What About Regrets

Having pondered the subject of guilt in an earlier blog, I am now thinking about its second cousin, the subject of regret. My parents had many regrets in their adult life, the main one being that they didn’t leave Europe at an early age and thus avoid the horror of the Second World War. But there were others, many of them being the decisions they made in either spending or managing their money. No matter how problematic my father’s relationship was with my brother, he never regretted anything he said or did in my poor brother’s regard. Remember, he was the one member of my family who never, never was able to say, “I’m sorry” except on one occasion.

My mother had many regrets, the most painful one for her was that she felt she was not close to her mother. And after my grandmother was killed, she was haunted by the fact that she never told her mother that she loved her. It’s mistakes like that which are the most lethal ones with which to live.

The other most painful regrets have to do with money. I heard my dad say, “I should have invested in that apartment house.” Of course his friend, who did take a chance on it, made a small fortune. Moreover, Dad didn’t learn from his mistake. He never was able to risk a dime on anything that wasn’t a hundred percent insured, solid investment. He had many regrets in his life.

Fast forward to my own regrets. I must be chip off the old block because I don’t really have any regrets regarding my interpersonal relationships. However, my husband and I both regretted not putting our house on the market a couple of years earlier when the market was hot. Our house is rented now and the regrets have diminished.

Moreover, recently there has been some talk about the fact that we may be going into an inflationary period in our economy, and owning a house may just end up being the best hedge against inflation that we could possibly have. So all this makes me wonder if we should really spend a whole lot of time kicking ourselves over regrets, when there isn’t much we can do to reverse things, and maybe, just maybe, our decisions may end up being the best ones we could have made in the first place.

Read Full Post »

Who’s the Boss?

I was having lunch the other day with one of my cousins and as is usual in our meetings, the conversation turned to a rundown of what is new with each member of our extended family. We don’t have a very large family but still, it seems that certain members see each other more regularly than others. I’m not sure if that is “normal” or not. I think it is.

So, I asked my cousin about some members with whom she is closer and the conversation went to a married couple in which the husband has been very successful financially. As I remember him, he was always the one to remind the rest of us about how he rose from being a shipping clerk to being the head of his lucrative company. Meanwhile, his well-dressed, bejeweled wife would sit in the background silently, smiling.

“Don’t kid yourself,” my cousin said to me at lunch. “She’s the whole show.” Of course, what she meant was that the quiet, subservient wife was, in fact, “the boss!”

It made me think about so many European families that I knew growing up as an immigrant in Portland, Oregon in which I saw that same equation at work. It seems to me, looking back at it all, that the Viennese culture I knew then required the husband/father to be the head of the family and thereby the one to lay down all the laws by which everyone under his roof was to live.

However, their wives somehow knew how to finagle their husbands into giving in to their wishes. My mother did it by crying. I’m sure others had other means for manipulating their husbands … without their even knowing it.

What was and still is clear though, is that everyone else among their acquaintances who knew the couple, knew exactly who was “the boss.”

Read Full Post »

Competition

When I was growing up and playing games with other kids, especially my older brother, my dad would always ask, “Who won?” Since my brother is almost nine years older, the answer was always the same, “He did.” But then I got older and once in a while, probably because my brother was bored with me, I did win a game here and there. It felt great.

Dad’s questions changed over the years. He’d ask what we got on our report cards, comparing my brother’s to mine. Since he was in full-blown adolescence and not interested in performing, I won by default.

Being “better” than the competition, in all my undertakings, definitely was what I strived for. Did that make me a competitive person? You bet! But when I think about it, I believe most people have to be competitive in order to make it in our culture. Is it not important to get better grades than the rest of your classmates? Is it not better to have a better job than the next guy? Does a woman not want to look the best she can, that is, better than those with whom she competes for a man? Does one not want to live in a nicer house than another, drive a better car, be a better cook, tennis player, gardner, etc. etc.? You bet!

Is being competitive a “bad” thing? I think not. Remember when the Russians put a man into space? We Americans couldn’t wait to catch and, guess what?, surpass them. Perhaps that drive led to the discovery of gravity, television, computers, etc. etc.

Not that everything you do should be competitive. How nice it is to just sit down and read a book, take a swim in the ocean, savor the beaty of nature. I must take time to do more or that … and give up trying to improve my backhand.

Read Full Post »

Writing About Your Kids

I belong to the Ventura County Writers Club (California) which has an annual short story contest. This year I have been asked to be one of the judges to read the entries that have come in. I met with some of the committe a few days ago and after we went over the format by which we are to judge the entries, we each had a cup of coffee and got to know one another a bit better. In time, our conversation drifted to sharing stories about our children.

I spoke a bit about one of my daughters. My fellow judges told me that I should write the story. It is a fascinating and interesting one, I will admit, but I’m not sure how my daughter would like for me to make public any of her history. I suppose I could fictionalize it somewhat, but I know that if she were to read it, she would know that it is she that I was writing about.

Recently I read a blog on the site She Writes in which the author spoke about how difficult it was for her to write about her twins. Mind you, the twins are three years old. I think I would have no trouble writing about toddlers. I think I would have fun writing about babies. Their antic are cute and funny.

The antics of my daughter were neither cute, nor funny. Sometimes I wonder how I survived them. Even more important, I wonder how she survived them.

The good news is that she did in fact not only survive them but ended up being the most admirable of all human beings. Perhaps I will write about my daughter.

Read Full Post »

Would-be Writers of Memoir, Beware the Pitfalls

Once my memoir Becoming Alice was published, I was asked to speak with quite a number of groups locally. I also have been interviewed for my own website and other websites. A question that has come up repeatedly was, “When did you become a writer?” Another was, “What made you decide to write your memoir?” 

I’d have to go very far back in time to tell you about the first time someone said to me, “You ought to write a book about your story.” The person who said that to me was my fifth grade teacher who asked our class to write our autobiography at the beginning of the school semester in order to get to know us better. There was no one in my classroom of second and third generation Italian kids who had anything like my own experience of escaping from Hitler’s Europe at the beginning of WWII.

My answer to my teacher was, “Perhaps I will someday.”

I didn’t know then that it would take me some seventy years to do so. In one of my prior blogs I wrote about how my grandson got me into gear. Still, I questioned my abilities to be a writer and so I took classes for over a year. My intention was to write my story well enough that my family and future ancestors would be interested in reading it.

My teacher at that time told us to get that thought straight out of our minds. She went on to talk about a student she had who had the same mind set. It was a lady from a small midwest town who wrote about her life as the wife of a very successful CEO at a large corporation. She was delegated to a second place position in the family and despite this, wrote an exceptional work about her experience: interesting,  sensitivite and with understanding. After it was published, she gifted copies to her four children. Even after several years had passed, none of them had read a word of it.

I am fortunate to know that two of my three children have read Becoming Alice. I think the third one may have skimmed it … I hope. But my point is … that it doesn’t matter. The words are there for whenever anyone, at any point in the future, has an interest in reading them. The book is there.

And how do you know that there might not be people out there outside your family who will find meaning in your words, and take pleasure in reading your story, and will identify with what you’ve said. I can tell you from personal experience that I did not anticipate what adventures would follow after Becoming Alice hit the marketplace.

If I’ve learned anything during my time as a writer, it is to let go of any self-doubts and write what you must write without thinking about who will read it, or when it will be read.

Read Full Post »