• Home
  • Fine Living
    • Start Here—Welcome to Tweetspeak!
    • Read
      • A Poem a Day with Every Day Poems
      • book club
      • Poetry Newsletter!
      • poetry reviews
      • T. S. Poetry Press
      • Quote a Day
    • Write
      • A Book of Beginnings
      • Become a Better Writer
      • Fiction Posts & Prompts
      • Memoir Notebook
      • Poets and Writers Toolkit
      • Writer’s Conferences
      • Writing Prompts
    • Live
      • Art and Disabilities
      • Artist Date
      • Eating and Drinking Poems
      • Journey into Poetry
      • Literary Tour
      • Poem on Your Pillow Day
      • Poetry at Work Day
      • Random Acts of Poetry Day
      • Take Your Poet to Work Day
    • Play
      • Coloring Page Poems
      • Mischief Café
      • Music Playlists
      • poetry humor
      • Quote a Day
      • Shop
      • Twitter Poetry Parties
      • Videos
    • Learn
      • Infographics
      • Poetry Classroom
      • Poetry Units for Teachers
      • Writer’s Conferences
      • Writing Workshops
    • Grow
  • Poets & Poems
  • Writers’ Resources
  • Get a Daily Poem
  • Teaching Tools
  • The Press
  • Workshops

Memoir Notebook: The Bright Orders

By Anthony Connolly 16 Comments

Memoir Notebook is a monthly (sometimes more) column dedicated to longer works.

By way of our Memoir Notebook,  we want you to meander, get caught up, find yourself taken to places you hadn’t intended to go (but are so glad, in the end, that you went). You’ll get thoughts on aesthetics, craft, latest issues, tips and books to read. But it will feel like poetic narrative. And sometimes it will simply be poetic narrative. Today,  Wm. Anthony Connolly talks about ghosts and Olympia Café.

__________________

I will remember you…

It had been almost two weeks since returning from a late December trip that I finally realized I was back. My body arrived—sick with food poisoning no less—much sooner than my mind. The suitcase was long ago emptied and returned to the garage while apparently I continued to unpack moments and experiences. I hear a song while driving and that’s enough.

I compose a moment: In the dimly-lit basement hallway of my sister’s home, weak with nausea, I stand in a fissure of nightlight briefly listening to the furnace spark and rage against winter; and, I glanced back at my messy benighted and borrowed bed and turned, hugging myself through a shiver, to scan ahead the dark stairs.

The ghost has been to visit me, again. Which way did it go?

And I compose another: It was mid-morning and nearly bitterly cold, but not so unpleasant to keep me indoors. Plus I needed to get out. The introvert in me (pardon the pun) gets claustrophobic from time to time, especially with family no matter how much they are loved. The ten-minute walk took me from my sister’s house, on the eastern outskirts of this small prairie city to the core of downtown. Like I said it wasn’t too cold so I smoked my pipe and ambled along through the frost of memories arising from the sight of various landmarks on my route. One such landmark was a shuttered business—The Olympia Café. It struck me so that I stopped walking, reached into my winter coat and retrieved my iPhone to take a picture.

Here it is:

memoir notebook olympia cafe

None of this is in any kind of order. The past keeps invading the present and the writer in me keeps an eye upon the future. Which way did it go? Narrative is always being composed in my head as matters unfold. I took notes—as I do with any trip—as best I could, but their significance and bright orders are still being sorted out since they were not dictated in lockstep with my experiences. I take quite some time to process and arrange, but such are the hazards of the memoirist to write things down only to understand the ciphers much, much later. Sifting through my notes after a trip back home is much like fanning out an array of puzzle pieces and slowly working the odd bits into something recognizable.

My small, leather-enclosed, journal has pages and pages of purple-ink code. I write these notes in bed before going to sleep at night as a way of meting out the day. I tend to write and ask questions later. Nothing is too obtuse or bizarre. In these furrowed pages, I have lines about airplanes and delays; about winter and going home; about the delicacy of family. When I returned to the States, while driving I heard a song that triggered something inside me. I stopped at the nearest Starbucks and wrote in yet another journal some kind of narrative.

memoir notebook

But I was still puzzled.

The Olympia Café has a huge influence on my life. As a young writer, working at the newspaper across the street, I would often go to the café for lunch, which usually consisted of French fries and a grilled cheese sandwich at the counter. And I frequently found myself talking with Connie, one of the two Greek-born brothers who jointly owned The Olympia. I included the café and Connie in one of my first short stories “Kym’s Moment, ” which I later revised and used in my debut novel The Jenny Muck, serving as the novel’s central locale. The Olympia is always open in my work, never closed or shuttered and it remains so in my upcoming novel The Smallest Universe. And now, here, it was utterly closed.

