Dynamic Woman — Changing Times
Even the most fractured families have family lore, stories handed down through generations. These stories are told and re-told when the tribe gathers. The lost sheep tend to be the ones who loom largest in family legend. They are the ones most likely to end up in a memoir or as the model for a character in a novel. The less you know about them, the more interesting they become.
My MC Dee is a spiritual blank slate. Her mother took secrets to her grave that cause her to look for answers elsewhere.
The generational divide is as seismic as shifting continental plates, as immutable as the characteristics that separate the species and one of God’s mysteries. Each generation is wired for the future yet tethered in some sense to the past. In the face of uncertainty, memoir has grown in popularity. How far down recent or ancient paths must we go to bring our own faces into focus?
New growth comes from what prickles us most. If you’re stuck for a story, consider the people in your past who haunt you still. Go far enough back and you may discover an ancestor whose character traits show up down through the generations…and they needle you!
Where is home? Is it a place, a memory, a fantasy, an inheritance? If I designed a perfume to spritz me back to halcyon childhood it would boast the scent of fresh cut lumber, sweet and slightly acidic. It would be lush with undertones of Italian plums grounded and softening in the sun.
The TV show Blue Bloods (on hiatus now) shows the rare family that functions well. Each episode ends with the many generations of Ryans gathered for Sunday supper, discussing the week’s events. They laugh and tease and share stories of family members absent from the table but present in memory. For the many people who live with huge gaps in generational memory, the fictional Ryans are a figment of romantic imagination.
