Blog 7

My story is about growing up with my Grandmother from when I was younger until the time that she died. The details that I selected were true to my focus, and I told a few anecdotes in segments, which displayed my grandmother’s distinct personality. I didn’t embellish her personality or hide anything about her to make my story more believable or more cohesive.
The only facts which I have set forward as true but I am uncertain about are the year and town of her birth. I’m only about a year off, and I’m 99% positive she grew up in Bayonne, however I included them because I was in a rush and didn’t have time to ask my mom what the definite answers were.
The sequence of my memoir is out of order on purpose, but the time and place of everything i talked about is factual.

Blog 6.5

In her essay, Mimi Schwartz discusses the differences between memoir and fiction. She draws the conclusion that the line between the two genres is murky, but essentially a memoir is a collection of memories that feel true to the person telling them. Her view on memoir writing tends to be that even if a memory didn’t exactly happen the way you’re telling it, such as the weather being different or a hair color being slightly changed, as long as it doesn’t play a crucial role in the story, it can be altered. She also argues for the usage of composite characters to be allowed when perhaps the two or three characters you want to talk about do not want their identities leaked. Schwartz does not advocate changing large details in the story, because this crosses into the line of fiction, but minor detail changes are allowed so long as this is how you remember your own story. According to these rules then, James Frey is a fiction writer. His novel, a so called memoir titled A Million Little Pieces which Oprah made famous by including in her book club, was so drastically changed from his actual life story that there’s no real way it can be included as a memoir. According to the smoking gun, and Frey himself, he changed huge details of central plot points, added characters which did not exist and didn’t need to be added, and included himself in a car accident which he was not a part of. His attempts to make his novel more interesting and sell it as a memoir instead of a fiction were done to draw more readers in and make them sensitive to his story, which worked up until everyone found out the truth.

Blog 6: my memior

Note: this is a rough edit of my memoir essay. it's very long, and i wrote the segments in a totally different order, so im not sure if this is the order they'll end up in. please tell me what parts should be taken out, what parts are necessary, and anything else you think is helpful. thank you!

Sometimes it’s hard to believe my mother and I are related. I’m sitting cross legged on my floor surrounded by photo albums and loose pictures, rummaging through them as I sweep off layers of dust and germs that have probably lived on these for several months. She walks into my room and frowns at the mess. “What the hell are you doing? Are you going to clean all this up later? Why haven’t you thrown you old school books out yet? Didn’t you just wear that shirt on Monday?” My mother is the queen of asking too many questions before I have the chance to process them, let alone answer them. I sigh, because it’s no use. I am messy and my mother is a neurotic neat freak. In our house, we have a couch you’re not supposed to sit on, towels you’re not supposed to dry your hands with, and a garbage can you’re not supposed to throw things away with. I’m constantly sad for the items she buys that will never be used for their true purposes. She comes over to where I’m sitting and picks up a picture of her mother during Christmastime from about ten years ago. “I miss her” she says softly, and I nod my head. I look up and notice that I’ve never seen my mother look so vulnerable.

It’s 1130 pm, which means it’s time for lunch. Which means it’s time for our salad platters. Salad platters are Grandma’s idea of a healthy lunch, which really means her idea of a quick way to feed us and get rid of leftover cold cuts. I think salad platters are the only thing my mother doesn’t fear us eating here, and since I’ve grown up on them, I love them dearly, like the way you learn to love your favorite sports team even though you know they always lose. I love the hardboiled egg half she always gives us, the pieces of provolone cheese, my favorite, and the rolled up pieces of salami and ham that I dip in Italian dressing. I even love that, even though this is a salad platter, there is technically no salad whatsoever in it. Grandma was always a comedian.

