WRITING MY LIFE course

I held my first Writing My Life class at the Meals on Wheels Dorrwin Jones Senior Center Tuesday October 7. I was extremely satisfied with the way it turned out. I thought maybe three or four people would show but in fact there were seven of us: Grace, Marie, Alice, Robert, Shirley, Cristal and even Mr.Yan came for a few minutes.

They all had distinct reasons for coming. I asked everybody to go around the room and explain why they were there. Grace said that her sister had started her own autobiography five years ago and Grace still had not seen the results. “So I just want to see how this is done,” she said with a certain amount of belligerence.

Marie from Indonesia speaks Mandarin. She said she wants to improve her English.

Alice is deeply motivated. Her niece has been after her for some time to tell the family story.

Robert gave a rambling explanation about being a short story writer which I could not make heads or tails of.

“So do you see your life as a short story,” I asked him.

“No, but there are lots of stories in it,” he explained.

Shirley could not give a reason at first and feigned indifference.

Cristal said she thought her great-grandchildren might find her life story “amusing”.

What little I know about these people already made these explanations intriguing . Alice and Cristal for instance suffered during World War II in their respective countries of Japan and Germany and I’m sure they will have stories to tell that are more than just “amusing”.

I asked the class to take 15 minutes to write about the circumstances of their births and what their parents told them of this event. I was fascinated to see Grace and Shirley began in the most ungenerous fashion. Shirley refused to take a notebook that had been provided for her. She just made some notes in the margins of the piece of paper with the day’s lesson plan on it.

Grace chose a tiny notepad and scribbled a couple of sentences. But after 20 or 25 minutes both of them had exceeded the space they had to write in.

Cristal who sees poorly wrote with a heavy marker pen in large letters. Marie with language difficulties labored over four sentences. She needed some help spelling the word married. Meanwhile, Robert who had earlier told us he was a psychotherapist needed some spelling help as well, the words cistern and growl.

I will be interested to see who shows up in two weeks at our next meeting. When everybody disbursed, Robert said he found it “very encouraging”. It was an odd comment but it pleased me.. Alice thanked me profusely: “I’ve been wanting to do this for ages and you came along just in time,” she said.