Archive for category: Memoir

The Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge had only three cars in the parking lot on this cool wintry-looking April day. I parked, knowing that I’d enjoy the luxury of having the museum almost entirely to myself.

I tried to get here on a couple of other days, but made the mistake of beginning to write early in the morning, not noticing the clock until it was past three. Too late to set out. This time I planned ahead.

The building itself is a perfectly classic white complement to the Americana style of Rockwell, its peak topped with a cupola that pours light into the space below. There are a lot of cupolas in this area of the Berkshires. Even the barns have cupolas—more than likely designed to let light into the barns during the dark sunset hours when candles and oil lamps were dangerous in barns filled with hay.

As much as I wanted to wander around outside, I crossed to the main building following the sidewalk that was the only surface empty of snow. Strong snow glare and sunglasses.

A visit begins with a brief biographical film in the basement where I sat alone,  front and center, surrounded by a collection of framed The Saturday Evening Post magazines, in a gallery full of empty chairs waiting to greet the summer crowds.

There’s a lot I didn’t know about Norman Rockwell.

I knew that Norman Rockwell painted the cover art for the countless Saturday Evening Posts that I pored over in the privacy of the screened porch at my grandparents’ lake house. A large cardboard box full. I dug deep into this box of buried treasure, pulling up one after the other on Sunday afternoons while my cousins played with their blond bitch Barbies in the upstairs bathroom. (Sorry. My doll feelings are showing.)

I knew that Norman Rockwell’s skill as an illustrator was epic. His dedication to creating charcoal sketches of the desired work, then progressing to an oil study, followed by the final painting, went far beyond mere illustration. He used local people as models for the paintings, photographing them in multiple poses to have his own stock of expressions and inspiration. Frequently, he added his own image—often playfully.

What I didn’t know was that Norman Rockwell was a natural-born illustrator with skills that surfaced at a very young age. He often interrupted his father’s story-telling so that he could sketch out what was being described.

Fortunately his parents recognized his gift and he dropped out of traditional high school to attend art school in NYC. His first job after graduation was at Boys Life, the Boy Scout magazine, at the age of seventeen. By nineteen, he was their Art Editor.

I attended a gallery talk by a talented docent who shared insight into Norman Rockwell’s creative style, his influences and especially, his symbolism.

The use of symbols to convey meaning is common in master works, in what we consider “museum art”, but illustration art has often been overlooked as lacking in this sense. Norman Rockwell was far ahead of his time in uplifting the art of the illustrator.

While many viewers may have seen only the subject matter of the Post covers, each painting had been planned with intricate attention to detail. The use of triangulation to draw the viewers eye to the message. The use of color and symbolism to project the message.

Which leads me to the dolls in some of his work.

If you’ve read some of my essays, or work-in-progress excerpts from my childhood memoir, you already know. I never liked dolls. In fact, I despised them. I didn’t know what you were supposed to do with a doll.

Sixty-something years later, I couldn’t escape the dolls, even here at The Norman Rockwell Museum. Like the snowstorm of a few days ago that carried me back to the snowy winters of my childhood, the dolls in the paintings of Norman Rockwell carried me back to the phases of my childhood where dolls were supposed to be part of a normal child’s play.

The first painting I noticed was Girl at the Mirror, from 1954, where a young girl is clearly absorbed in the self-analysis that accompanies puberty. A hairbrush, comb, and an open lipstick case are on the floor at her feet, a movie magazine in her lap, a wistful expression on her face. Her doll is posed in a position of rejection, tossed to the left of the mirror. She no longer has use for it.

Second was Freedom From Fear, one of the quartet of The Four Freedoms paintings which traveled the country raising money for the war bond effort. In Freedom From Fear, Rockwell used a doll placed on the floor at the foot of the bed to illustrate that the children being tucked into bed have freedom from fear. There’s black fabric on a chair—possibly to symbolize the blackout cloth that was used to block city lights during WWII. The father is even holding a newspaper with the headline of “bombings” and “horror”—a prop that the local newspaper printed for Rockwell to use in his layout. The docent who noted these details shared that the doll on the floor meant that the children didn’t need to cling to their dolls for security. They didn’t need a doll to comfort them.

The dolls, used as symbols of childhood shown here, are innocent. They don’t take into account the children for whom dolls represented a dark side.

That’s OK.

As I viewed The Saturday Evening Post covers of the 50s, I saw a lot of family values and reminders of every day events from a time that celebrated the innocence and good times, post-war optimism and prosperity. I saw the hair styles, the clothing, the cars—the scenes where my own childhood took place.

