Today I found the following on an old, faded index card:

William- not Bill & certainly not "Dick"

I often find bits of paper around the house with scribbled notes on them. Sometimes it's a corner of an envelope or a grocery receipt. Other times it's the back of an old postcard or half a Post-It note. Whatever it is, it is often unclear what I was trying to remember. If it has the name of some food item, than it could be part of a grocery list (or not), but more often than not, the paper has a short phrase or one word underlined several times.

I find these bits of memory in old purses, shoved in my checkbook, sticking out of books I've read, or am in the middle of reading, in my shower caddy, my side table, lying on the floor and sometimes, even stuck to my clothes. I'll share a few of them here:

Letter with bits of sand in the envelope.

Boston's south side

Miss Hargreaves frank baket (at least that's what it looks like)

Ribbon for Anne's jar

Discombobulated

Tap the clock at top

It's a beard

It's hard to see why I'm not a member of Mensa, isn't it?

I have been reading Jenny Lawson's (The Bloggess) book Let's Pretend This Never Happened (A Mostly True Memoir) for the second time. I think I am enjoying it more now than when I read it originally. Lawson's book makes me want to put down in writing all the crazy stories from my childhood. Heaven knows there are more than a few. They are definitely not as unique as Lawson's experiences, but it would be great to have them for my children. 

As I have been mulling this idea over, I realize how I remember things is not going to be parallel to how other family members or friends remember things. I guess every memoir is not truly non-fiction. It is non-fiction from a single point of view, which is basically just fiction with a higher than average number of facts thrown in.

I also worry about the legal aspects of my memoir. Will people want to sue me for defamation of character? So, I looked it up and found this article from Writer's Digest. Turns out, my opinions are protected expression. The situation becomes a sticky wicket when I claim it to be fact and don't have any proof. Basically, I can't say 'my great-uncle George (I don't have an uncle George, this is just an example) once stole a whole set of fine china from Macy's Department Store so he could trade it for crack cocaine' unless I have proof (like a police report, signed confession, photographs etc). Otherwise, I open myself up to a lawsuit by my uncle George, unless he's dead- in which case his heirs can not sue me, because it's not allowed. 

Moral of the story: wait until people die to defame them in your memoir.

I have started a list of all the significant memories from my childhood I could possibly make into entertaining reading. I will get back to you when I have decided how to proceed. I might be calling up some family and friends to check my facts a bit, or get their take on things. Don't think this means you will get any kind of credit as co-author if my little collection becomes famous. Perhaps I will mention your name in the acknowledgments page if you're nice and send me emergency care packages while I am holed up writing all this stuff down.  

You can purchase Jenny Lawson's book here (it just came out in paperback).

My grandfather passed away last night. Grandpa Brown was my mother's dad. He was an intelligent, artistic, loving and kind man. Of course, there are not enough positive adjectives to show his true character. When I was young he smelled like pipe tobacco and awed me with his crossword puzzle abilities. He was at once imposing and fascinating. He built airplanes and wooden yo-yos and volunteered at the hospital.

I have a lot of memories of my grandfather, some of them were borrowed from my mother, but they are all still mine to keep.

There are four girls and one boy (the youngest) in my mom's family. For quite a while it was just girls. My mom used to tell us how her dad would help get them ready for school by brushing their hair and putting it into pigtails. She always recanted, with much drama, how he would brush their hair so hard their heads would ache and then proceed to pull it into the tightest circle possible, leaving them with mini-facelifts and almond-shaped eyes.

I was lucky enough to spend some summer time with my grandparents when I was young. My grandpa made the best breakfasts. He would fix silver dollar pancakes and sausage links. I had never had pancakes that small before. He sat at the breakfast table with a cup of coffee and the morning paper- then proceed to his chair in the living room with the crossword puzzle.

I always gravitated toward his shop in the garage. It smelled so good. Shavings and saw dust from several different types of wood gave it a great perfume. My grandpa wasn't always building cabinets or making multicolored vases. Sometimes he sat in his shop watching the news or a baseball game on his small black and white TV, and I imagine he was enjoying the smell too.

One summer he flew me home in the plane he had built. I thought he was the coolest man in the world. I still do.

One of my favorite memories is of my grandpa sitting in a chair at my mom's house with my youngest daughter on his lap. I think she was around two-years-old. He was reading her a Christmas book and she looked up at him just like I had at her age- with wonderment and love.

I didn't get to see my grandfather much in the last ten years. He and my grandmother moved to Oklahoma, which always seemed worlds away. Two years ago I drove with my mom and aunt from California to Oklahoma to visit. I was surprised at how much older my grandpa looked, while still looking the same. Does that make sense? He didn't get around as well as he used to, but you could still find him in a favorite chair with a thriller/suspense novel and his quick wit and wonderful sense of humor were never lacking.

Although my kids didn't get to know him as well as I would have liked, they were lucky enough to spend some time with him and through stories from myself and my mother, they were surrounded by him in spirit. His passing makes me very sad, but I am so grateful to have known him. I will not forget him, and I will not let my children forget him either.


**If anyone has any other pictures they would like to share, please email them to me and I will add them to this post.

Last week I went for a walk around campus and ended up at the library. Ok, who am I kidding? I always end up at the library. Anyway, from the top of the Terrell Library you can look through the skylight and see down into the rotunda. It's a beautiful building.

On the ground floor of the library there were rows of chairs set up, along with a baby grand piano and a few tables. I decided to find out what was going on- hoping there was a recital I could stay for. As I entered the library, I saw a large sign with a photo of John Tarnai - it was a memorial service. Tarnai worked for more than 30 years in the Social and Economic Sciences Research Center. He had served as the director of SESRC since 1996.

I know all this because a nice woman came up as I was looking at the sign and asked if I was attending. I told her I had never met Tarnai, and asked her who he was. After telling me about his service at Washington State University, she directed my gaze to a table on the edge of the room.

The long table was covered with library books. There had to be more than a hundred - most were pretty unique from their neighbors. There were books on writing and journalism, entomology and chemistry, research and economics and many others. The woman let me take them all in before telling me they had placed them there so attendees could understand a little more about Tarnai's personality. She told me all of the books on the table had been found in his office after his death. All of them were books from libraries on campus and, from what she said, the majority of them were recommendations. She said he would come to the library to check out a book a colleague had recommended, or he had been wanting to read, and he would leave with several books recommended to him by the librarian who helped him. It sounded like he tried to read them all.

I couldn't stay for the memorial, since it started later and I had to get back to work, but I am told they shared stories about Tarnai that had been sent in by people from all over the country. People who had worked with him, corresponded  with him, or knew and used his research.

I hope there are such stories about me when I die, and I really hope they involve books.