At three o’clock on the dot we rush into the living room to watch “General Hospital.” Grandma resumes whatever afghan she was knitting the day before, and I pull out a word find and a highlighter and try and find the words. I’m pretty sure “General Hospital” is the only TV show my grandma watches because she doesn’t have cable and usually falls asleep around 7pm anyway. Between the hours of nine and three, my sister and I can do whatever we want. Usually we alternate between playing bingo with Grandma or watching reruns of “Empty Nest” or “Saved By The Bell” on TV. Sometimes I pull out old photo albums from the 70’s and 80’s with the psychedelic printed covers, searching through the pictures of my aunts and uncles on family vacations and holidays. Everyone’s hairstyle seems strange and their clothes look extremely old fashioned.
Underneath all the trees you can barely tell it’s sunny out. I’m lying on a hammock in grandma’s backyard with her and my sister, staring up at the branches of the tree. I play with grandma’s soft black hair as she tells us the story of how my mother had a pet duck that followed her to school one day. I’ve heard the story about 100 times, but I always ask to hear it. This is my favorite part about going to grandma’s house, hearing her tell the stories from my aunt and uncle’s childhoods. Looking around the backyard is like seeing a museum from my family history. There’s the swing my grandfather put up years ago, a tire swing hanging from the tallest tree in the yard. Further back (this is the biggest backyard I’ve seen my entire life) there is the red shed, and my Uncle Andrew’s old dog is buried in front of it. In the middle of the yard should be the above ground pool where my mother almost drowned, but it was taken apart decades ago. On the white cement steps that lead to the backdoor are handprints and names of my three aunts and two uncles, one name per step. I trace the imprinted names with my fingers every day. When we go inside I ask to see the tape that I’ve watched about 30 times since I discovered it, the tape that has no sound other than the old music someone recorded over all the scenes. It isn’t black and white, but in a kind of fuzzy color that seems extremely vintage. On it are small episodes in my family’s history; my aunt and uncle’s wedding in the late sixties, a christening of a cousin, my great-grandma’s birthday party, and my mother dancing around the basement with her friends as a teenager. Everything on this tape makes me nostalgic for a past that I never was a part of.

My six year old sister Nicole looks nothing like me. She’s my half sister, born with my mother as her mother and my step father as her father, but she doesn’t resemble me at all. She does, however, have my attitude and pieces of my personality. Right now she’s asked me to put in a tape that she’s watched at least 20 times in the past month. It’s the video of my mom and step father’s wedding, something that occurred when I was nine and when she wasn’t even a twinkle in my mother’s eye. She is transfixed by this tape, which is so old that it’s a VHS, something that looks ancient to me now. Nicole and I watch my nine year old self dancing to “greased lightening” and my mom and Aunt Laura do the electric slide. I’m embarrassed by the late nineties dance music, but Nicole loves every second of this video, even though she’s nowhere to be found. When she saw it for the first time, she kept asking “where am I?” After I told her she wasn’t born yet, she didn’t seem to care anymore. She still watched, hypnotized by the images of a family that looked so dated to me.

“Ma, this can expired in 1997.” My mother is annoyed, and slightly embarrassed. She taps her foot and tries to reason with my grandmother, who seems oblivious and earnestly confused. “What do you mean? It’s soda, I’m sure it’s fine!” Meanwhile it’s 2002, and six years haven’t aged the Pepsi well, so when my grandmother isn’t looking my mom chucks it into the garbage. Grandma’s basement was like an ancient archeological dig, if you happened to be digging for outdated cans of soup and vegetables and boatloads of fabric and apoulstry. My grandfather was a carpenter, and even after he died she never got rid of all the fabric in the back of our basement. I guess she figured she would need it, just like she figured she would need all those six year old cans of creamed corn and broccoli. In her muumuu and favorite, possibly only, pair of Ked’s slippers, my Grandma prepares dinner for my family. My mom and aunt Andrea are watching her closely as she makes spaghetti and meatballs, making sure the ingredients she uses are fresh, and that she doesn’t end up accidentally putting peanut butter in the sauce instead of basil. It’s never happened before, but I really wouldn’t put anything past her at this point. Grandma’s getting old. Her memory isn’t what it used to be and her cooking, well her cooking is what it always was, a little scary, but always made with love.

I am constantly singing. It’s completely subconscious at times, and utterly embarrassing when I don’t realize I’m doing it. I’ll sing in the shower, sure, but unlike everyone else in the world, I also sing when I’m walking, when I’m working, when I’m around complete strangers, and when I’m around new friends. Everyone who knows me at all knows this about me. They will completely attest to my occasional belting out of “Edge of Seventeen” or “Whole Lotta Love” or basically the entire collection of songs by The Beatles. All my friends are aware of my aspiration to be a lounge singer and my endearing yet unhealthy obsession with American Idol. I guess the oddest part of all of this, the part that makes me slightly more embarrassed than the fact that I will serenade a crowd of strangers with “Michelle” and mess up all the parts in French, is the fact that I cannot carry a tune for the life of me. I’d like to say I’m a pretty good singer, but this would be a lie. In reality, I’m a mediocre singer who is occasionally tone deaf and should never be allowed near a microphone. It’s a wonder how I’m so drawn to music, lyrics, and the art of performance, and always have been. Or, almost always.

