Ghost Writer
How stars and stories synchronized to expose a family secret
The quest to track down a long-hidden secret in my grandmother’s life is unspooling me.
Creating an ancestor memoir has the power to deconstruct our self-portrait—the one built up over decades, reinforced by the stories our families instill in us, the ways society conditions us to accept certain things at face value.
It’s like we have a mental picture of where we come from, the kind of stock we descend from, who we are.
Until we don’t.
In “Unearthing the Past,” I posited how, by fleshing out Grandma’s story, unraveling the mystery of her life, and following the thread to learn how it is interwoven with mine, I might know her better.
I think of a William Stafford poem, The Way It Is. Here’s how it begins:
There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
“You have to explain about the thread.” Well, okay.
A thread has only two dimensions. You can follow it from here to there, it can take you in a straight line. But a two-dimensional view doesn’t reveal much.
Still, following that one story thread might lead me to another, and another, allowing me to knot them together to see a bigger picture. Standing back to reflect on the newly-woven together threads, what new picture might emerge?
The Thread I Follow
Grandma is a ghost whose life I am trying to write back into history. Weaving words together. Forming a tapestry to gain insight into her life, her loves, her world: that is my path.
Weaving a life tapestry, but where to begin?
I never heard Grandma Sophie’s voice in life—she died when I was eight, her voice long-before silenced by a series of strokes.
Hand-me-down memories:
Blue and white china plates with scalloped edges. Family lore has it that my grandparents received a “barrel of dishes” as a wedding gift when they married in October, 1893. My mother passed down to me the two remaining plates.
Knitting and crocheting. Folded at the foot of my bed growing up was an Afghan she made. I can still see it in my mind’s eye. Pale blue knit squares crocheted together with purple yarn. She made a matching Afghan and little pillow cover for my Raggedy Ann doll and, every morning, when I made my bed, I would lovingly tuck Raggs in on top of my bed, her head resting on my pillow and her own. I like to imagine Grandma tucking me in the same way but, alas, ‘twas never to be.
Love poems. Grandma taught herself to read and write English with a little book of popular love poems. I don’t think the poetry was anything special. Mom kept the book when Grandma passed away. Packing up boxes of family memorabilia after my mom’s death, I vaguely remember glancing at it before tossing it into a box, n’er to be retrieved. A missing thread.
Love poems lost, poetry took on new resonance for me. A year ago, I signed up for a class in writing the persona poem. I have been writing poems most of my life—but just for me. On a whim, in 2023, I decided to submit some to anthologies for review. Much to my surprise, three have since been published.
I decided maybe I should take a class to learn how to write poetry.
Last summer, I signed up for a class on the persona poem. Think of it as a dramatic monologue where the poet writes through the voice of something, or someone else.
To be honest, I’d never before heard of it. Still, it sounded intriguing and that our teacher was a former Poet Laureate of Boston who also taught in an MFA program spoke volumes about both her talent and teaching.
And writing in someone else’s voice? This was something I had down cold. Since 2017, I have been conjuring other people’s voices in prose for my Edge of Yesterday time travel-adventure book series. My experience writing first-person fiction proved fitting preparation for our week-long class.
Postcard Personae
Each day, our instructor laid out an array of postcards, fine art reproductions by well-known artists. She invited us to pick an image that spoke to us. From it, we were to choose a single element to represent our poem’s voice, or persona.
My postcard pick: Vincent Van Gogh’s, “The Road Meanders.” My poem, Insight, gives voice to an ancient, knotty plane tree. Insight I struggle to remain tall. The rocks piled at my roots push against the gnarls of my trunk and twist my limbs. Sun through my leaves draws me upwards still. Still is what I long to be, but movement—wind, rain, the painter’s brush—denies my desires. I bend not to break but to live. Motion arrested, emotion connected by my creator. From his brush I spring, I sing, I do not snap. This beauty is not mine, but his, his mind’s eye rendering me on canvas not as I endure at Saint-Remy, but as he would have me live. From his mind’s eye to yours and into eternity. It is not what I believe me to be. But you, dear Seer! See me in yourself.
