Aging My Way
Memory is fickle, sometimes true and sometimes false. I didn’t need Sally Tisdale’s essay “Mere Belief” in The Best American Essays 2024 to know that. All I have to do is listen to my adult children. When they recall one specific family event, no two remembrances of it are ever alike, including mine. We all could have been somewhere else on a different day.
But I found the article well-worth the read as the author attacked the subject from an ethical writer’s point of view. She believes that we writers have a contract with our readers that says we are telling the truth.
I’ve always tried to adhere to this ideal – and wish all writers had signed the same contract. But enough of that.
Sallie also noted that writers sometimes don’t write the truth but think they are. This is especially true of memoir writing where an author recalls lengthy conversations that happened when they were only two or three years old. But then she went on to say that: “Our false and shifting memories of the past don’t matter to anyone but ourselves. The future only cares about what we learn from them.”
And that line of thought brought me to how I had looked at my childhood from a child’s point of view, and then how one day when I was approaching 40, I viewed it through an adult’s experience. I realized I had failed to be the mother I wanted to be, not from not trying, but from circumstances.
It was only then that I realized my own mother had actually loved me, that it was circumstances, including three much younger brothers and other heavy burdens she carried on her shoulder, that meant I didn’t get the same attention I had when I had been her only child.
A memoir I would have written at 20 would have been much different than what I would have written at 40. At 85, I can see how it would be even more different today. Experience, especially observing the world around me, has made me thankful for the great childhood I had.
Time has a way of changing things – and one’s fickle memories.
Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is a wondering-wanderer, avid reader, enthusiastic birder, Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder, Story Circle Network board member, author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), and is always searching for life’s silver lining.
Pat Bean's blog 
Pat, as your younger brother, I look back and realize I have that same kind of situation as you got married at a young age and I missed you and so I got a different view of family life, but I grew from it and you have too. Your loving younger Brother, author and somewhat of a poet. Love to you and yours
Robert Lee Joseph
So glad you are reading my blog. And thanks for the kind words.
So true. Years after my memoir was published, I heard versions of my stories from other family members that varied widely from what I’d remembered and written. But yes, the lessons are the same regardless of the actual events, so I’m happy with what I wrote. (Not to mention that I’ve outlived everyone in that book…)
Me, too. Re happy with what I wrote. My book Travels with Maggie, while a bit of a memoir, includes many details however that happened the same day. But as a journal keeper, I know that sometimes what I remember and what I go back and read differs in details. What an odd brain we have.