Grandma had one of the longest driveways ever. If I was to visit that house now, I’m sure the driveway would seem long, but not scary long. However at eight years old it seemed to stretch out into an eternity of never-ending blacktop. In the middle of the driveway, on the left side, was a small concrete set of steps leading into the side entrance of the house. There were two small steps on either side of a large platform which was enclosed by a rusty black railing. The platform was just big enough to fit me and occasionally my sister, and during those many summer afternoons at Grandma’s house, acted as my stage for all the shows we would put together. Grandma was born in 1927, smack in the middle of the Great Depression. She grew up in Bayone with her two older sisters during a dreary time, and with her father in Italy, my great grandmother had to take care of her three daughters mostly alone. I remember her telling stories about her youth, but more so I remember photo albums with fading pictures and dated hairstyles which I made fun of. Grandma was enthusiastic about a lot of things, but singing and dancing were her most revered activities. She taught my sister Caitlin and I tons of songs from her childhood, and was never happier as when we were making up songs and dances and performing them on our makeshift stage. Grandma would sit on her crappy folding chair with a glass of unsweetened Iced Tea in her hand, (which you couldn’t have gotten me to drink if you had paid me, and I was eight) beaming at us and clapping with delight. Our silly little performances were her greatest entertainment, and I learned to love to sing and dance all those summers ago, even though I knew I wasn’t remotely talented at either one.

Grandma is a huge Yankees fan. If we’re outside, which we usually are as long as the sun is shining, she has her portable AM radio with her to check the scores of the baseball games. If you ask her favorite player, it will always be Joe Girardi, and secondly Derek Jeter. Today we’re in the living room of my house, sitting with my step dad Steve, my mom, my sister, and my grandma and grandpa. The topic of baseball comes up, and Steve is also a huge Yankees fan, so he and grandma start a conversation about the current team. Enthusiastically, she says “That Jerek Deter is something, isn’t he?” I laugh. Steve laughs. Grandpa is to deaf to have heard her, but I’m sure he’d laugh too, after he yelled at her. My step dad stops laughing long enough to correct her mistake, but she doesn’t get it. “I said his name right, didn’t I? Jerek Deter! That’s not right?” Then she realizes her mistake and laughs with us. It’s no surprise that anytime someone in my mother’s family says or does something stupid yet endearingly funny, we call them “Mary” after my grandmother’s name.

She died about five years ago. I remember a lot of tears at the wake and the funeral, I remember my mother touching grandma’s soft black hair for the last time and saying she looked beautiful, but I also remember laughter. I have a lot of cousins, aunts, and uncles from my mother’s side of the family, and countless amounts of stories about my grandma were being told those few days we mourned, stories that I had already heard but loved hearing again, and new stories that grandma never told me. My favorite story happened right before the funeral, and didn’t involve my grandma at all, except in spirit. A few days before her funeral, my aunts and uncles gathered at Grandma’s house to sort through things, like who would be a pallbearer and what kind of casket they would buy. They were deicing on which mass card to use, and after looking at one for several minutes, my Aunt Andrea, the one with the personality most like my grandma, said “I like this one the most. Except, who’s this guy they have on the front of it?” My Uncle Andrew took the card away and smiled, then laughed. He passed it around to my aunts and uncles and they all laughed too. Finally, my Uncle Gary spoke. “Good job Andrea, or should I call you Mary. The guy on the front of the card is Jesus.”

Blog #5: Response to my Personal Essay

The personal essay I wrote was about growing up between the ages of 9 and 15 and watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer with my parents. In the beginning of my mom and stepdad's relationship, we began watching Buffy and it really brought us closer together. It also helped comfort me in times when I was upset, and was with me during my entire youth. I almost feel like I had a second family in the characters, that I grew up with them, mainly because the age that I watched the show was so young and such a developmental stage. I think I could've been happier in the way the essay turned out. I like the ideas that I had, and most of the things I said were exactly what I wanted to say, but I wish I had expressed my ideas differently. I'm just not sure how I could have done that better.

Blog # 3: Brainstorming on my Memoir

These are just random pieces from my freewriting during class which we wrote about several topics that were prompted to us. Oddly, I kept going back to a few specific places, time periods, and people. I'd like feedback on what seems to be the most interesting for an essay.



