A Writing Life (Part 15)

In all of this, there was my family. My mother was, of course, very proud of me. The experiment with me had worked while failing for so many of my other relatives and members of my community. She came to the high school and university graduation ceremonies with some other people in my extended family and took many photographs. My older brother, after spending years working in another city and parts of the northern wilderness, was also proud. He also came to the ceremonies. But there was still a problem: I had not yet written about them or my community. A play I wrote and had performed at the student art gallery was politely applauded by my mother, soon-to-be-sister-in-law and nephew, but it was clear to me that my experiment had left them unmoved. Any of the writing I did back then was a means of putting me at a distance from my family (again, it took me some time to realize this). It is terrible to learn such a thing, but it also makes you aware of what a family is willing to sacrifice for their children. They accepted my not writing about them. And I have never forgotten this when I write. And this is what makes things so difficult for me when I try to describe my very real and very vivid family. Things get lost, reshaped, re-cut and recorded in a way that feels false.