How to begin a Memoir

Gosh, your whole life: do you start with your diapers? First grade?

Find a structure. Think of three to five conditions of your life for example, as Shakespeare did, and make them chapter headings. Infancy, childhood, youth, young adult, middle and old age.

You can start with the old age and go back or just stick to one category. You could follow a pal or school or your dogs or cars..

Houses make an excellent structure for my story so I'm going to try writing from the Houses I've lived, sticks and bricks which have protected and nourished me.

That first house, for starters, the one where my bedroom ceiling sloped down on one-side to a knee-wall. A knee-wall is a low interior wall, perhaps three-feet high. In my house, two sticky doors in one bedroom wall opened to a very low attic above an end of the living room. The air in this attic smelled like old, dry, raw wood the way a summer cottage at the lake smells when you open it in June for the season.

Inside this dark space my parents parked the battered luggage they rarely used. But one night after a nasty fight where my father's voice rose almost to a shout, Jesus Christ, Sally! and my mother ranted at him about their miserable lives in Middle Haddam, his measley earnings, broken promises, dreams unfulfilled, the usual marital excoriation, I hid with the covers over my head. Suddenly Mom stormed into my bedroom, jerked open those low doors and yanked out a suitcase.

"That's it! I'm leaving!"

Memoir: Rexie

How shall I keep Mother from trying to write my memoir herself? Her ghost is pushing my fingers on the keys.

"Tell them about the time your father brought Rexie home." Yes, that's good story, brave father, sensitive mother, thrilled child. A happy ending story and it takes place when I am very young, exactly the right age to have dog of my own.


Ever notice you don't get to choose the breed? It's only a kid's dog so who cares if it's a mutt or a Wolfhound. Okay, a Wolfhound would take up too much room in that little house in Middle Haddam, three rooms down, three up and a single bathroom. The first house my parents owned. and they couldn't wait to have a mortgage burning party. I was six. And that was the house Daddy brought Rexie home to.


"Sal," he called up the stairs. It was late, Sally, my mother, and I were in bed. Dad had stopped to whet his whistle on the way home from somewhere down at the shore where he taught Coast Guard navigation as his part of the war effort, being too old to join up to fight. "Sal, come down and see what I brought home."

My mother obeyed the urgency in his voice and so did I. Barefoot, we felt our way down the steep, painted stairs into the livingroom where Daddy had a brown and white Walker Foxhound on a short chain. The frightened dog made himself as flat as he could and edged toward the door.

"Oh look, he's scared to death," Mom said. "Now be careful, Reedie, just show him the back of your hand. Let him sniff and he'll know you. I hope," she added, offering her own hand.

"Son of a bitch was going to shoot him,"Daddy growled. "Said he wouldn't hunt. He was nasty, he kicked the poor dog. At that tavern in Chester, you know the one." Mom was patting the trembling dog.

"Water," she said, rising to get it. "Don't try to drag him through the living room. I'll bring it. He can stay on the porch tonight. If he doesn't go through the screens." She put a pot of cold water on the porch and folded an old blanket. "Here." She patted the blanket but the dog cringed away from her and headed toward the outside porch door. "You think he needs out?"


"Nah, he piddled when he got out of the car. Water and a bed, that'll have to do it until morning."


"No, honey," Mom turned to me, closing the inner door. "He'll be here tomorrow. You can feed him and make friends with him. Poor guy, somebody's been awfully mean to him. He's terrified of us and this new place."


Daddy told us the man bragged about how he beat the dog to teach him to hunt but it didn't work because the dog was stupid.

When Daddy offered five dollars the man refused. Daddy insisted and again he refused to sell at any price. My tall father stretched his six feet four inches over the guy who was by then too drunk to argue, handed him a fiver and just took the chain.


By morning Rexie would stand almost all the way up, trembling hard. We had removed that awful chain and now tied a clothesline on his collar so I could lead him outside. With his ears flat back he sniffed and gazed around the unfamiliar yard, found a bush and lifted his leg. Watching me very cautiously, he ventured around the yard, poked his nose into the old barn, then backed out as if he sensed a trap.


There were no traps, no cages or kennels. We hadn't had a dog since Rastus tried to bite my face off when I was two. I don't remember what Mom made for Rexie's breakfast, probably milk toast, our Sunday night supper.

This was her comfort food, hot milk pour over toast with a lump of butter melting on it. Proper dog food would come later that morning.


Rexie let me stroke his tan satin head and his long, long ears. His deep brown eyes were sad--well, no wonder with a master like that. We clucked our tongues and thought Daddy was quite a hero to rescue the poor boy.

In a week Rexie was comfortable in the house, certain his water bowl would be in that exact corner of the kitchen and that dinner, kibble and thawed horsemeat (half a Hills one pound frozen package) would appear every night right on schedule. My job and I loved it.


I loved every hair on his body. The black saddle, the white breast and legs, the white tail tipped with black. For the rest of his life Rexie ducked if anyone raised a hand to pull a light switch or just stretch and he spent Fourths of July under a bed but he quickly learned how to sit and sit up and come and go in the cars with his head out a window, ears flying, black nose wet in the wind. We took him everywhere, even on the boat. He became the darling of village. He completed our family.

Ah, that boat. And Rastus, there's another tale for another day.

What the devil is "Psycho Doughnuts" the world wants to know? Psycho is a small, cheerul, themed doughnut shop--you figured that out yourself, did you?--in my small town near San Jose, California. They bake and sell doughnuts with cutsey names such as "obsessive compulsive" and "clinically depressed". Said items are decorated with way too much sweet frosting and colorful candies. The cashier wears a nurse's outfit and there's a table called something like "the rubber room".


Local mental health advocates, that is, folks who advocate on behalf of the mentally ill, not those who advocate becoming mentally ill, have been on the warpath. They've picketed. They petitioned City Hall to force the shop to change the evil message it conveys to the community that mental illness can be a joke. So far they have not succeded in shutting the shop down.


Beignets? Yum, but not these cloying artery busters. Yet, I wave, I honk for "Psycho Doughnuts" because the MH-ers are stepping on our right to be vulgar, to be silly, to be even a little mean-spirited. Come on, righteous MHers. Laugh and get over your hurt feelings.

If you don't like "Psycho" on a sign, don't go there. Tell your friends not to go there. But don't ask my/our city to shut them down. I don't like pornography or adult video stores that sell them but I wouldn't shut them down. Where would that lead? Censoring movies at the local 7-plex?

Of course mental illness is an unfortunate condition and of course underfunded (who isn't?) but a good laugh is often the best medicine. Sweeten up!

Beginning the Memoir

The first try being rather thin, Just a Teaser, Folks, no one's watching, anyway. The ether must be chock full of our mistakes.

But enough about you! This is MY glob, I mean, blog, and I'm going to demonstrate exactly how to write a memoir about your own life. How boring my childhood, humid Connecticut summers, long sunlight on the wallpaper, no bro's, no sisters. Cat always outside, dog afraid of slippery stairs. How many hours did I stare at the slope of the pitched roof ceiling?

But I digress. Memoir, now! My mother, departed since 1992, stands squarely on the keyboard. She is not smiling! Mom, sit down, you're in my way!