March 23, 2008

• I don’t remember.

  Occasionally, when I post memoirs, someone remarks on how good my memory is.  This always causes me to wonder if there are really people who get through life with more defective memories than mine.  My forgetter works much more efficiently than my rememberer, but sometimes not as well as I’d like.  I have spontaneous and almost photographic recall of certain scenes and events, most of them either traumatic, dramatic or somehow especially memorable.  Other things, such as phone numbers, names, dates, and the like, I can recall with some effort if I can associate them with something else.

  If I add up the elapsed times for all the little mind movies that I can recall, however, they make up only a very small portion of my lifetime.  Most of what I did or saw, for all my hours and days, is just a blank.  What came first and which event followed what, I can usually only deduce if I recall where something happened and when I was in that place.  Thus, for example, the memories of events occurring in the fifteen years I lived at Elvenhurst, our old place across the highway from here, are a jumble without coherent chronology.  Fortunately, that was the longest time I ever stayed in one place.  Moving around a lot has certainly enhanced my memory.

  Having forgotten so much can be maddening when one is trying to write a memoir.  It seems inappropriate to write a memoir that focuses primarily on what I don’t remember.

  I don’t remember everything that my first husband, “Ford”, said to me on the phone that Thanksgiving night in 1960.  He said he loved me.  He said he was sorry.  He said he wanted me back.  I told him I wouldn’t go back.  I know we talked longer than that.  I suppose, based on things I remember his having said at other times in similar circumstances, that he blamed his brutality on alcohol, swore that it would never happen again, and said that I had been in the wrong, too.

  He said he missed Marie, and invoked the responsibilities and privileges of fatherhood.  I must have commented on how he had abused her and the way he complained about her crying and the expense of feeding and providing for her.  I can’t imagine letting him slip those statements by me without comment.

  He probably ran the old lines about how we belonged together, and everyone said we wouldn’t make it, so we had to stay together to show them.  I don’t remember.  I guess he must have said that since I wouldn’t come back to him, he would come to me.  I don’t remember it being said, but that was what happened.

  I don’t know how long it was after that conversation before he showed up.  I don’t recall how he got there, how long he stayed, or how he was traveling when he left.  He might have had a car, or hitchhiked, or ridden on a bus or train.  I don’t know.  If it was bus or train, I don’t know how he paid for it.

  I know that he didn’t like life on the ranch and was unenthusiastic about helping with the work.  He hated getting mud on his shoes, and refused to get shit on them.  Blood or shit on his hands was out of the question.  He didn’t want to get within biting range of the rabbits or cows, but he would go up in the hay loft and throw down bales for someone else to break up and distribute.  The idea of his trying to learn to milk a cow is absurd.  He was willing to drive the tractor, but not skilled enough at it to be permitted to do anything useful.

  I don’t recall who had given me the puppy that Marie called hers, how long we had him, or what we named him.  I remember that Ford killed that puppy.  Grady saw him do it, but Ford denied it.  I knew he was lying.  In the aftermath of that incident, Ford left to go north to Stockton, where he had an aunt or a cousin or something.

  I don’t know how long after that it was before he called me up and said that he had a job and had rented an apartment in Lodi for us.  I can deduce that it was about a month or month and a half, because I recall something that happened on 21 January, 1961, and I had been in Lodi for at least a week or two by then.  I don’t know how he talked me into going there, but I suppose my mother was partially instrumental in my decision to go, just as she had been a major part of my reason for wanting to get married and out of her house in the first place.

  I remember that Marie and I rode a bus from Redlands to Lodi.  I remember seeing Christmas decorations, but don’t recall whether we spent Christmas at the ranch or in Lodi.  What came next, I remember with too much clarity for comfort.
  

  • 4:44 pm
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