When your parents tell you something you want to trust and believe what they say. The view of my mothers about the Chandler's has always made me question her. Since both sides of my family are strange in many ways, the way each of them act is totally different. My father’s side, not very wealthy growing up, is the big family of 7. As children they would all sleep in the same room which was the attic of their house. When they got together they said it was like 7 wild animals roaming the house. Also, their cousins the 7 Kelly children would also join their herd. No wonder they turned out the way they did. On the other side of my family, my mother's side was also big with 5 children, but they were all brought up proper and always following the rules. My mother's view on the world around her is much different than my father's. They were so close by living across the street from each other, but they were so different.
When I was younger I wasn't very close with many of the Chandlers because my mom did not think I would learn anything good from them. My dad was supposedly the only "normal" one to her because he was the only child that graduated from college. My mom thinks this way about them till this day. It upsets me because now that I have grown up and have realized my mom still views them the same way, it makes me want to get closer with all of them. I want to figure out why she has this view. I am one of the middle grandchildren so I get along with my older cousins. The younger ones I barely see. I have a lot in common with them and they know the real me. They know that I am just like my father who keeps to myself, but also the one that believes that you have to take care whatever cards you’re dealt in life. It's my mother’s hatred for the Chandler side that pushes me closer to their open arms. They accept me even when I have faults.
The Chandlers are all about the legion. My uncle Donny spends every waking moment at the Legion, even Christmas Day. It is where I have grown up. I remember seeing a picture of me (2 years old) and my cousin Mark (9 years old) during an Easter egg hunt at the Legion the only one that I would be aloud to participate in. My mother didn't find it suitable for me to be down there. My father always relaxed with anything so he would sneak me down to the legion at any age. During every summer I would always run down there from my house because of the small town everything is so close, that I would always find my grandpa smoking a cigarette in the basement when he knows he shouldn't be, or the bartender saying hi to me while kicking some drunk out at noon. I have many memories at the Milford Legion with my Chandler cousins, some should not be mentioned. My mother still doesn't know half the stuff I enjoy doing with the Chandlers. Whatever I did with the Chandler's, was always kept from my mother for many years. The legion was like a safe haven from her. I don't understand how my father can listen to her complain about his family? He sits there just facing the TV. or reads the newspaper without looking up. He is probably used to it since growing up with her and being married to my mother.
I can’t go in the past and see why my mother thinks of the Chandlers as some type of disease that she doesn’t want to spread in me. She speaks to them like they are under her. Maybe it’s that she tells me stories of before I was born and explain to me events that took place that I had no idea happened. My father would never speak a word of them. It was in the past and we need to deal with the present, his thoughts of it all. It’s moments in the past how my father’s sister Mary Jo was a knock out in high school and she married the biggest low life twice. Since I’ve been around they have two children and have no money, they try to ask for it from their siblings, but no one budges. Or maybe it’s my father’s other sister Betsy that has been married three times and has I can’t even count how many kids. Back in the day when my mother and Betsy lived across the street from each other they were enemies. Betsy would always steal anything she could get her paws on. My mother remembers every item Betsy took from her. Betsy till this day has not changed. Another blow to my father’s side is when my cousin Allison (one of Betsy’s children) who just turned twenty-one and is about to have her second child. In my mother’s eyes, she thinks this is ludicrous. My mother never wanted me to hang around Allison because of her actions. Maybe it’s because Allison has had two abortions, got married to a soldier that went a-wall, and because of who her mother is.
My parents are always there for me. They always make me feel welcome, but awkward at the same time. I don’t know how to act or feel to their actions towards me. I want them to acknowledge me for what I believe in and how I feel to live in the world they way I want to. I am closer to my father even though his family might be different than my mothers but were all the same we are family. My father is a man that spreads a smile whenever he speaks. He's a man with little words and emotion. He is always packing a cooler to float in a canoe to have time to be himself. He's the man that I look up to even though when we say goodbyes he gives me an awkward handshake instead of awkward hug with a pat on the back. My father came to visit me for a weekend in Athens. My father Patrick is the type of guy that takes everyday at a time. I think a 52 year old gym teacher should be living life. I always question what he is thinking; I can never read him right. Anyway, as an only child not really emotionally close with my parents I was actually very excited he was coming to OU, to visit me, his follower. While he came to visit on Saturday we went to dinner with my friends and then went to (I don't know if I'm allowed to say this, but went to a bar and had drinks that helped me have a great morning after). At the end of the night when my father was leaving to go to his hotel room and after having an awkward night of standing next to each with a distance of looking right then left and then saying one sentence then repeating again until he left with complete intoxication and giving me a handshake and slipping a $20 dollar bill in my hand. It was at that moment that struck me as kind of annoying. I haven't completely thought of how I really feel. It struck a nerve to the very core of my feelings towards my parents. It's a confusing feeling I still haven't understood. I wanted to spend time with him, not for him to give me possessions that I don't want when I have time with him without my mother around. It's a want to be close with him, a closeness that I want more than anything especially worth more than to have Andrew Jackson explain his feelings.