Memories of my Grandma's house, the big red house, the only red house on the block. The paint was always chipping off. The house number, 1112 (i actually cant remember, i'm making this up) was painted on a white stone in black lettering. There were flowerbeds every spring and the front porch had a wicker chair that she always sat in. The front living room was full of pictures of my aunts and uncles, mom included, and grandma and grandpa. The wall in the living room had a picture of each of my aunts and uncles on their wedding day, with my granparents wedding picture in the middle. Only two of the original couples are still together. The back room consisted of games for my sister and I to play with. Bingo, puzzles, and colorforms were our favorites. There was a small TV with no cable, so we always watched channel 13 which was PBS or any number of daytime sitcoms like empty nest or golden girls that played during the "old people hours" when everyone else was at work or in school. I could always be found digging in the piles of pictures in that room, lost in the photo albums with their psychadelic 70s prints, filled with pictures of my aunts and uncles from the "good old days". the photographs were faded and torn, and the hairstyles and clothes looked dated, but i always longed to be inside those pictures.

the kitchen looks the same in my mind as it always will. there was a long table in the center of the "dining room" and a phone with huge, i mean HUGE numbers on them and the longest cord known to man. that cord used to wrap around me and my sister. there was a fishtank in the dining room too, and after my aunt told me a story of how a fish once jumped out and fell onto her feet, i never ventured too close to that tank. my fondest memories of that kitchen were when grandma made us her famous"salad platters" which never really consisted of salad at all...just some lettuce, olives, ham, salami, cheese, and dressings, basically whatever she could find on a paper plate. and a hard boiled egg if she was so daring that day. i loved that horrible food.

I think i'm definetly going to write about my grandmother's house and my grandparents in general, I just dont know where to go from there, what to tie it in with. Maybe my family now, all of their children (my aunts and uncles) because both my grandma and grandpa have passed away.

Blog # 2: Schwartz: My Father Always Said

In Schwartz's essay "My father always said," she segments it into parts which all come together to tell the story of her and her father's relationship and each of them reacting differently to the same experience. The story begins by the author telling of her father's behavior and "favorite lines" about his native town of Rindheim. Her father is affected by World War II and got his entire family out before Hitler invaded, and moved them to Queens in NYC. Because of this, he clings to his recent past of Rindheim, and tells his daughter of then that "In Rindheim, you didnt do such things!" The family then travels to visit Rindheim and sees the old town where he grew up. The trip takes place only a few years after the war had ended, so it's really the first occurence for Schwartz were she truely sees an accurate account of what had happened to the Jews. Her father shows her around the town, shows her the buildings and tells her stories of the hardships of his people. In between telling the reader about this trip, she includes that she went back to visit Rindheim in 1993 when she was much older, insinuating that she researched her family history and the history of the Rindheim Jews more. The trip ends up doing two different things to her and her father. It makes a lasting impression on them both, but serves to make her father aware that the war is over, and it's time for him to move on and become part of the American way of life. For Schwartz, it serves to make her aware of her history and her past, and causes her to find out about her ancestors and their hardships.

