On Wednesday, I wrote these beginnings in a memoir workshop:
In response to Cisneros's "My Name" in House on Mango Street
My name is Lilian, with one l in the middle, the way my Aunt Lilian spelled it and her Aunt before that. It is a family name, on my father's side, and I never knew why, exactly, my parents chose this name for me. When I was young in the l950s and 60s, no one else was named Lilian, except for old ladies, ladies people called "Miss Lillian;"Lillian, with two Ls, Lillians who live in run down Victorian houses, Miss Lillians who wore fuzzy bedroom slippers and yelled at young children from their front porches, shaking their canes in the air. So I called myself Lil--though that was a problem, too. My brother would say, "Lil sounds like a saloon girl."
In response to "My Father and the Fig Tree"
My father was a man of principle. He said often to me, "You must live by principle," even when I wondered what that meant. I knew when he said it that I shouldn't be doing whatever I was doing because whatever that behavior was, was what got me "the principle lecture" to start with. But I would always wonder what does he mean "to live by principle"--did he mean living next to Mr Harris who was headmaster of my elementary school or a neighbor named principle who I had not yet met. But as my Dad repeated to me "You must live by principle" throughout my years growing up, I realized he was repeating to me what his Dad had said to him, his Dad--a Christian minister--who lived by principle and always sought out the good in others.
In response to Nikki Giovanni's "Nikki Rosa"
Childhood memories aren't a drag for white folks.
It's the teens and twenties that really get to you,
The years where all that Christian upbringing
Of sex being only for bad girls
and being smart means not being quite as smart as a boy--
It's the teens and twenties that really get to you.
Because you have to un-shape
All that shaping you got as a child
Undo yourself and do-over
Ditch the icky husband
Claim your mind
And that can be hard on all those childhood friends
and family
who made your childhood memories oh so nice.
I love your response to your name. It makes me remember my reaction to my own name--Wendy--a Peter Pan character. Little girls are named Wendy. I don't know of a single old lady named Wendy. Also it reminds me of the story my mom share when I was born. She thought she was having a boy (I'm not sure why) and my name was to be Christopher. When I was a girl, she didn't have a name and asked the delivering doctor what I should be named (who does that?!). He supposedly looked out the window and replied, "Let's call her Wendy." I hate that story. It reveals that my mom should
ReplyDeletei think we all have unique stories. My name is really Faith Christina or at least that is what came out in the newspaper. Mother said that it was going to be either Faith, Hope or Charity because she needed all three to stay with my dad. Christina was after my adopted grandmother Christine. I hoped that I could name my daughter Faith, but after losing three babies, I feel blessed to have MY boys. (That's the joke in the family that everything is MINE!-only child symptoms) By the way Robin is after my dad....Robert.
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