The section that I just read was very good. Michael Ondaatje's writing is different than what I have read in a long time. It was very interesting to hear about him and his sister going to the church and finding their ancestors on the chiseled slab.
In the chapter, "Monsoon Notebook" (i) Michael is descriptive in his writing.
Running In the Family, by Michael Ondaatje is a good read so far. His memories have me wanting to keep reading. This memoir is my favorite out of all the memoirs that we have read for class. It has kept me entertained and wanting more from this author. One of my favorite chapters is The Courtship, Page,31. I am fond of this chapter because of his father's life at this age was very humorist. The way Michael tells the story of his father's way of life living in England and his parents not knowing his where a bouts. Also his father's few engagements. When Michael's grandfather just sat back and kept silent during all of the craziness it was very comical too. Towards the end of the chapter I came to realize that his father would like to jump around a lot and not stay in one place. It seems when he would be bored he would just get up and leave. Of course his grandparents were not happy with their son especially when he was going to get fish and two days later wound up in Trincomalee. When his fiance sent him a letter to break off the engagement, his father decided it was time for a road trip to Colombo. His father would not let him have the car so he found a ride with his uncle Aelian. The arrived in Colombo very intoxicated, but Michael's mother decided to marry his father after all. During this chapter it helps me recall that there are people in the world that have crazy ideas just to pack up and leave just for the thrill. Michael's father just wanted to get away from his family, he wasn't like the rest of them. This chapter made me very intrigued to what else is to come in the next chapters. The Memoir and the Memoirist hasn't really held my attention. When reading the twenty pages there were some lines that I liked. "No alternative is possible: the story commands us to write it as a way of sentencing it to memory" (80). In Kathryn Harrison's memoir she writes, "I'd heard myself speak what I hadn't yet thought" (84). That happens to all of us that write and speak. I am still questioning what it really means to me. Also when Larson is mentioning Eggers who auditioned for The Real World, he mentions he "admires the fearlessness" in him, "he gets sucked back into the past as he writes about it" (98). This is true to all who write of the past. We all get sucked back trying to remember every intricate detail to help us remember. We have to get sucked back in, to understand what really happened to get back out and move forward.
During our lives we all have these moments of silence. The silence wants to reach us. This silence is triggering our thoughts to hear something else. At any moment the silence will hit you like a wave crashing down. It's the true meaning of the silence that we find the need, the want to know the silence. Through the memoir, Fathers, Sons, and Brothers, by Bret Lott, Lott has many experiences from childhood to adulthood with the secret silence. The silence is a vine in our thoughts, which is intertwined with memories of past and present. The silence makes an appearance in Bret’s life a number of times to give the reader a questionable thought, “Can silence really be heard?” Silence gives a number of meanings to Bret Lott during his life which is expressed through his essays.
The first sign of the rising silence in Bret's mind was when he had a job with doing the paper route through his neighborhood. After the rush of riding down the hill and chugging 16 ounces of RC Cola he would jump into his bed. Bret said, "I lay there in bed listening to that sound, wondering where it had come from, why it was here, what purpose it served; and imagined that perhaps I was the only one on earth who ever heard it.... Sometimes, then, I fell asleep. But most times I only lay awake, waiting for what could happen next, that sound passing through me swallowing me whole, me that much alone in the world" (22). There are times in everyone's life that we have a moment of brilliance and there is only one thing our ears pick up, the silence. The silence wants to be heard. It crawls out into the world around us enlightening, or scaring us because we feel we are the only ones that hear it. While we hear the silence are thoughts are blank because we are trying to find what truly is inside the silence. We don’t want to let the silence disappear. We want to clutch until it reveals why it is hear with us, at this moment. We may feel alone hearing the silence, but it is a shield around us that wants us to remember the moment. The silence is helping us remember those special moments.
