In her book Old Friend from Far Away, Natalie Goldberg notes: “Think of the word: memoir. It comes from the French mémoire. It is the study of memory, structured on the meandering way we remember.”
I often think about this. Memoir is “the study of memory.” Memories don’t necessarily happen in a linear way. There is a random, plate-of-shrimp dynamic to memories. Maybe that’s why memories can hit hard when they strike.
Lately, my great aunt Annabelle has been popping up unexpectedly in my memory. Whether I’m rediscovering forgotten dreams of her or seeing her in odd photos, enthusiastically grasping the antlers of the deer my Dad had just killed, Annabelle is there. And it’s not just me. Annabelle seems to loom large in the collective memory of me, my sister, and several of our cousins.
Annabelle just lingers, waiting for just the right moment to emerge. Waiting there in a place where none of her and my grandmother’s many other siblings seems to be.
Just Annabelle.
So don’t be surprised to find that, as I study these memories of Annabelle, she’ll wind up here in this journal. I seem to want to think about Annabelle and I seem to want to write about her, so I will, even though I really didn’t know Annabelle at all.
~217~