I hesitated some in publishing my previous post, and I’ve been hesitating on posting a piece about my grandmother. (It’s not quite done yet.) I’m uncomfortable exposing my memory — and its possible (probable?!) errors.
Which is weird, because I’ve been doing this blogging thing for almost a decade now, and I’ve written lots and lots of personal pieces, including some personal history.
In examining the hesitation, I find it comes down to a few particular things:
- Usually when I write about personal experiences, they’re fairly recent, so I feel much more certain in telling the story from my own point of view.
- I’m actually not too sure about the accuracy of my memory. I realize that all memory is subjective and faulty, but I seem to be particularly sieve-brained. (ER was always the one with the good memory of us girls, and I find I often fact-check childhood memories against hers.)
- The goddamned Facebook. There’s always been a few people reading this who’ve known me for a long time, including at least two who reconnected via the blog. But now I’m posting to Facebook as well (through the magic of some app or another), and on Facebook is, well, everybody. People I went to junior high with. Extended family. Co-workers.
I guess I’m afraid of being contradicted in my memory: “you told it wrong.” I’m pushing myself to post anyway, because I like telling these stories whether they are entirely true or not. (See Grandma N’s crazy tales.) And in writing, I figure out who I am and what I believe.
So: if I tell a story and you read it and think “WTF is she saying? That totally didn’t happen that way!” I apologize, sort of. At least I acknowledge that memory is a weird thing. Of course, feel free to tell your version, either in a comment or in your own space on the interwebs.