In late December being in my sister’s home where my father lives now, means seeing a house filled with Christmas. It was my mom’s season. No one loved Christmas more. Gone now almost five years, Christmas’ glitz is joyous but tinged with sadness. Mum died two months after Christmas 2008. She died while I was sleeping. It was two in the morning when my father called to say, “She’s gone.” She died at the Portage General Hospital in our hometown, at the age of 77. It was a long way from where she grew up, and it was a long way from where I awoke, rolled over and picked up the receiver. The immediate cause was lung cancer, but also emphysema.

Her last words to me over the phone weeks before her passing in 2009 were “I love you too son.” I was weeping then, heaving, alone in my office. Dumb. “I always loved you, ” I had said inexplicably, like it had been in doubt. It had been for me only a few weeks since I had surgery on my spine to correct some degenerated discs. I was still recovering and could not fly home to be with her before she died. Our phone call was mostly one-sided—me talking, Mum groaning. Through her moaning, she was able to say goodbye to me. I told her about my favorite memory as she listened. One winter night we sat in one of those café booths watching a parade of people go by, fat snowflakes in the dark nightscape, she had leaned forward and told me something important, but it was a mystery because although I would never forget the moment, I could not remember the words she said.

I don’t remember the moment of her death. It was a telephone, after all. I simply placed it back in its cradle and rolled back over onto the bed. Dyan, my wife, undoubtedly held me. The dogs probably licked at my face. I can only guess. I don’t even remember if I fell back asleep. I might have.

The café booth of my memory with Mum was not in The Olympia Café —this a memoirist must admit. That particular booth was in a hotel lobby further downtown, which had long ago been razed by fire and time. The task for the memoirist is simply to say it as best they can, from what they’ve got: A shiver in the night; the dusty windows of a closed café and some bright orders in the mix of purple ink all pieces of a puzzle.

I wonder about the strength of my heart. It’s taken long to process this—will take longer still, if, finally, ever. I’d written in an unpublished memoir that with every one we meet we leave a piece of ourselves with them, and that only when we take in our lives within the circle and power of others are we complete. Which way did it go? Until then, we find ourselves driving and suddenly remembering how much has been already forgotten. How in the aimless ramble of agitated winter malaise we suddenly find ourselves returning from a journey.

… will you remember me?

—Sarah McLaughlin

Photo by Steve A. Johnson. Creative Commons license via Flickr. Memoir Notebook byWm. Anthony Connolly,  author of the forthcoming novel, The Smallest Universe.

______________________________

Sun Shine Down Cover

 

Check out Sun Shine Down by Gillian Marchenko, the latest literary memoir from T. S. Poetry Press.

Shimmering beauty, powerful. Marchenko brought me to new levels of awareness regarding the struggles of a special needs family.

—Bill Giovannetti, author of Secrets to a Happy Life

You Might Also Like

  • memoir notebook summerMemoir Notebook: Through the Hands of Strangers
  • how to write a spiritual memoirMemoir Notebook: Voices (or, How to Write Spiritual Memoir)
  • Memoir NotebookMemoir Notebook: Folie a Deux — The Ghost in You
  • Memoir Notebook: Double I/EyeMemoir Notebook: Double I/Eye

Filed Under: Become a Better Writer, Blog, Memoir Notebook

P. S., With Love

We hope we made your day
with something you loved or needed.

Make our day? 🙂

Keep thoughtfulness, beauty, & whimsy
in your world (and the world)
with just $1 a month

Comments

  1. Maureen Doallas says

    March 5, 2014 at 10:44 am

    So beautifully written, Anthony. So deeply moving.

    Reply
  2. Anthony says

    March 5, 2014 at 2:05 pm

    Thanks Maureen, it’s always appreciated to hear the work has some kind of impact.

    Reply
  3. Donna says

    March 5, 2014 at 3:28 pm

    Wow. First, I want to tell you how much I appreciated the way you shared so beautifully about your mom’s passing, about how you didn’t remember more than you seemed to remember and you describe that… what probably happened. I’m sending you a hug through the atmosphere – two hugs – one for your loss and one for your sharing. I’m sure you weren’t but this felt as if you were speaking directly to me, Anthony. 🙂 But then again, I suppose those of us who do this, at various stages and competencies (mine being the greenest stage) are similar in this respect, yes? Trying to understand how to convey what we know but can’t remember… Reading this piece was the first time I have ever felt like a real memoirist…

    And the words you chose: Melting out the day…. oh that’s beautiful!

    Reply
    • Anthony says

      March 5, 2014 at 5:38 pm

      Donna, your kind words mean the world to me. I try to write this column as a memoir(s) and at the same time to talk a little bit about what it means to write memoir and I’m thankful you picked up on that. You’re one in a million. A sweetie.

