San Diego Experiences: The Visit

by Karen Kenyon

He stood there, not more than 3 feet from where my friend and I were sitting in the French bakery.

She said later, she thought he was going to sing. We laughed at that afterwards. But at the time it was anything but funny.

Tall, a large build, African American, his clothing was casual and clean. And then you saw the cotton ball taped to the side of his hand, indicating blood withdrawn, or something given intravenously. A hospital bracelet on his left wrist.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” he announced. All then turned to look at him. He commanded our attention, and his invitation was offered with some kind of bravado and respect.

His eyes appeared to be squinted shut — almost like a little boy who’d memorized a speech, and now it was time to deliver.

“I have just come from the hospital’s psychiatric ward….”

Now even those who hadn’t noticed the hospital bracelet saw it, I’m sure, and took this into account.

“And I need Lithium.” He paused. “Do you know what Lithium is?”

Then he went on, standing rigidly, eyes still shut, arms straight down beside him, as if it was a performance of sorts, and all carried out with a certain dignity, and as if he didn’t want to alarm us.

But he needed our attention. He needed our help.

“Lithium,” he continued, “costs $21.06. I don’t have that. But I need that. If you can help me….”

The room was stone silent.

His earnestness, politeness, and the precise measured quality of this plea seemed to have us all transfixed.

A man, and then a woman, not from from him began to pull out some bills.

Tears sprung to my eyes. But why? I felt overwhelmed with this Dickensian moment. Both poverty and pain were standing there before us.

And with no apology — just as a witness — perhaps to the pain and poverty inside us all.

And while this description sounds grandiose, there was somewhat of an almost Shakespearian quality to the moment too. And it seemed to transcend space and time.

It seemed all the hurts in the world, the unspoken needs, the pleas we all have inside at times, were now finally given voice.

And all given with no threat, no anger, but with a kind of reverence. This was no rant. This was a soliloquy.

I felt the earth had cracked open and this spirit who incorporated all our unspoken needs, had now pled for us all, for all time.

My friend and I exchanged glances — and both of our eyes, I’m sure, were full of hurt and wonder.

No one spoke in the cafe.

No one urged him to leave.

It was not an unruly or dangerous display.

It was an honest and seemingly brave announcement. The need was clear.

And then the owner moved toward him, and with equal respect, spoke softly to the man, and began to guide him out — no one could hear his words — and all the while taking the bills from his hands and returning them to the cafe’s customers.

My friend and I had begun our coffee talk as two women exchanging news about a recent trip, and a recent retreat.

Now, hollowed out, somehow, and with souls open, our conversation deepened. We seemed to be experiencing the aftershock of his visitation (it felt like that). Our conversation dropped to an even more real level as we exchanged thoughts not shared before.

Could others have experienced this?

In ten or fifteen minutes the owner returned, and merely turned into the bakery area and resumed his work. No words were spoken.

He’d been gone just long enough to have escorted the man back to the nearby hospital — perhaps turned him over to a nurse, attendant, or someone who could help. Perhaps he paid for the prescription.

I don’t know, but it seemed to me such a beautiful expression of quiet compassion.

There was no sense of distress, no condemnation, no condescension, no alarm. Respect reigned for all.

I wonder how the others felt who witnessed this extraordinary event in the little cozy cafe the day a stranger awakened us for a time, when it seemed the earth stood still to hear a cry of humanity.

Karen Kenyon, M.A., is an author, journalist, poet, travel writer and college instructor. Her books include Sunshower, The Bronte Family/Passionate Literary Geniuses and a forthcoming book titled Writing by Heart. Her poetry has appeared in publications such as The Christian Science Monitor, Magee Park Poets Anthology, and San Diego Poetry Anthology 2006. She is teaching Writing by Heart in Fall 2012.

This story was initially published in the San Diego Free Press on July 12, 2012.

Writing Memoir: Creating Art from Our Lives

by Karen Kenyon

I didn’t intend to write a memoir, or shorter memoir-like personal essays—but I think what we are to write presents itself, and rises like an underground lake, dampening the soil and grass. You can’t get away from it.

I avoided writing about a difficult experience at first—for as long as I could. After my husband died at age 38 I felt I couldn’t write at all. In fact, when a few days later I wrote in my journal, “Dick has died…” the words were tiny and so small they were hardly readable.

Gradually I began to look for books that held words of comfort—words that told not the same story of loss as mine, but a similar one. I felt so alone.

I found a book called simply Widow, by Lynn Cain. It was a personal story of a young wife with children, whose husband died.

It gave me some solace, because here was another woman whose husband died at a relatively young age. She had young children. I had my young son.

Being a young widow is a world unto itself. There is no one to identify with. You don’t fit.

On an outer level I eventually made attempts at going out in the world. But people in that age bracket sometimes divorce, but few die. My experience was so different. Perhaps that’s another reason I turned inward toward the pen and paper.

Years have gone by now since I wrote Sunshower, and recently I taught a 9 week course in Writing Memoir at the University of California, San Diego, Extension. A young widow was in that course, and though now happily remarried, she yearns to write about her loss—to help other young widows, for that very reason—to reach out and say, you are not alone.

So, I guess that’s part of my point—that writing can be there when nothing and no one else is. My book, Sunshower, took me through my “unfinished business” as they say. I had to face feelings I was still working on, and dealing with.

But writing memoirs can of course be about happy times too—about your travels, or about childhood (the light and the dark). And in addition, some memoirs are humorous or witty!

Writing memoir can also be about creating a home on paper, as another woman from that UCSD Extension class is doing. Her childhood as a military offspring had no real roots—so many moves, schools, new friends.

Writing a memoir can ground us or anchor us as we make the experience ours.

We somehow frame the experience much the way babies learn to see. Instead of a diffuse experience—the shapes, the colors, eventually the naming takes place.

Of course, our memoirs are just one version of the story. Someone else would write a different story. And so would we—on a different day, in a different year. But a memoir is your truth and perspective, at a particular time.

Our memory changes, and we don’t remember the same thing the same way. In fact every time we remember, the thoughts are changed.

Jonah Lehrer writes in “Proust Was a Neuroscientist” that “…memoirs do not directly represent reality. Instead, they are imperfect copies of what actually happened, a Xerox of a Xerox of a mimeograph of the original photograph.”

I believe in this ever-changing examination of our lives, creating art from our lives, sharing the process.

When my book came out, it not only gave me a step toward closure – it also helped integrate the experience into my life, and it strengthened me because, I guess, I now “owned my experience” in the jargon of the day.

In truth the experience of writing did alter me. I was not just the person who experienced this tragic loss. I was also this stronger person who wrote about it.

And as in all journeys, I had helpers—my wonderful agent, the late Jane Jordan Browne; and my amazing, intelligent editor, Richard Marek (an imprint publisher through G. P. Putnam). I was no longer alone.

Just as any of our slippery memories change, even as we try to pin them down, I think if any of us decides to write a memoir, whether for publication or not—believe me, we will never be the same. There will be the beauty of reflection, and the “aha” moments of epiphanies. We can’t help but see our lives in a new way.

If we want to change and grow, then writing about where we’ve been can be part of that path.

Then we will no longer be in that same place—but will be somewhere else—new, and full of the light of awareness.

This piece of writing was originally published November 19, 2010, in the now defunct UC San Diego Extension Writing blog, and we thought we would share it with you, since it is such a well-written and personal take on memoir from Karen Kenyon. Please join her for a fascinating look inward in Memoir Writing I starting June 27th.