[stylist] Sharing Memoir and question

[Lynda Lambert]

OK, I will ask this question - I know I should KNOW this, but, how do I find the "word count" for my writing?

I will copy and paste a short memoir I have worked on today. I am writing a series of memoirs about a Great Grandmother's Memories - her reflections on Art and Memory. This is the first of the "Silent Discourses." In this one, the storyteller speaks of a memory shared by the Great Grandmother. The recollections of the Great Grandmother on her childhood and her love of nature and secrets of the Earth.
It should move from the storyteller, to the memories of the grandmother, back and forth, as in the way memories come to us - in layers, shifting, and moving.

In my work there is almost never a chronological time line - so don't expect it. Life shifts and moves and comes and goes like the ebbing of the Caribbean waters as one stands on the beach. That is how I approach writing.


I very greatly would appreciate any feedback you can give me on this, any suggestions for improvement, or anything else you can offer to me on it. I consider every comment carefully.

I really appreciate feedback. In fact, because of the great feedback I received from a group of writers on another site, my poem "Flotsom, Jetsom, and the River" was selected in the NFB writing contest. The group had told me it was too vague - so I set to work to figure out what I needed to do to make it stronger and then I submitted it to the contest. Without their good critique this poem would have been too vague, I am sure, to be considered. 

Thanks, Lynda

Here is the Memoir:

____________________

Silent Discourse:  Reflections on Art and Memory

By Lynda Lambert

 

 

Silent Discourse #1

 

 

Memories of  her summer days in Western Pennsylvania seemed to silently move in the thoughts of the Great Grandmother today as she thought of the little girl  who stood  alone, surrounded by  a yellow-green world.

 

Great Grandmother's  memory  was taking her back to a distant summer day in western Pennsylvania. She thought it must have been in the late 1940s because she was so very young at that time. The little girl  was sensitive to the natural world of trees, flowers, birds, grasses, and the brilliant blue sky.  She loved to be outdoors in all kinds of weather but summer time was particularly pleasant because she did not have to wear shoes. She could splash through the falling rain as it saturated her clothing and made her long auburn hair stick to her wet shoulders. She liked to stomp down with her bare feet, into   the puddles of cool squishy water in the yard. Her toes moved about on the wet ground, and it felt so good to her!

 

On sunny days, she climbed into the back yard walnut  tree  quickly and liked to hide amid the foliage to survey the entire world of her deep green grassy  yard. From there, she could watch her father working in his gardens. There were two of them, separated by a path down the middle. When she thinks about her father, in her mind's memory book, he is always laboring in his garden and bringing fresh vegetables to the house for their dinners. Father brought other delights, too. There were rabbits and squirrels, wild game birds , and deer. All were brought by the Father for his family. There were fresh fruits, too, from his trees. And, chickens from the chicken coop behind the gardens.Great Granmother's favorite gift that was gathered by her Father was the assortment of fresh mushrooms he gathered in the woods. He knew exactly what each mushroom was, and exactly when each would be ready for picking. He was a woodsman who knew the ways of the woods and brought the bounty of the woods home to feed his family of four children. There was always plenty to eat because of her Father's skills in hunting and gathering.

 

If she was not high up in a tree, then she might be found in the gardens, making trails and roads through the dark rich soil. She liked to play there in the dirt  with her dump trucks and brightly painted metal cars. She was a little girl who did not play with baby dolls or have tea parties with her friends. She read about little girls who liked those things in the books she read from the library. She enjoyed reading about the tea parties and the adventures of little girls in the books. But, that was not really her world. It was the Earth that she connected with. The Earth in all it's many manifestations was her muse from the earliest days of her life.  

 

Great Grandmother  was in her late 60s and she still loved the Earth. She liked to feel it in her hands. She liked  to sit on it, and lay on it under the trees in the shade. Her children would often lay there on the Earth with her and they would laugh and tell stories, and dream together. It felt so good to lay there, fixed onto the surface of the earth like a magnet. She taught the children that the Earth was a Positive charge, and that people were a negative charge. It was necessary to join their bodies with the Earth's surface for them to be complete. Just like a set of magnets, the positive and the negative charge have to be together for the magnet to work properly. 

 

Great Grandmother believed  it was probably mid-July when she reflected on it because the days were smoldering and languid because the sun was high in the sky very early in the mornings that particular summer. The days were so intense and hot that her skin felt sticky all the time. Her hair felt wet from sweating as she played in the trees that summer afternoon.  She was aware of the stifling heat of the early afternoon.  The child's  stature was quite small as she  stood beneath the large leather-textured tree. She was small, but very strong. Neighbors often said she was athletic and wild.

 

She  had glanced up into its gnarled branches, with their downward movement towards the earth. They reached out in every direction over her  head.  This hulking giant was her favorite Apple tree - a protective, sheltering hide-away.  This ancient Apple tree stood just behind Mr. Corbin's gray concrete block garage.  As Great Grandmother  recalled, it was the only tree that stood in her  neighbor's yard.  She could   not say that there were no other trees, but it is this giant one that was remembered.   It must have been very old and looking back on the scene through the lens of memory. It  seemed to her  to stand as a sentinel to separate the garage from the rows of garden plants. But,Great Grandmother 

knew for sure that even as this tree separated and divided Mr. Corbin's back yard it was also the connection between Heaven and Earth.  It was the space between Here and  There; between the Present moment and the Future.  The tree stands in her childhood memory as a vertical division in a horizontal verdant landscape - an axis mundi.  

 

 

The Great Grandmother  knew then just as sure as she  knows  now about secret things.

She  has  always known about hidden things and what they mean. She knew about the life inside of rocks, and the tears that were there. She knows about the silent and quiet things that most people never see. Some people call Great Grandmother a "seer." But she really cannot see because she is now blind. Great Grandmother talked  about seeing wit her inner eyes. She calls this her "intuition." She says she sees the very special places  that people with good eyesight have never seen. 

 

The secret places are all tucked away in her memories. One by one, over the years, she will share them with her children and her grand children and even now, today, she shares this memory with her Great Grand-daughter. It is the Great Grandmother who is the Storyteller. Just like the Griot in an African village, Great Grandmother is the One who preserves the memories for the family and tells the stories that will give them the information they will need on their journey in life. She holds the secrets in her memory until the time is right.

Lynda Lambert
104 River Road
Ellwood City, PA 16117

724 758 4979

My Blog:  http://www.walkingbyinnervision.blogspot.com
My Website:  http://lyndalambert.com