      Reply
  4. Debera Harrington says

    March 5, 2014 at 4:17 pm

    Memoirs, yes they are usually a bit jumbled up, with all sorts of information to be looked at later. I enjoyed the read about the Olympia café and about your mother’s passing. Very moving.

    Reply
    • Anthony says

      March 5, 2014 at 5:40 pm

      Debera, thank you so much for taking the time to read and comment. Part of my job writing this column is to embed instructions and advice as to how one goes about writing memoir(s). For me, its taking the pieces and making a whole; I tried hard to leave this column unprocessed, to a degree, to show how much work a memoirist needs to be with the raw and undigested. Thanks again for reading and commenting.

      Reply
  5. Karen says

    March 5, 2014 at 7:48 pm

    I enjoyed this Anthony.In our minds everything is open.Do you know how hard it is to walk by it and see it this way years later?Sometimes, I avoid walking past it, or I pretend it’s not the same place.I lack the words.Now I must read your stories,to paint me a picture of my childhood and to keep the Olympia always open.Well done.Also I would like to ask how many notebooks have you acquired over the years?I know in my fits and bursts there are many.

    Reply
    • Anthony says

      March 6, 2014 at 10:56 am

      I love that “in our minds everything is open,” and I might add, “alive.”
      I have seriously kept notebooks/journals since around 1987, and go through about five a year — and I’ve kept most of them so expect to see me on an episode of Hoarders!

      Reply
  6. Anthony says

    March 5, 2014 at 8:19 pm

    I love that “in our minds everything is open,” and I might add, “alive.”
    I have seriously kept notebooks/journals since around 1987, and go through about five a year — and I’ve kept most of them so expect to see me on an episode of Hoarders!

    Reply
  7. Rachel Rinehart says

    March 5, 2014 at 8:28 pm

    Beautiful piece, Anthony. I love the rambling of the narrative and how it resembles the journey along a windy road and the moment of discovery as memory is unlocked. You also have lovely images throughout.

    Reply
    • Anthony says

      March 5, 2014 at 8:37 pm

      You’ve made my night.
      The best memoirs/nonfiction to my mind are discursive and fragmentary much as the lives lived by those who write them.

      Reply
  8. Heather Eure says

    March 6, 2014 at 10:34 am

    This is so good. “The task for the memoirist is simply to say it as best they can, from what they’ve got…” Heart rending. This brought tears to my eyes.

    Reply
    • Anthony says

      March 6, 2014 at 10:55 am

      Heather, so kind of you to take the time to read and comment on this. You make me feel as if I have said it as best I could. Thanks.

      Reply
  9. Sandra Heska King says

    March 15, 2014 at 10:57 am

    See? Donna saw it, too. You wrote “meting out the day,” and I read it as “melting out the day,” and I thought what a beautiful image. And then I realized I read it wrong–unless that’s what you really meant. 🙂

    This is a marvelous meandering, Anthony, and this, “The task for the memoirist is simply to say it as best they can, from what they’ve got…,” as Heather said, really touched something deep in me. Thank you for this.

    Reply
    • Anthony says

      March 15, 2014 at 11:22 am

      Well thank you Sandra.
      To be honest I can’t say unequivocally I didn’t mean “melting.” But yeah, I put “meting” to indicate some measure of judgment. Either works.

      Reply
    • Donna says

      March 15, 2014 at 12:03 pm

      🙂 I could have sworn it said melting! 🙂 Now I see meting, and understand why you chose that word Anthony. Sandra, maybe we are just itching for the Spring Thaw?? 🙂

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Take How to Read a Poem

Get the Introduction, the Billy Collins poem, and Chapter 1

Free with tweet

Search Tweetspeak

Follow Tweetspeak Poetry

Subscribe to Our Newsletter

Getting added to our newsletter is your first perk, when you join us on Patreon!

Welcome to Tweetspeak

New to Tweetspeak Poetry? Start here, in The Mischief Café.

You’re a regular? Check out our April Menu.

Recent Comments

  • Donna Falcone on The Color of Your Creativity
  • Laura Brown on The Color of Your Creativity
  • Sandra Heska King on The Color of Your Creativity
  • Sandra Heska King on The Color of Your Creativity

Featured In

We're happy to have been featured in...

The New York Observer

The Huffington Post

The Paris Review

Tumblr Book News

Categories

Poetry for Life? Here's our manifesto on the matter...

Poetry for Life: The 5 Vital Approaches

Help make it happen. Post The 5 Vital Approaches on your site!

Learn to Write Form Poems

Whether or not you end up enjoying the form poem, we've seen the value of building your skills through writing in form.

One reader who explored the villanelle was even featured in Every Day Poems!

