I quietly hoard memoirs
It is not my habit to collect things. Scanning my house, new visitors are quick to ask when we moved here. As if the work of moving in is still unfinished. As if our decade of residence at this house should have more to show for itself. A friend of mine finds the echo on the other side of the phone haunting. She jokes she’s going to bring a U-Haul full of her junk to dump in the living room of my “empty cave of a house.” The horror.
While I do favor open space and a more minimalist decor, I will confess that I have been hoarding memoirs. With the honesty and vulnerability we’ve come to hide from one another in everyday life, each testimony bares a life of struggle, great strength and tenacity, and hard-earned personal triumph. Generously, the authors have used their own life to teach strangers. These gifts are the stories of our elders.
They are wise and resilient, much like the ancient redwoods that house our smaller forest neighbors, and tower over our nestled home, standing guard over our daily lives.
One sunny day, I hauled my memoirs to the part of my deck closest to where the redwoods live. I figured my collection had grown taller me (like both of my sons already have), but how tall? As I picked up each book, I reminisced about the author’s journey. As I kept adding to the stack, so many lives flashed before me, distorting time and contracting space, leaving behind the warm feeling of human connection. I welcomed the kaleidoscope of emotions that passed through me.
Yes, my library of memoirs houses trauma; it’s also a beautiful gathering of hearts and minds, of journeys, of courage and resilience, of hope.
These memoirists, like the trees, dug deep in order to grow, transcend limitations, and find sustaining light. And like the roots of redwoods that intertwine with one another for greater stability, their collective voices form a communal strength——a testament to how remarkable the human spirit truly is.
This collection provides me with the exact tincture of inspiration I might need on any given day. And that beautiful spring day on the deck under the redwoods, it reminded me that the important things in life can’t be measured.