Talking and Listening
This article first appeared in the Minden Times in January 2024.
My brother has digitized 457 letters that he wrote and received over three plus years in the late 1960s when he was preparing to and served with CUSO (Canadian University Students Overseas) in Kenya. The rationale was to capture the Africa of that day for the benefit of his grandchildren, but the motive – and the great gift – was to capture our young adult life in that time.
The letters between us are informatively and distressingly candid. He is a year older than I and we were by necessity each other’s companions on the Alberta farm where we were raised. We both lived for eight months in Toronto while he was finishing and I was starting a post-grad degree. Our social lives intertwined significantly; his girlfriend of the time was apparently a close friend of mine. I say ‘apparently’ because, to my chagrin, I could not remember her, even when he sent a photo. (I was – still am – distressed about what that says about me.) There were complexities; his ex-roomie of the time was hot on me (unreciprocated) and married my brother’s girlfriend when she became an ex. (A recent visit included me chatting with – some would say interrogating -- the ex-roomie about when/why their marriage ended, and my brother and me having a long coffee meeting with the ex-girlfriend, which I think laid to rest concerns he may have had about roads not taken – although she’s lovely. But that’s a story for another place.)
What I take from the letters is the place of stories in our lives as we age. From several perspectives: that of the elders whose stories they are, the adult children or their generation whom we need to understand us accurately as we become dependent on them, and our grandchildren and their generation to whom we owe some strand of historical perspective.
First, the perspective of the elder: When the busyness of life slows down, there is time to think about the life one has had. Margaret Lawrence wrote The Stone Angel, published 1964, about Hagar at 90 ruminating, not kindly, about her life. I remember thinking, when I read it as a much younger woman, that I would be nicer in my old age. I do think there is a need as we age to string the specifics of our life into some kind of pattern that makes sense and gives meaning to our time on earth. The opportunity to gather the self into a thoughtfully-coloured persona, to embrace the better (without fearing that your pride will be appropriately punished) and forgive the worse and ponder the grout that pulls the pieces together, has value.
Re adult children: Memoir about caregiving seems to be the medium of choice for adult children acknowledging the power of elders’ stories. Caregiving of the visiting/respite variety creates time and space for talking. There is also motivation for listening: when the tick-tock of mortality makes itself heard -- the end is near the end is near – we (maybe) make listening a priority. There is also a payoff for the adult children: by understanding from whence they came, the personalities and realities of their forebears, they better understand themselves.
It’s nature’s gift that aging chews holes in the censor system. A lot more that could be said is said. Stuff slips through without an ‘oops’ or mouths covered in mock shame. The elder has a diminishing need, as tick-tock becomes audible, to keep secrets, to protect the sacred cows of family lore, to keep the sainted sainted and the disgraced in their cupboards. Censorship is kicked to the curb. The curtain falls away and the real person stands (relatively) naked.
As the elder emerges in context, the stories gain gusto. The tropes of family gatherings are embellished with technicolor detail, the hidden gems are disclosed, the cause and effect of decisions are exposed, the limits of self-determination and the role of fate and happenstance become evident. This has the potential of solace and instruction for adults still immersed in their busy busy lives.
For the grandchildren? Mine need to be a bit older before I’m comfortable sharing the letters with them – although perhaps their angst about where they fit on the gender spectrum would be assuaged by their elders’ confusion and ineptitude dealing with the gender we unambiguously owned. My understanding of their world perspective is so inadequate that I cannot predict what they would make of us. Maybe when they’re in their mid-twenties, if we’re still around …
But mostly I think it’s a pity we don’t write letters any more.
