Moonlight on Linoleum
Page 24
6. You mention that you had help from your sisters and other family members in piecing together your history. Can you talk a little more about this collaboration and how you pulled all of their memories together?
I am extremely grateful to my sisters for embarking on this journey with me. They helped me flesh out many events and scenes. We spent countless hours talking on the phone, writing e-mails, ferreting out old photographs, and debating differences of opinion. It became clear to me, as I pieced together our family puzzle, that, if given an opportunity, every sister would write a very different memoir. A happy memory for one might constitute a painful memory for another. Our perspective, our birth order, our emotional charge around an event—all impacted us uniquely.
I came to believe memory was more than a set of facts; it was also the interpretation of facts—even with something as concrete as a floor plan. When I drew up a floor plan of our trailer house from memory and e-mailed it to my sisters, a debate ensued about the existence of a wall in a small middle bedroom. Some vividly remembered a wall in place and others swore it was not there. Eventually, one of us remembered Daddy removed the wall. Both opposing memories turned out to be true.
Even before the mystery was solved, I wasn’t concerned—in fact, just the opposite. Whenever our discussions digressed into minutiae, it usually meant we agreed on the larger issues. Not one of us ever questioned that we had lived in a trailer with a tiny middle bedroom.
7. There has been quite a bit of focus in the media lately on the issue of accuracy in memoirs. Was this on your mind as you wrote your book?
I thought a lot about accuracy as I wrote. What events should I include? As a child, how could I accurately portray the complexity of the adults in my early life? What if I misunderstood personal motivations or the causality of events? How could my life and the lives of my sisters be accurately distilled into two hundred pages? What if someone took exception to what I said?
These were the dragons I faced.
Memoir differs from autobiography in that it is a reflection on one’s memory. While the story must be true, emotional truth differs among individuals. Ultimately, I had to recognize the authority of my own emotional truth. Only I knew how it felt to grow up inside my skin, trying to interpret the world in which I lived. I tried not to impose my emotional truth on others, but memoir necessitates looking through the lens of the author.
8. After 9/11, you founded The Thread Project (www.threadproject.com). The resulting tapestries were exhibited at the United Nations and St. Paul’s Chapel, across from Ground Zero. Can you tell us more about the project? Did your childhood have any bearing on this work?
As a young girl, I clung fiercely to the slimmest threads of hope, even in times of despair.
After 9/11, I felt the world hung by one of those slender threads. Having learned from moving around so much in childhood that people are really more alike than different, I invited people worldwide, via the web, to send me a single thread, representing hope. Those early threads were woven into Hope Materializing, the first of seven world tapestries.
I received tens of thousands of “threads”—guitar strings, cloth strips, fishing line, electrical wire, lace—the variety seemed endlessind People identified their threads—a tattered fiber plucked from the Killing Fields in Cambodia, a strip cut from a marker flag in Antarctica, a ribbon sent by a 9/11 family, a lace pulled from the tennis shoe of a murdered son. I was both humbled and inspired.
Forty-nine weavers, in fourteen countries, set up looms in their communities to weave the collected threads into the tapestries that hung in the United Nations and St. Paul’s Chapel. Now, ten years later, I hope to gift this fabric of humanity to an interested organization that promotes peace, tolerance, and compassionate community.
We hope you enjoyed reading this Simon & Schuster eBook.
Sign up for our newsletter and receive special offers, access to bonus content, and info on the latest new releases and other great eBooks from Howard Books.
or visit us online to sign up at
eBookNews.SimonandSchuster.com
Table of Contents
Cover
Description
Back Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Contents
Foreword
Prologue
Chapter 1: Emerson, Iowa 1950
Chapter 2: Fort Morgan, Colorado
Chapter 3: Glenwood, Iowa
Chapter 4: Elkhart, Kansas
Chapter 5: Amarillo, Texas
Chapter 6: Alvin, Texas
Chapter 7: Ozona, Texas
Chapter 8: Grand Junction, Colorado
Chapter 9: Fort Stockton, Texas
Chapter 10: Ozona, Texas Revisited
Chapter 11: Odessa, Texas
Chapter 12: Grand Junction, Colorado Revisited
Chapter 13: Denver City, Texas
Chapter 14: San Luis Obispo, California
Chapter 15: Odessa, Texas Revisited
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Q & A with Terry Helwig