They say that life imitates art. Some also say art imitates life. They say when you write to write what you
know. Clichés that are repeated so often
they must lose legitimacy in the redundancy… and yet… the more I write, the
more I know they are true.
There is also the philosophy that some stories have to wait
for the right time and place – even if inspiration comes along 15 years too
early. I always resented being told I
didn’t have enough experience in my twenties.
And now, I kind of get it. I had
to live through certain emotions and heartbreak and … experiences to make this
novel a better story.
So I don’t know if it is the first sentence or the second
that has shaped the reality of my November.
I spend my weekends at the house in which I spent the end of my
childhood, fixing up some of the wear and tear and seeing
it with a new set of eyes. And… a whole
lot of love. It has become a sanctuary…
a country retreat where I can write, sit in front of the fire, and sip coffee
on a Saturday morning. There is a sort
of self discovery through the reacquaintance with this property and the quiet
of the nature that surrounds it. Not
necessarily a piece of me that got lost… but that went to sleep for a few years
while I lived closer to the city.
And I don’t know which opening sentence applies to the
greatest influence of my current writing life.
I lost my grandmother this fall… something I expected to happen this
year. Something I knew was an inevitable
sadness my life would have to face. And
yet the details of the last few months have inspired a more honest storytelling
to my novel. It also inspired me to
start telling the story of my own life – my own heritage – and the woman who
planted that seed of storytelling in my imagination long ago.
I just sorted through the recipe boxes that are the fodder
for my blog, searching for a dessert bar to bring to a meeting tomorrow. I am on the fifth recipe for this project of
family history through cooking… and while looking for the famous peanut butter
bar ingredients, I discovered the treasure hunt that my grandmother left me in
these two boxes.
Almost every recipe is annotated with a source. Some are impersonal like Good
Housekeeping. Some are familiar like my
aunts and cousins. Some are vaguely
familiar like other older deceased relatives.
Some are… a mystery. Names of
people that are connected to my family, but I don’t recognize. Or a descriptive word to an ingredient
foreign to my 21st century mega grocery shopping experience
memory.
My eyes welled up as I sorted through these cards – finding really
great titles like Happy Day Cake or Tropical Gingerbread… and a whole lot of
inspiration for my blog, Soup and Shells (which you should read and like on Facebook if you
haven’t already).
But the other truly extraordinary gift of discovery is that…
well, it isn’t a contrived storytelling gimmick to say that a modern
thirtysomething woman can actually find something of herself through the story of
her grandmother. That it isn’t selling a
woman who lived through the 20th century short by telling her story
through the kitchen. These were major
concerns I had about my novel. Things
that I thought made it unbelievable… or cliché.
Now I realize it is a chance to write what I know
