Sydney, I wouldn't take bets on which of us has the most striking family members. What I think is that it just takes a person, you or me, to identify and frame the stories so other people can catch the gleam.
Ah, that's the trick, isn't it? To find a way to write with that extreme range of feeling. I work hard at it, always wanting the next thing to be a surprise.
I did not know your family. I did know Victor and Ione Leedham. I do know that Ione attend every auction sale in the surrounding communities. Likely how she acquired your grandmas bible. There are likely many more stories lurking in our area. I did enjoy your writing. Thank you for sharing. Sharon.
Sharon, Thank you for this. That's fascinating about Ione haunting the auction sales. Still such a miraculous coincidence that I found her and the letter. (She said she found it in her own family Bible, not my grandmother's.) As I was writing this piece, it occurred to me that I don't think I ever knew what her maiden name was. Do you know?
I like good comments, but sometimes they come on a different platform. My old friend Wayne Lindeman wrote to me on Messenger:
"I enjoyed both essays about your great-grandfather immensely. A familiar frisson of fear and revelation as I read his handwritten note: I read my half-sister’s suicide note thirty-four years ago, her words trailing off less poetically into gibberish as she inhaled more carbon-monoxide in the front seat of her car. Which tells me that your description of your grandmother’s eventual confessional is both profoundly and universally accurate: Then it all came tumbling out, rueful, incensed, affronted, bitter, and full of love. Aren’t families, aren’t all intimate relationships bound up, costive, in one way or another by the unsayable? Which gives suicide notes that much more epigraphic power, like precious little bits of a Rosetta Stone.
"I think you’re spot-on as well about your ancestors being early victims of globalization, which makes me see their evasions about the letter’s existence and raison d'etre as related intimately to their larger, grandiloquent denial of a faltering economy. Fascinating stuff, and reminiscent not only of my own family’s historical tragedies, but of, say, the kinds of shame and dishonor that members of Japan’s post-war aristocracy felt in the face of cultural and economic assaults by the West—typified so eloquently by Osamu Dazai’s novel, The Setting Sun."
What I like about this comment is the way Wayne makes explicit the tacit connection made in the essays between the faltering economy (first wave of modern globalization) and my family's evasions in regard to the suicide letter, the evasions all the more desperate because their social order was trembling around them. These are good thoughts.
It's Nov. 13, Doug, and wherever you might be, this date is sticking in my now 70-year-old brain as your birthday. Not sure where you are, but I hope you've had a great birthday. Me? I'm in Exeter, RI, retired from URI June 2022, and I'm busy writing and enjoying being outdoors and not teaching! Sending love and light, Jody
Sydney, I wouldn't take bets on which of us has the most striking family members. What I think is that it just takes a person, you or me, to identify and frame the stories so other people can catch the gleam.
How is it that your writing can sometimes be ironic and violent and yet can also bring me to tears?
Ah, that's the trick, isn't it? To find a way to write with that extreme range of feeling. I work hard at it, always wanting the next thing to be a surprise.
I did not know your family. I did know Victor and Ione Leedham. I do know that Ione attend every auction sale in the surrounding communities. Likely how she acquired your grandmas bible. There are likely many more stories lurking in our area. I did enjoy your writing. Thank you for sharing. Sharon.
Sharon, Thank you for this. That's fascinating about Ione haunting the auction sales. Still such a miraculous coincidence that I found her and the letter. (She said she found it in her own family Bible, not my grandmother's.) As I was writing this piece, it occurred to me that I don't think I ever knew what her maiden name was. Do you know?
I like good comments, but sometimes they come on a different platform. My old friend Wayne Lindeman wrote to me on Messenger:
"I enjoyed both essays about your great-grandfather immensely. A familiar frisson of fear and revelation as I read his handwritten note: I read my half-sister’s suicide note thirty-four years ago, her words trailing off less poetically into gibberish as she inhaled more carbon-monoxide in the front seat of her car. Which tells me that your description of your grandmother’s eventual confessional is both profoundly and universally accurate: Then it all came tumbling out, rueful, incensed, affronted, bitter, and full of love. Aren’t families, aren’t all intimate relationships bound up, costive, in one way or another by the unsayable? Which gives suicide notes that much more epigraphic power, like precious little bits of a Rosetta Stone.
"I think you’re spot-on as well about your ancestors being early victims of globalization, which makes me see their evasions about the letter’s existence and raison d'etre as related intimately to their larger, grandiloquent denial of a faltering economy. Fascinating stuff, and reminiscent not only of my own family’s historical tragedies, but of, say, the kinds of shame and dishonor that members of Japan’s post-war aristocracy felt in the face of cultural and economic assaults by the West—typified so eloquently by Osamu Dazai’s novel, The Setting Sun."
What I like about this comment is the way Wayne makes explicit the tacit connection made in the essays between the faltering economy (first wave of modern globalization) and my family's evasions in regard to the suicide letter, the evasions all the more desperate because their social order was trembling around them. These are good thoughts.
Wow. What a story. And as always, great writing.
It's Nov. 13, Doug, and wherever you might be, this date is sticking in my now 70-year-old brain as your birthday. Not sure where you are, but I hope you've had a great birthday. Me? I'm in Exeter, RI, retired from URI June 2022, and I'm busy writing and enjoying being outdoors and not teaching! Sending love and light, Jody
Fascinating story, Doug. Some striking characters in your family!