Porch-talk, Storytelling, & Writing Memoir

Porch-talk, Storytelling, & Memoir Writing

A couple of days ago, I went to a memorial service at St. Stephen’s Episcopal in Belvedere for a beautiful, remarkable soul, Elizabeth “Betty” McKegney. She was 99 years old. She would have been 100 on September 9^th. I heard it uttered that it was too bad she hadn’t reach the milestone of 100 years of age.  Well, to me, it just seemed right for her to take the poetic route: born 9-09-09, she took her leave at 99. Nice.

 The church was packed because Betty was significant in so many people’s lives as well as the one of the last of the “old guard.” I’m sure many of you know what I mean. This woman represented an era now past, the nostalgia of which is instilled in my heart. She lived in a house they say was graced by 150 cats, at one time or another, that was the first left turn just past our house and about 150 yards down one of the last gravel roads in town. This gravel road was fitting, too, as the last vestige of the past in an otherwise so current town.

Now Betty wasn’t a timid, sweet little old lady (she was an early 20^th Century woman with a degree in physics, after all). The range of her temperament and strength was legendary, and that’s specifically why she will be so utterly missed. Those who said a few words in the front of the church had interesting things to say that made her come alive through their stories about her. I loved what her son, Lowell, had to say about remembering his mom sitting out on the porch with her grandmother talking about everything under the sun, reminiscing, and learning about life through the telling of stories – he called it porch-talk.

Then a girl rose to the pulpit and began to speak about knowing Betty and Betty knowing her. And the girl spoke of the camera always around Betty’s neck, capturing the history of families and our small town one click at a time (she called her one of the first paparazzi), and how Betty treated the books in ‘her’ library as entities that could transport you to a world unknown – but you’d better treat the books right and return them on time – and  how Betty always made you feel in each moment you were with her like you were the one, the only one, whom Betty wanted to know, to talk to, to ask questions of and listen to, even if you were only 7 years old, or 11 or 50. And then the girl became a woman who writes bestsellers and keeps on loving Betty, and she was there that day in St. Stephen’s as the porch-talk storyteller who made the sun shine and the fog dance for Betty once again in our hearts and minds.

This girl who talked on through womanhood was Anne Lamott. Her talking-tribute to Betty that day is the perfect example of the bio-vignettes I encourage folks to write for TellTale Souls, and Anne’s mirroring of Betty made me believe Anne was talking just to me – the same feeling I get when I read her books. She didn’t say it outright, but you caught the drift of Anne giving Betty credit for believing in her and instilling in her the very strength of character and resilience that Anne has called forth throughout her life as a survivor and a giver. (Read Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life.)

Anne Lamott sat next to Lowell and the rest of Betty’s family in the first pew in the church, my husband, who gave a reading for Betty, and I were seating just behind them. And the whole time I thought there is something about Anne that reminds me of my mother as I remember Mom when I was young (yes, a long time ago, and Anne is much younger than I, and my mom didn’t have dreads), and it brought a lump in my throat and made my eyes sting. But it’s strange to contemplate how many realities seem to coexist in very different planes, and spaces, and times, and how the turn of a word or the soft curve of a cheek, of a lip can remind you of someone altogether different. Or are they really?

The Story Woman asks you to write “Mother Memoir” and join the ranks of all TellTale Souls.