“But you, dear Seer! See me in yourself.”
Our crowning assignment: to write in the voice of a family member or ancestor. What I didn’t know is that there would be another voice whispering to me with an entirely different history that she wanted me to tell. The voice of my grandmother, Sophie.
How to find her persona, to see her in myself? That last insight held a clue.
Changing the Channel
For reasons unknown to my head but evident enough to my heart, I have long been able to have long conversations with my father. Post mortems, I’d call them.
A CPA, philatelist and history buff, he was a time traveler of sorts, diving into history through his stamp collection. Daddy was also a poet, and shared with me a love of words. When I visited him Florida in early December, 2003, it would be the last time I saw him alive.
He shared that there would be some changes over the next few months, but it was going to work out great. That there were things only he knew about, and everything would be for the best. Lying down with his eyes closed, he traced a path with his gnarled, lovely hands; he asked me who was in the room. In the room I could see, it was just him, my mom, and me but I think he was looking in another room. Between worlds. He shaped graceful arcs in the air that showed a movement like dancing or flying. In that other room, he said he could see people. They were all friendly. No one he knew, and they weren’t talking to him, but welcoming.
Were they flying? Were they from that other world? Is that the world he was going to? He described it as an amazing place, a place that would be miraculous to us. That only he could see. Sharing with me the vision of a life after life.
Daddy gave me permission that afternoon to see that there might be worlds beyond this one, if only I could gain insight.
A Spirited Exchange
It was this other kind of vision I would need to access to tackle the final assignment—a persona poem in the voice of a family member or ancestor.
I sat outside on the porch and closed my eyes, and invited in whoever wanted to share something with me.
To my surprise, it was Grandma Sophie. I was able to channel her voice from beyond the veil. (I almost typed “beyond the Pale” which might be a truer hearing). Even though I’d never heard her speak, I recognized her right away. Her heavy accent in English, the Yiddishisms in her speech.
Breaking her silence, the story she chose me to receive was shocking.
For this writing project, I had no preparation. I have long shied away from writing about myself or my family. “Don’t air your dirty linen in public,” my mother always warned.
In Yiddish, the mother tongue, lashon hora is speech that causes harm. The evil tongue. Gossip. What the Medieval Jewish sage Maimonides describes in his writings in the Mishneh Torah, as words that, spread from one person to another, would damage someone’s body or their property, or even annoy or frighten them.
“Lashon hora,” my mother would warn.
I have been conditioned not to tell stories about family. And what is the purpose of a memoir, and particularly an ancestor memoir, but to tell family stories.
And suddenly, it is my mother’s voice in my ear. “No one needs to know our business, Robin.”
I am silenced from the start.
Fascinating how it appears the poetry class and the persona assignment led to hearing the personified voice of your grandmother for the next assignment and then, if I understand the chronology correctly, the desire to write about her life. Then your mother, working out of a very different instinct, warns you away from writing about family and its secrets, and there from the start is this conflict within you over doing the writing you feel compelled to do. A compelling obstacle to creation at the very start of your story.
Robin,
This is a great essay, and your poem based on Van Gogh's work is beautiful. It's great that you had such a wonderful poet teaching you. I would think it is difficult to write in a persona's voice. But if anyone can do it, you can. I think this memoir you are working on would be challenging but somewhat satisfying to write it.
Your mom sounds like my mom; she always feels that no one needs to know our business. She is always superstitious, saying kun-ahora and spitting three times to ward off the evil eye. I come from a family of secrets. When I was diagnosed with breast cancer, my mom immediately told me not to tell anyone. So I did the opposite: I told the world.
Like you, I'm a poet who has published some of my work. I am hoping to compile my poetry in a collection focused on getting breast cancer at a young age.