Memories of the Future

Letters of an examined life – letter #2

Writing is about connection. It is about finding those commonalities through shared experience. So when

Lily Dunn

and I discovered each other’s work we both thought: ‘now this is a woman I could sit down and chat with for hours over a bottle of wine’. Yet geography – and the miles between us – made that impossible. So instead we committed to writing letters to one another, to discuss life, memoir, writing craft and more. And in this series, Memories of the Future: letters of an examined life, we will share those unedited – and often very personal – letters with you, our readers.

Lily published Letter #1 on her Substack on Wednesday, and you can catch up with that here – you may like to read it before reading my response.

Memories of the Future

And below you will find Letter #2 – my reply to Lily. She will then reply next Wednesday in Letter #3.

We would love you, not only to follow our thoughts, but of course, add your own in the comments if what we are discussing resonates – perhaps your replies will make it into our letters too?

Letter #2

Dear Lily,

Thank you for writing and sharing your memories with me. The image that you painted of the holiday home ‘trembling under the weight of grief’, the family who had once lived there and the links you made to your own relationship – trembling too – were so vivid, something many of us can relate to. I know I can.

You asked first if I felt we are all connected, I would go further than that, we are connections. As humans I believe that is all we’ve got, connection to others – though world events stand as a reminder that we tend to forget this and when we do the consequences are devastating: to a country, to a home, to a family.

We are not just connections in our human relationships, our bodies too: the nervous, venous, arterial system; the umbilical cord from mother to child. Look outside of ourselves, to nature, think of the web that stretches unseen under our feet when we go for a walk in the woods, that great fungal highway sending messages along the wire of its ghostly tendrils to trees, shrubs and plants. Look up at the sky, the clouds full of rain that become rivers, the moon that moves the tides. Why do humans like to think of themselves as superior to the natural world? We are the natural world. Kazuo Ishiguro once told me and a group of masters students that it is not character that is vital to a narrative but relationship. Relationship is connection.

And so to my own relationships and my own memories, you asked of those. I too have snapshots either in my mind or printed on glossy photographs, there are two I wanted to share with you, both from the same holiday to Crete eight years ago when my daughter was about to turn four – a holiday where we never even saw the beach because her father did not want sand in our hotel room.

The first photograph is taken on the balcony of that hotel room, behind us the blue of the sky falls into the sea. I am holding the camera for a selfie – as I always was – desperate to capture our family life. I needed evidence, evidence of his presence, that yes, we could be happy, that we were the same in our ordinariness as all those other families in the hotel. We are all smiling in that photograph, we all look gorgeous (and, believe me, I rarely say this about myself in photographs), yet I glowed in his presence — some of the time, other times I disappeared in fragments.

We’re all wearing sunglasses in that photograph, even my three year old and I know what our eyes are hiding, that we were all faking it. A friend said to me when I returned home, suntanned, and showed her that portrait: ‘But how hard did you have to work to capture that moment on film?’

There is another photograph from that holiday that I did not show people, one that I ostensibly snapped of my daughter sitting across the table from me, a ring of vanilla ice-cream around her lips. Over her left shoulder, across the restaurant, you can glimpse her father sitting alone for dinner, clutching his knife and fork, punishing me for something else. I had felt so embarrassed when all the other families had seen him walk in after us and then choose a table for himself.

He was not really present on that holiday, just like he was never really present for our entire relationship. I see now that I built a home, a marriage, a child alone, while he lived his life.

You asked if it was better to fold these memories away, not talk about them, not write about them, better for our children maybe not to look too closely, to move on, to look forward, to leave the past in the past. I think you know the answer to that without me having to tell you. You know that as writers this is not a choice that we make, it is simply the way we live. We understand this world by examining our experiences in it. You know I want to write a memoir of my own instead of those for other people, and for that I need to stare hard at these photographs, these memories, I need to take myself back like I take others back when I am ghosting their words. Except, this time I will be the ghost.

As a writer, I must examine my life, and I do that through the connections I have made. There are risks though, we must tread carefully, for our children’s sake, for our own, for the lawyers… but then Annie Ernaux said: ‘If it’s not a risk [to write memoir] then it’s nothing.’

Are we brave to examine and write our lives? Do you think this is an act of bravery? For me, bravery is going to sleep to the sound of bombs with your child in your arms not knowing if you, or they, will live to see another day.

I loved your memoir, Sins of My Father, writing that must have been a risk. You had to show both the ugliness and the beauty – just like my two photographs. But what about when we want to examine the relationships – the connections – we had with people who are still living? How can we avoid that ugliness especially when that living person might prefer us to? That is impossible, and to me, dishonest. Yet to avoid it is not to write at all and that would feel like a dishonesty to myself. If we weren’t mothers would it be easier? How do you reconcile being a mother and a writer? How do you look back at both the beauty and the ugliness in your own relationships with honesty, both to yourself, your reader, and the family that once was? This is a dilemma to me. I would love to know your thoughts.

With love from your pen pal,

Anna

Thank you to those who pay to support my writing. I support other writers on substack, too — it’s nice to show appreciation for words you’ve enjoyed reading (think of it as a tip jar!). Your support really does make a difference to me and I’m always super excited when someone upgrades! Supporting me gives you benefits too, like access to my entire archive including essays by more than 25 authors, PLUS you get to join my monthly online creative writing club – see you there!