This is not a story about some knock-off DNA test that will help you discover your ancestral roots.
Instead, it is a story with no definite answers. A story that will unfold with memories, ideas, thoughts, feelings, words, and sentences. All to be generated by fourteen writers–eleven women and three men–who have joined me (Writer in Residence in February and March) on a three-week memoir-writing odyssey at the Scottsdale Public Library.
Our journey together began February 20 in the SHC program room, in a wing of the Civic Center Libary devoted to Scottsdale history. Who knows, maybe some literary history is about to be made there.
We spent our first thirty minutes learning about each other. The youngest of our cohort is in her early twenties. The oldest beyond ninety. They and the other twelve (mostly in their fifties and sixties) told me in a few sentences why they were drawn to the workshop.
Some have been writing for years. They are fine-tuning their craft. Others are new and perhaps a little intimidated about the idea of sharing their writing with a group of strangers. But with time they will learn the benefit of bringing voice to the words they will assemble on a page.
From my previous workshops, I have learned that leading a memoir-writing session is deeply personal. So, in our first meeting, I worked to create a trusting, respectful space and asked that they also commit to that. It is essential, because when people tell their stories it is often raw and revealing.
After we settled in, we began writing. I gave the group this prompt: “My most vivid or meaningful February memory is …….”
After fifteen quiet minutes of pens scribbling across paper, eight of the fourteen offered to share what they wrote. I will honor our verbal confidentiality agreement and not share the content here but suffice it to say that an array of diverse stories came from that one prompt.
At the end of that exercise, I told them we had just illustrated that–like each of them–their memories, stories, voices are unique. What they have experienced in their lives is worthy of writing and sharing.
In fact, we–as writers–have a responsibility to do so. Especially now in a country brimming with external pressures designed to constrain a myriad of human thoughts, feelings, and ideas.
The group has an assignment this week: to write one-to-two manuscript pages that paint a picture of a setting–a place replete with vivid memories for them personally.
To help prime the creative pump, I read this passage to them from my third book, An Unobstructed View.
***
In June 1980, I left my parents’ home in the rolling suburbs of St. Louis, Missouri, to launch my career and create my own life in the relative flatness of northern Illinois. Jimmy Carter’s stay in the White House was winding down, but my hopes were high and trending up, and so would the volume of my days and nights in the Chicago area.
Unlike the state’s long and slender physical shape, I didn’t know my Illinois roots would ever extend far and wide. I couldn’t imagine I would live and work in the Chicago area for the next thirty-seven years–that I would occupy Illinois, and it would inhabit me for the most significant portion of my life.
Yet I would marry; divorce; raise two sons; change jobs multiple times; build a lucrative career; bury both of my parents; find my way out of the closet; live openly as a gay man; discover love again; marry a second time; retire from corporate life; begin a second career as an author; and say goodbye to my Cook County neighbors, family, and friends just a few days shy of my sixtieth birthday for a new adventure and warmer climes in the desert southwest.
All of it happened while I was living in the Land of Lincoln.
***
The room was quiet as I read. Compassion danced across their faces.
I can’t wait to listen to these fourteen writers tell their stories and help shape their literary journeys.
That will happen over the next two Fridays.
Mark Johnson Stories 