Reading the chapter “Hugo”, Bret Lott explains this silence when taping the windows up and putting X's on the windows. "The wind was up, shifting through the pine boughs, whispering and we only listened, no words between us," (121). The silence is always around us. It keeps people alone and together at the same time. Even if there are no words spoken, the same silence can have so many different meanings. It also happens to Bret when the family is living with Deno and Kathy, "...the wind out here-there'd been no wind all day long, simply an overcast sky-charged through the boughs, bent the pines side to side in big, slow arcs, the air through needles whistling furiously, and I wondered why no one else was up, no one else out here, startled from sleep by this sound. There were no clouds, only that moon, and these trees, and that wind," (124). Reading this section made me think of all the times each human being has those silences during hectic or crazy times and we all ask ourselves why I can hear something else in the silence. There is a moment when we are by ourselves and the silence is irritating our minds. It's wrapped around our little finger, that sound in the silence we just can't seem to untie that thought. The silence is maybe a comfort to us, to know everything is going to be alright, or help us to understand our thoughts. Bret seems to be alone whenever he hears the silence. His wife or children might be there during the silence, but they are either weeping, or sleeping. There are no words spoken between them. He is left alone.
We never know what the silence can bring us. Can we really hear silence? Silence is silence. You’re not supposed to hear, but we do in ways that only ourselves can describe it. Through the drive in the rain to “Wadmalaw Island”, Bret finds the silence, "I see up there, in the darkness of those trees, in the black-green of them, a kind of silence it's hard to find anymore: silence like a treasure, a secret worth the drive out here and whatever wrath my children might wreak upon me once they awaken to no orange soda and M&M's" (144). I don't think you have to drive somewhere to find the silence. It comes to you no matter what. If you're by yourself, or with friends there is always a silence lingering through everyone. We can allow ourselves to experience it whenever we would like. I think Lott is correct when he mentions that “silence like a treasure.” The silence is a treasure to each person that experiences it. The treasure grows inside of you. The silence is something we crave, we want to find it and keep it forever. Silence is the gold that keeps us wanting more.
Lott gives the reader his view on the silences that fill his life; to help him remember his past. The silence is the magic mirror that brings the past alive in his thoughts. We all have some form of a magic mirror to help us remember our past. Lott is maybe telling his readers that we need some silence in our lives to remember the past, but also to help deal with the present. The silences are the peace that comes with life that helps us through good and difficult times. It’s the buried treasure at the end of the rainbow.
A. Mary's relationship with her grandmother was not strong. Since the beginning Mary has always blamed her mother's Nervous on her grandmother. "I always associate my grandmother's house with mother's silence and the old woman's endless bossy prattle" (29). She never got along with her grandmother which is difficult for me to understand because I have always grown up close to my grandmothers and they have never been so hostile like Mary's grandmother. In the words that Mary writes you can tell her hatred for her grandmother, "Maybe it's wrong to blame the arrival of Grandma Moore for much of the worst hurt in my family, but she was such a ring tailed bitch that I do" (41). Mary's grandmother is suffering from cancer and that is why she has to come live with Mary's family. Right as her grandmother first moved into the house, she started criticizing everything about the family and what they did in that house.
She was an angry woman all the time. Mary and her family would eat meals on their parents bed, but since grandmother was there they had to eat at the table. Mary and Lecia were not allowed to run around naked when the heat was intolerable with clothes on, because grandmother was watching. Mary's grandmother was really into faith so she bought the two girls white leather bibles. Mary says that when her grandmother moved into the house "she brought with her that same kind of slightly deranged scrutiny" (44). Also on page 46, "Still, I remember not one tender feeling for her or from her" as Mary talks about how she feels towards her grandmother at the end of chapter 2. According to Mary's grandmother, "These children are being ruined!" This is when Mary's grandmother is going "batshit" over the braided whip. Her grandmother revealed to Mary that Lecia and her supposedly have a brother Tex and a sister Belinda that their mother never told them about.
B. The family runs from Leechfield because there was a class 4 hurricane headed toward where they lived. Mary, Lecia, their mother and grandmother were the ones in the car on the bridge going to their aunts house. Their father was staying at where he worked. When they first got on the bridge out of town, Mary's mother started singing the scariest part of "Mack the Knife" then the car went into a 360 degree spin. According to Lecia, they crashed into the railing because her mother was trying to get a hold of Mary in the back seat. That was the first time that Lecia gave any sign of affection in sisterly relationship to Mary by lacing her fingers between her sisters.