How to Write an Acrostic

How to Write a Ballad

How to Write a Catalog Poem

How to Write a Ghazal

How to Write a Haiku

How to Write an Ode

How to Write a Pantoum

How to Write a Rondeau

How to Write a Sestina

How to Write a Sonnet

How to Write a Villanelle

Featured Literary Analysis

Poem Analysis: Anne Sexton's Her Kind

Poem Analysis: Adrienne Rich's Diving into the Wreck

Poem Analysis: Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach

Character Analysis: Romeo and Juliet

Order and Disorder in Macbeth

Tone in For Whom the Bell Tolls and Catch-22

Tragedy and Comedy: Why People Love Them

Was Hamlet Sane or Insane?

Shakespeare Resources

Poetry Classroom: Sonnet 18

Common Core Picture Poems: Sonnet 73

Sonnet 104 Annotated

Sonnet 116 Annotated

Character Analysis: Romeo and Juliet

Character Analysis: Was Hamlet Sane or Insane?

Why Does Hamlet Wait to Kill the King?

10 Fun Shakespeare Resources

About Shakespeare: Poet and Playwright

Top 10 Shakespeare Sonnets

Book Promotion, Platform, Publicity

Author Platform: Where to Start

Ten Surprising Secrets to Make Your Book Go Viral

How to Host a Successful Book Launch

Simple Tips on Finding and Working with a Book Publicist

How to Get Your Poems Published!

Pride and Prejudice Resources

5 Amusing Pride and Prejudice Quotes

Infographic: Simpleton's Guide to Pride and Prejudice

10 Great Pride and Prejudice Resources

Happy Birthday Mr. Darcy: A Pride and Prejudice Playlist

Featured Top 10 Poems

Top 10 Chicken Poems

Top 10 Chocolate Poems (Okay, Minus 3)

Top 10 Fairy Tale Poems

Top 10 Funny Poems

Top 10 Laundry Poems

10 of the Best Love Poems

Top 10 Poems with Make or Break Titles

Top 10 Mirror Poems

Top 10 Question Poems

Top 10 Red Poems

Top 10 Rose Poems

Top 10 Summer Poems

10 Great Poems About Work

Children’s Poems, Children’s Books

Llamas in Pajamas and Ten Great Children's Poetry Books

A Children's Poem on the Playground

Come Again: Teaching Poetry to Children

Poetry With Children: What's in Your Journal

Teaching Poetry to Children: There Are So Many Blues

Take Your Poet to Work Day: Poet Treasure Hunt in the Library (Callie's Story)

6 Benefits of Reading Aloud to Your Children

Top 10 Children's Books and YA Books

Little Red Riding Hood: Graphic Novel

14 Reasons Peter Rabbit Should Be Banned (Satire)

Featured Infographics

Infographic: How to Write an Acrostic Poem

Infographic: How to Write a Ballad

Infographic: How to Write an Epic Poem

Infographic: Ghazal for a Gazelle

Infographic: Boost Your Haiku High Q

Infographic: Pantoum of the Opera

Infographic: How to Write an Ode

Infographic: Poem a Day

Infographic: How to Write a Rondeau

Infographic: Simpleton's Guide to Pride and Prejudice

Sonnet Infographic: Quatrain Wreck

Featured Playlists

Playlist: Cat's Meow

Playlist: Doors and Passageways

Playlist: Fairy Tale and Fantasy

Playlist: Purple Rain and Indigo Blues

Playlist: Surrealism

Playlist: Best Tattoo Songs

Playlist: Trains and Tracks

All the Playlists

They Bring Poetry for Life

Meet our wonderful partners, who bring "poetry for life" to students, teachers, librarians, businesses, employees—to all sorts of people, across the world.

How to Read at an Open Mic free download

How to Read at an Open Mic!

Free Sample!

The Teacher Diaires Front Cover with Lauren Winner

“Hilarious, heart-rending, entertaining.”

—KA, Amazon reviewer

GET FREE SAMPLE NOW

About Us

  • Our Story
  • Meet Our Team
  • Poetry for Life: The 5 Vital Approaches
  • Contact Us

Writing With Us

  • Poetry Prompts
  • Submissions
  • Writing Workshops

Reading With Us

  • Book Club
  • Dip Into Poetry
  • Every Day Poems
  • Literacy Extras
  • Quote a Day

Public Days for Poetry

  • Poem on Your Pillow Day
  • Poet in a Cupcake Day
  • Poetry at Work Day
  • Random Acts of Poetry Day
  • Take Your Poet to School Week—National Poetry Month!
  • Take Your Poet to Work Day

Gift Ideas

  • Give the Gift of Every Day Poems
  • Our Shop
  • Everybody Loves a Book!

Connect

  • Blog Buttons
  • Become a Partner
  • Shop for Tweetspeak Fun Stuff

Copyright © 2018 Tweetspeak Poetry · Site by The Willingham Enterprise · FAQ & Disclosure