Blog: My Personal Essay Draft

In the spring of 2003 during my freshman year of High School, I opened up my mailbox one afternoon to an issue of Entertainment Weekly with Sarah Michelle Gellar, the star of Buffy, on the cover. Initially excited at the prospect of reading an article about my favorite TV show, my face dropped the instant I read the headline: “Buffy Calls It Quits.” I dropped the magazine to the floor and stared into space in disbelief. This couldn’t be happening, it couldn’t be real. I guess I always knew that the show couldn’t last forever, that it had to end eventually, but it all seemed so sudden. Thus, I received my first dose of heartbreak at 14 years old. My “boyfriend” of seven years had finally decided to break up with me, not really giving me many reasons, leaving me standing in the sunlight wondering why, what had went wrong? It’s the spring of 1997, a Saturday afternoon, and I’m eight years old. My mother and my father had just finalized their divorce a few months earlier, so my mother, younger sister and I are living in a two family house which barely has room for all three of us. I’m comforted by the small living room, which brings the three of us closer together as we all sit on the couch watching TV or playing with toys. Actually, by this point it’s the four of us. My mother’s boyfriend Steve, who is now my stepfather, is basically living with us. Since I’ve known Steve since I was just a toddler, I don’t feel threatened by this, nor do I feel protective over my mother. However, I do feel that my once seemingly fine family is crumbling around me, and I do wonder why my Daddy left us. The sun is shining brighter than normal this Saturday, but as soon as the television turns on, it seems to dim the lights in the entire house. An eerie music fills the room as Steve raises the volume and tells us what we’re watching. “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” he says. “Maybe the girls are too young for this.” My mother seems to agree, but I beg to stay and watch the show for a little while at least. Even at eight years old I know what I’m interested in. My mother reluctantly agrees, but makes my sister leave the living room, after all, she’s only six. For the next hour the three of us are memorized by one of the first episodes of the newly premiered show, listening to the hip dialogue, laughing at all of the jokes, and jumping in our seats when the “bad guys” come on screen. Instantly I am hooked. Like most children who can remember everything about the first time they played with a certain toy, or most adults who can remember what they felt the first time they heard Led Zeppelin, I can remember exactly how I felt that first season of watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I felt oddly protected, not only from the strong blonde heroine of the show, but also by my mother and stepfather who were just as entranced with it as I was. We had formed a bond over Buffy, a ritual Tuesday night viewing of the show that was all I seemed to talk about in school. Even my friends called me “Buffy,” which must have seemed weird to my teachers. I was the nine year old who preferred vampires and demons to Barbie dolls and Pretty Pretty Princess. The first season of Buffy The Vampire Slayer began airing just after my ninth birthday in March of 1997, a full ten years ago. Based loosely on an early 90’s movie of the same name, “Buffy” was created by writer Joss Whedon when he decided he was sick of seeing the young blonde girl in horror movies constantly portrayed as the victim. He instead drew up the idea for a teenage girl named Buffy Summers who would be blonde, beautiful, smart, endearing, and oddly tough. Buffy was, as the title suggests, a vampire slayer, the “chosen one” who had the power to slay the vampires, demons, and forces of darkness. Try as she might to live a normal teenage life, such as join the cheerleading squad, attend her school prom, study, and date someone who didn’t turn out to be a vampire, normal just wasn’t in the cards for Buffy Summers. As the series progressed, so did my life. Just a few episodes into season two, my mother and stepfather got married, and we soon moved into a new house which would become the place where I watched “Buffy” for the next six years. Almost all of my memories of Tuesday nights with my stepfather and mother involve being in the family room on my couch, hypnotized for an hour by what was happening onscreen. In season four, Buffy and the gang embarked on College, and was starting Middle School. These occurrences were obviously not the same, but in my eleven year old brain I found this coincidence to be helpful and strengthening. After all, if Buffy could deal with changing schools and simultaneously battling vampires on a weekly basis, I could certainly handle the sixth grade. Sometimes the bullies, popular girls, and even teachers seemed like the forces of evil. Having Buffy in my mind at all times kept me stronger. I could do it all. Seasons five and six were especially dark, and did nothing to stop my mother’s claims that perhaps this show was to advanced for someone my age. Of course, she never won that argument, and I continued watching “Buffy”, only now I was too embarrassed to view it with my parents. I instead began watching the series alone, unless the episode was lighthearted or extremely important, in which case I would have to view with them and discuss all of the jokes and significant plot movements. During these years, when I was just beginning the leap from adolescence into pre-teens, and then finally being a teenager, Buffy was growing like I was. She was maturing, finding herself, going through dark and rough times, and I was finding myself too. Perhaps I didn’t have to fight an evil hell-god named Glory who would stop at nothing to find a key back to her home dimension, but my struggles seemed real and impossible at times too. When the final episode aired I had to watch it in my kitchen sitting between stacked boxes and my microwave. We had just moved into our new house, literally three days before, and it was the first day our cable was installed. Of course, I panicked all week at the thought of my TV not working during the series finale, thinking of alternate places I could watch the show at. I sat on a folding chair surrounded by a cluttered mess of moving material, directly in front of the television, transfixed as I waited for 8:00pm for what I knew would be the last time. I was watching the episode alone, something I rarely did, because my parents were busy setting up our house in all the other rooms. I also put out strict instructions that if anyone in the house interrupted me during this house, I wouldn’t speak to them ever again. By 9:00 I was a wreck, crying and clutching at the screen, wanting more. I felt betrayed, abandoned, and lost. I also felt slightly embarrassed for crying over a television show, but at that point I didn’t care. “Buffy” had trapped me since 1997, leading me into a fantasy world that was full of vampires, demons, and ass-kicking blondes equipped with witty banter and sarcasm. I looked around my kitchen, at a house which was strange and new, a house which I had never watched “Buffy” in before, so it seemed fitting that I would never sit down on a Tuesday at 8pm to watch it here again. I knew my life was changing and that I was on the brink of growing up, and that by this time next year, I would be sixteen and wouldn’t have time for silly television shows. For that night however, I was still fifteen, I was still innocent and naive, and losing “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” was still the scariest thing the world had thrown at me. Looking back, I long for that night. Currently my grandmother is in the hospital, my mother has to go get tests done from the doctor, and my ex-boyfriend and I just got into a huge fight. I am a wreck. There are literally thousands of ways I could be dealing with my pain; most of them are unhealthy, some of them are illegal, and a few of them involve cookie dough ice cream. Instead, I sit here on my couch curled up under a blanket watching my favorite season of “Buffy.” For at least an hour I don’t have to remember why I’m sad, and I don’t have to think about what I’m going to do after the episode ends. Right now it’s just me and Buffy Summers, and I am as content as I was when it premiered ten years ago, as emotional as I was when it ended four years ago, and as nostalgic as I’ll always be.