During our lives we all have these moments of silence. This silence is triggering our thoughts to hear something else. At any moment the silence will hit you like a wave crashing down. It's the true meaning of the silence that we find the need, we want to know the silence. Through the memoir, Fathers, Sons, and Brothers, by Bret Lott, Lott has many experiences from childhood to adulthood with the secret silence. The silence gives another meaning to Bret Lott's life in his essays.
[adding example SOUND]
Reading the chapter Hugo, Bret Lott explains this silence when taping the windows up and putting x's on the wood. "The wind was up, shifting through the pine boughs, whispering and we only listened, no words between us," (121). It also happens to Bret when the family is living with Deno and Kathy, "...the wind out here-there'd been no wind all day long, simply an overcast sky-charged through the boughs, bent the pines side to side in big, slow arcs, the air through needles whistling furiously, and I wondered why no one else was up, no one else out here, startled from sleep by this sound. There were no clouds, only that moon, and these trees, and that wind," (124). Reading this section made me think of all the times each human being has those silences during hectic, or crazy times and we all ask ourselves why can I hear something else in the silence? There is a moment when we are by ourselves and that silence is irritating our minds. It's wrapped around our little finger, that sound in the silence we just can't seem to untie that thought. The silence is maybe a comfort to us to know everything is going to be alright, or help us to understand our thoughts.
[adding example from the essay WADMALOW]
Lott gives the reader the silences that fill his life, to help him remember his past. The silence is the magic mirror that brings the past alive in his thoughts. We all have some form of a magic mirror to help us remember our past. Lott is maybe telling his readers that we need some silence in our lives to remember the past, but also to help deal with the present. The silences are the peace that come with life that help us through good and difficult times.
It is easy for Bret Lott to write about his memories of his childhood because of his own sons. I think my thesis is kind of weak. I would love to make it stronger. Input would be great. --Also, I thought I was going to do something else to make up the quiz, but I can answer the questions by tomorrows class time. Is that ok?
When your parents tell you something you want to trust and believe what they say. The view of my mothers about the Chandler's has always made me question her. Since both sides of my family are strange in many ways, the way each of them act is totally different. My fathers side, not very wealthy growing up, is the big family of 7. As children they would all sleep in the same room which was the attic of their house. When they get together they said it was like 7 wild animals roaming the house. Also, their cousins the 7 Kelly children would also join their herd. No wonder they turned out the way they did. Their dinners would always be of lima beans and bread. On the other side of my family, my mother's side was also big with 5 children, but they were all brought up proper and always following the rules. My mother's view on the world around her is much different than my father's. When I was younger I wasn't very close with many of the Chandlers because my mom did not think I would learn anything good from them. My dad was supposedly the only "normal" one to her because he was the only child that graduated from college. My mom thinks this way about them til this day. It upsets me because now that I have grown up and have realized my mom still views them the same way, it makes me want to get closer with all of them. I am one of the middle grandchildren so I get along with my older cousins. I have a lot in common with them and they know the real me. They know that I am just like my father who keeps to myself, but also the one that believes that you have to take care whatever your dealt . It's my mothers hatred for the Chandler side that pushes me closer to their open arms. They accept me even when I have faults. When Karr mentions the American Legion and her time spent there, I have memories just like her. The Chandlers are all about the legion. My uncle Donny spends every waking moment at the Legion, even Christmas Day. It is where I have grown up. I remember seeing a picture of me (2 years old) and my cousin Mark (9 years old) during an Easter egg hunt at the Legion the only one that I would be aloud to participate in. My mother didn't find it suitable for me to be down there. My father always relaxed with anything so he would sneak me down to the legion at any age. During every summer I would always run down there from my house because of the small town everything is so close, that I would always find my grandpa smoking a cigarette in the basement when he knows he shouldn't be, or the bartender saying hi to me while kicking some drunk out at noon. I had my first beer in Milford Legion with my Chandler cousins. My mother still doesn't know that fact. Whatever I did with the Chandler's it was always kept from my mother. The legion was like a safe haven from her. I don't understand how my father can listen to her complain about his family? He sits there just facing the t.v. or reads the newspaper without looking up.
The first chapter of Fathers, Sons and Brothers, was interestingly focused around a garage. Brett Lott remembers his family when he was a child to the present day with his wife and two children. He says, "a house is not a home,"(2). Lott writes about the house is not complete without a garage. It's as though the garage is what is holding everything in place. When Lott was younger, he, his father and brothers would be together in the garage. Fond memories are in the garages of their homes. Lott says on page 5, that their families garage was a "haven". When it comes to Lott's memories of his childhood his garage is making a big impression. It's only a garage that pulls the chapter around.
