In writing memoir, writers choose a slice of life that might illustrate the whole. Like a tree branch that is part of the larger tree, the memoir exists in relation to the life story. It’s included.
Branch of a tree, branch of a memoir, branch of a bank where money is withdrawn for rent. I was away last fall, not visiting my dad as I should have been but instead helping my friend with his Californian orange tree. Before I left, I let the landlord know that a branch of the massive Japanese maple in my front yard was overhanging the neighbor’s driveway, a leafy sword over the kids as they traipsed down the driveway to school. That would not do.
After I emailed the landlord, I checked it off my “to do” list, feeling a sense of accomplishment that I had done the responsible and neighborly thing.
When I returned the following week late at night, it seemed as if I’d pulled up to the wrong house. In the dim light, I saw a naked yard. I had a view of the neighbor’s porch that was clear—had their porch always been so massive, so inviting? The Japanese maple was gone, and where she had stood, there was a gaping hole, and scattered wood chips. I went to bed, my heart stuttering.
The next morning I looked out at the lawn. It was a grim sight, and I felt impoverished by it. My world was denuded, made uglier. My post-divorce home, which I affectionately call the bungalow, became a characterless 1940 house slapped with cheap siding, festooned with a porch with plastic rails, and a flimsy plastic mailbox. The Japanese maple had made me feel rich.
Everything that I had been trying to do at my desk—this writing—seemed mocked by the absence of the tree. I was set back to square one, with a pile of sawdust that said: ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Go ahead and try to build a new life here. Here’s what it looks like.
The tree would be coming into leaf now, in April.
It would be in its full glory by May, and all summer long it would provide shade. I’d sit under it , on the red bench my new neighborhood friend Tina gave me.
My tree was the one extravagant thing about this little piece of property. What would fall be without her luxurious leafing that seemed to light up the air around her?
I finally went home to visit my dad. I hadn’t seen him since September, just before I lost my beautiful Japanese maple. My dad, who is now 85. My dad, who like me, is renting this life. Is that why we write memoir? Because we can’t bear to look at the whole autobiography, to admit, as writers used to, that we have a beginning, a middle, and an end? We write memoir to say: cut off this branch and leave the tree whole.