And symbolism? Good writers share the artist’s use of symbolism to evoke the feelings that they are wishing to convey. I was glad to receive the reminder.

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Editing memoir is a long slog.

The first draft is easy. It’s bleed onto the page. Dance on the page. Sing on the page. Burn. Cry. Get angry. Pour it all out.

Dig back to the beginning. Try to remember every last detail.

Then the editing began. Editing is when the doubts creep in. Who is this book for? For me, or The Reader?

In my opinion, the first memoir draft is for the Writer. After that, IMHO, you have to walk the fine line between staying true to your memories and yet make them, not just palatable, but interesting to the reader.

Make the memoir something that the reader can relate to in terms of their own life.

If you don’t, it’s just a self-centered ramble through your own dirt or glory, as the case may be.

I’m on Week 3 of Draft 5, the fifth revision.

I’m holed up in an apartment north of town with a chair, a table, a laptop, and a foam mattress that I bought on Amazon Prime the day before I moved in with a basic black wardrobe and a box of socks and underwear.

One water glass, one wine glass, a couple plates and a handful of silverware.

The table is covered with index cards, post-its, a few favorite memoirs, Mary Karr’s The Art of Memoir,  and vitamins.

The landlady lives upstairs. I told her that the only person she’d hear me talking to is myself.

I’m hoping to communicate with the voice of my past clearly.

I want the voice of my past to greet the voice of my present and make sense of it all.

The original time frame was age three through eighteen.

Things change.

Fortunately, I write in Scrivener so I won’t lose any of my previous versions.

I’m making big changes to the voice as I’m now letting the adult Linda take charge.

Expanding to the present. Reflections, Lessons, Questions Answered.

Hoping for the best.

Editing Memoir.

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I was breathless. I darted barefoot across the length of my mother’s kitchen on the second floor of the creaky hundred-year-old farmhouse, bumping around chairs and pushing off the harsh edge of the table top as I cut a vee through the pungent scent of the morning’s coffee and burnt toast. The chilly floor was sloped with age, and the cracks in the linoleum threatened to topple my clumsy three-year-old self.

The young rabbit was enjoying the tender grass at the side of the gravel road when a beagle came over the rise, its nose to the ground, tail raised high and waggling back and forth with excitement. The rabbit scurried along the dusty stretch of pale dirt road, springing left, then right. Gravel sprayed.

I tripped over the shallow threshold of the back bedroom. My heaving chest hit the dirty floor hard. Sliding into the shadows, I sought asylum in my usual hideout.

The rabbit knew instinctively that the beagle was its enemy and made a quick choice. Deep alfalfa, stone wall crevice, abandoned rubber tire.

Under the bunk bed was dark and dusty. I clawed my way to the wall. “I’ve got the army belt!” she bawled. My dingy t-shirt rose up to my armpits, my tiny fingers brushing away the globs of dust.

The beagle was excited, sniffing with the concentration of the hunt, the imprint of previous canine generations fueling its quest. The rabbit froze, eyes bright and bulging.

Paralyzed with fear, I tried to slow my breathing. The floor shook with her angry footsteps. I listened intently, my ears trained for the source. White ankle socks and brown penny loafers paced back and forth inches from my nose. Lucky penny Lincolns, heads up.

The rabbit blinked once, a cautionary test of its security. At dawn, it didn’t expect the beagle to be in its path. Its fur was dotted with burrs from the chase. The rabbit waited. Long seconds became longer minutes.

My disheveled hair was tangled in the galvanized bedsprings. I couldn’t turn my head and pressed deeper into the chilling chasm. Claustrophobia set in.

“God-damned little brat,” she muttered to herself.

Soon Mummy was flinging Daddy’s army belt from one side to the other under the bed. Its heavy brass buckle clanged against the bed frame tolling my fate.

The rabbit’s mottled brown and gray fur blended into the grass.

I was scarcely noticeable in the shadow of the bunk bed. I scooted further back, and made myself small, afraid to be caught and dragged out by my dirty bare feet.

The rabbit didn’t make a sound. Its survival depended upon it.

I didn’t cry. Eventually she would stop.

Soon the rabbit sensed that the beagle was gone. It moved with one tentative hop at first, followed by a pause to listen. Then it resumed nibbling the grass at the side of the road.

When I was sure she had given up and gone away. I slowly crept out and brushed the fuzzy grey globs off my red corduroy pants. The wale had worn off the knees and the elasticized waist was no longer capable of resuming its original shape, but they were familiar and  soft as a rabbit on a roadside.

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