My favorite part in the reading thus far is when he has the paper route and remembers every street he delivered too and the intricate details of the paper route. "The wind grew, whistled in my ears, the handlebars lighter than anything I could imagine after having been so full so long. The bags ballooned out with the rush of air into them..."(20). You're on top of the world, the wind blowing past you knowing you get to go home to a bottle of R.C Cola. That is a perfect childhood memory every child would like to have. As we grow older those moments as a child get behind us. We never get to experience those innocent bike rides, or playing with the neighborhood kids in the street anymore because time is flying by like your riding down the hill wanting to finish the paper route as soon as possible, but as soon as your finish and your at the bottom of the hill your childhood is gone and you are a grown up and have to take on more responsibility. It's your life flashing before your eyes.
"Sometimes, then I fell asleep. But most times I only lay awake, waiting for what could happen next, that sound passing through me and swallowing me whole, me that much alone in the world."(22) He started hearing the sound as he would lay in bed after his paper route. For him to remember this "sound" must have been extremely important. It's the sound of silence that enlightens our childhood. The rush after something exhilarating.
Another important line in the reading is, "I remember-no true picture, necessarily, but what I have made the truth by holding tight to it, playing it back in my head at will and in the direction I wish it to go,"(28). No one has a clear picture of their own memories. We try so hard to remember to piece together what happened. At some point in time that whole memory comes into action playing in our mind. It's our choice whether we want to remember every critical moment of the memory. Our family moments good or bad will be with us, we just have to find them in our memory. It's hard for the real truth to finally come out.
"Anyway Mother's back to me in that rocker conjured that old Alfred Hitchcock movie she'd taken us to in 1960 Psycho...Mother turned around slow to face me like old Tony Perkins. Her face come into my head one sharp frame at a time. I finally saw in these instants that Mother's own face had been all scribbled up with that mud colored lipstick. She was trying to scrub herself out"(148). It seems that in, "The Liar's Club," by Mary Karr, Mary can relive this agonizing memory. There is something wrong in her childhood if she is comparing her mother to an awful fiction movie. I believe that Mary does not see her mother as a parental figure, but a psycho who can't be cured.
I have seen the movie Psycho, so picturing her mother sitting in the rocker, is very disturbing, but an awesome comparison. I am thankful for my mother. It's a tragedy the way Mary's childhood is that of something evil in the world. I think the word Psycho is a perfect adjective for Mary's mother. it is sad that her memory connecting this point in her life to that of a killer in a movie. I think there are points where we always connect something make believe with what happens in our true lives. We hope that what we make believe will come true and that sadness of our lives will disappear.
At this point in reading we all know that Mary's mother is an alcoholic and there is something going on in her head, maybe evil thoughts? We finally understand that she did snap. I think that her father is putting up with these antics for the kids. He wants to protect them from the evil, or craziness that is in Mary's mothers mind. It's crazy to think Mary's father didn't do something sooner. This is all stemming from the heartache that Grandma put on Mary's mother. Her mother gets Nervous resulting from her Grandmother. It is sad that died, but it's a big change from when Mary's mother drives the body across Texas and back home. That road trip made her angry and compile all the damage her mother had done to her. At that point the psycho is leaving her flesh, but the alcohol is returning into her bloodstream. It's really awful to hear of these hardships knowing that they really did happen, or did something else happen?
Another disturbing image is, "If I tried to slide in with Mother too, she'd have unwrapped my arms from her neck, saying I made her hot,"(180-181). It's a tragedy when a child, or even an adult is not comforted. Mary is not close with anyone. Since the beginning of the book she has somewhat become closer to her sister, Lecia. Their relationship is that of two people exchanging an awkward hug. No wonder Mary is so close with her father. It's still not a close relationship, but its the best one she has. The alcohol and mother's Nervous is a guard between all of them. I guess back then there wasn't that much affection between family members. Her mother chooses to be close to Lecia because she would refill her addiction.
Mary's mother was affected by her own mother, but as daughters we are all a piece of our mothers whether positive or negative. From her mother's actions, Mary will not follow in her footsteps. She has witnessed her mother during her childhood. I am sure Mary is grateful for her childhood, but also angry at the way her mother treated her. I am blaming her mother because of her psycho and alcoholic way of life. Her father may have some faults, but she never mentions them as neatly as her memories from her mother. In the end Mary's mother and father were brought back together, just as Mary's one relationship ended with her father having a stroke. Her mother growing old made her stronger for who she was even if her father wasn't present.
