Dogs (if you served my brother a Manhattan, he used to say, "Say good night to me now."). My parents drank a lot of Manhattans when I was young, but I am sure one would do me under the table now. And Old-Fashioneds--my, how I loved them. Haven't had one in years. At the end of the session, we always have a circle and ask how each person is feeling--some said "Better," some said "Tired," and I said, "Freedom." It's a really rewarding experience, and the ladies seem to enjoy it a great deal.
I've also written 700 words on my mystery today, which feels like an accomplishment. When I read it last night, it wasn't as dull as I thought, and today I inserted an incident in earlier text to heighten the suspense and then went on to write the 700 new words, which I feel is a pretty good accomplishment for a day.
Had a thoroughly enjoyable lunch with Elizabeth, usually my co-partner in this evening's class, though she asked to be excused tonight because she really wanted to write on her memoir project and had some things she wanted to get down on paper. I know that feeling and willingly agreed. I hope she'll share with us next week. I should mention that the class is inspired by the Story Circle Network (look for it on Google) although not many members have joined the network.
The Sisters in Crime listserv has had a lot of posts in the last few days about gender language and discrimination--I think the general conclusion is that pronouns and whether God is he or she don't matter much, but the condition of women in  underprivileged countries matters a lot. I thought about that tonight, with a group of educated, middle-class, economically comfortable women sitting around me telling their life stories. Some of us do indeed have hardships to recount--the loss of a child, physical abuse, physical ailments--but these all pale in the face of what women in other cultures face. We should be grateful. But it also occurs to me that men wouldn't be involved in a group like the one that met on my porch tonight--okay, this may be a generalization,but I am drawn back to the now-old book, Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus, which contends that women want to talk about things; men simply want to solve the problem. I still believe it.

Reading is addictive

I've lost myself in reading lately, and not even the mysteries that I constantly consume. But I have so many books I want to read that I'm ignoring other things I should be doing--like working on my new novel. It started with a book I am to review for the Dallas Morning News, titled 97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Families in One Tenement. Set in the lower East Side of New York City, it spans the 1860s through the Depression. I won't be a spoiler for the review, except to say that it chronicles the way various cultures--German, Irish, Jewish, and Italian--contributed to American foodways and in turn, the habits they assimilatede from American culture. I read it avidly and had the review ready a month before it was due.
Then I became probably the last person I know to read Katherine Stockton's The Help, about the relationships between white women and their black maids in Jackson, Mississippi, in the 1960s. It's hard for me to believe some of the white women, and I thought perhaps they were caricatures, but friends who lived in the South assure me it's true. Stockton, who grew up in Jackson, turned the material into a riveting novel, and although I ached for the black women, the one who gave me the most pain was a little girl named Mae Mobley who thought her nanny was her real mother because the mother never gave her any love or attention. When the maid is fired, for becoming part of an imaginary tell-all book, she walks away hearing Mae Mobley's anguished screams. It's a book you can't read without being moved, and I spent almost all of last weekend reading it.
The Help made me think of GeeGee, the black nanny we had in Chicago when I was a toddler. Relations between her and my mother were much more cordial, though I can remember Mom recalling her amazement (and disapproval) when GeeGee let me eat four eggs for breakfast one morning (maybe that's why I didn't like them for years!). I asked my brother the other day when GeeGee left and how old I was, but he just shook his head and said he didn't now. "They're so many questions I didn't ask and now wish I had," he said. I remember GeeGee coming back once for a visit and how happy we were to see her. In retrospect, I wonder if the death of my younger sister at six months (probably SIDS, though I was told she had a heart defect) didn't contribute to GeeGee's leaving.
Now, I'm reading an advance copy of Spilling the Beans, by Clarissa Dickson Wright, one of BBC's Two Fat Ladies who wheeled about the countryside in a motorcycle and sidecar cooking at various locations and gatherings. If you ever watched the show--and millions did--the picture on the cover will be familiar: a dumpy, slightly rumpled English woman in a  funny hat with a big smile on her face. The inside of the book reveals a far different and intriguing story. I'm reviewing this one for the Story Circle Network, so don't want to be a spoiler there either.
Speaking of the Story Circle Network, Beth Knudson and I are going to coordinate a class on Writing Your Life Story, based on the principles of the Story Circle Network beginning in early May, You don't have to join the network to be part of the class, but there is a fee. And we're going to ask everyone to participate in pot-luck snacks and wine. If you'd like more information, e-mail me at j.alter@tcu.edu. And if you're interested, you might search for Story Circle Network on Google. It's an international organization designed to help women tell their life stories. I've taught the class twice for the TCU community class program.
A food note: I've had a delicious day and still come out ahead on points. For lunch I had a tuna salad plate at a place I rarely go--it was really good, came with a quarter hard boiled egg, a bit of tomato, one thin slice of avocado, and a fruit cup. Tonight Betty and I went to Nonna Tata (I was prepared and took a bottle of wine and two plastic wine glasses), and I had braseola (the Italian cured beef version of prosciutto) dressed in lemon and olive oil, with grana cheese, and a vinegar based German salad. One of my favorite meals.
Okay, back to Spilling the Beans.

The Berkeley neighborhood in Fort Worth

Today, I filled my garbage carts about noon, but when I went to take them down to the curb around two, they were already there. I waved at the school crossing guard and shouted my thanks, and he waved back. Tomorrow, even before I'm out of bed, he'll have one of the carts back up by the side of my house. I never asked him. He saw me with a cart one day and said, "Let me do this for you." I hope he does it out of the goodness of his heart and not because he thinks I'm a little old lady with a cane, but either way I'm grateful. And he's a nice, nice man.
And Jay came over tonight to show me where the cartridges are on the printer/scanner/fax he handed down to me. Then he went in to check the commode that runs if you use it and decided he needs to get a new something or other for it. And we spent a long time at the side fence discussing what to do with the barren spot between our houses, the way he and Greg were going to take out some junk trees and put in a drip system for whatever ends up planted there. (Not sure Greg knows about this!)
I live in a neighborhood where I feel well taken care of, and it's a good feeling. I also try to take care of my neighbors, though I'm better at feeding them than caretaking (they're all a lot younger!).
Our neighborhood newsletter came out today, complete with a full page feature on Cooking My Way through Life with Kids and Books, including the ubiquitous Doris casserole (I really must develop another signature dish!). But also in the newsletter was a note about the class that Elizabeth and I will be facilitating in May (okay, she's Beth to the rest of the world but she will always be Elizabeth to me). It's called Writing Your Life Story and springs out of the Story Circle Network (call it up on Google) and Susan Wittig Albert's  Writing From Life. I've taught noncredit classes from that book before at TCU but this time I'm going to teach at my home, with pot-luck food and wine. It's a class for non-writers who want to tell their life story--for themselves, for family and friends, for the world at large. I've already had one inquiry from a neighbor I've not yet met. If you're interested, email me at j.alter@tcu.edu.
Yes, Berkeley is a nice neighborhood to live in. Jordan said the other day, "I want to live in this neighborhood." Of course, she'd have to pay more for less space, and it's too soon for them to do that, but I do hope someday they will move close. We have an active neighborhood association, guardian patrol service, a strong voice in civic matters to protect our neighborhood--and lots of activities, mostly for families with young children. It's a great place.