My daughter, Nina, sat in the passenger seat, and we ate as I drove. We had a shiny black town car that the rental company had, by luck, upgraded from the simple sedan I had ordered. Before we left the parking lot, that luxurious vehicle had told me three times that I was too close to another car or a wall. Don’t you hate it when a car bosses you?
We had flown to Los Angeles, gone to Disneyland, then driven to San Diego to visit Sea World. We were driving back to L.A.
We waited until 11 a.m. that morning until Point Loma Sea Food take out or eat in restaurant opened.
We had lunch there many times when we lived in San Diego. We would sit outside in the sunshine with seagulls begging overhead and sea lions barking in the harbor. Although I had many lunches there, I had never ordered breakfast before.
I ordered my favorite, a crab sandwich.
“I’m in heaven,” I sang as we barreled up I-5.
I’ve tried other crab sandwiches from other restaurants, but none comes close
to Point Loma’s. It’s a simple sandwich, crab meat with tartar sauce (I get
extra) on sourdough bread. That’s it. Iced tea and lemon completed the meal. It
makes my mouth water just thinking about it.
“I remember” is an excellent place to start.
You don’t have to wait until you’re old to
write a memoir. Write one at 20, 30, 40-80, 90, and beyond.
Memoir used to be an old-folks genre, but not anymore. I was once told that nobody will read your memoir unless you are somebody famous like Shirley MacLaine. It’s different now. You can write many memoirs during your life. Do not begin with, “I was born”—you know the story, schooled, married, children. No, a memoir is that stop alongside the road to strip off your suit and bathe in that swimming hole you glimpsed as you almost drove by.
This is your life. Make it a good one. If it was a bad one, you could write of that too. But whining—I’d suggest that is for your eyes only.
Traditional wisdom—Oh Lord, traditional wisdom has gotten us into more trouble than Timmy’s escapades on the Lassie show. Okay, here is traditional wisdom: “Without conflict, you have no story.”
Oh, how I’ve struggled with that axion.
Conflict. The very thing we are trying to heal in our lives, we are called upon
to write on paper. Some writers create such horrible events that when I read or
see it, I think, “Do not put this into the world’s consciousness.”
I know, I have trouble throwing rocks at my
heroes.
Challenge. Yep, we all like challenges.
Otherwise, we would sit around with our fingers up our noses, get fat, and wear
out the couch. I tend to shy away from bad guys and wars as challenges and
instead face life, which has challenges enough without having to fabricate
them. I like adventure, which holds the possibility of having all hell break
loose. If your adventure is sublime, it’s a vacation.
We have how-to books on plumbing, golf,
self-examination, and enlightenment. Even those have an element of story.
I looked online at the ten most famous memoirs
of today and found exquisite writing but talk about angst. It was there. I was
envious of their turn of the pen, but not their troublesome life. I hope their
writing served to heal their wounds.
Remember, old Zig Zigler said, “It’s
your attitude, not your aptitude, that determines your altitude.”
Well, well, I tried to show you a minute video, Pebbles in the Pond, but this site had other ideas. It's a moment of calm, and pretty too. The reflection in the water was so perfect we had to throw stones into the pond to show you the water was real.
You can find it on https://www.youtube.com/JoyceDavis0001/videos
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