I’ve really wanted to do this for a long time: Start a new series which will explore the past, present and future of the Reese-family from different characters’ POV. And then list all stories taking place in that time-frame. Let me know what you thinkโand if you ever considered writing your own memoir!
– Chris
Introduction
So why would it make any sense for a 64 year-old woman write her memoir?
I hope to answer that question by … writing it.
It’s something I’ve been thinking of doing for some time, but each time I’ve been held back because I was in doubt if it had a worthwhile purpose.
I’m not even sure there is a red thread in my life, much less anything interesting to report and learn from.
Perhaps that is the reason why I want to write it? It’s to help me find that red thread. It’s not something I already have, ready to share with the world.
So this introduction will necessarily be as poor as any introduction for a completely ordinary life that had its ups and downs, its adventures and its doldrums. And which, if all goes as it usually does, will end without any great impact or without anyone really remembering much about it. Like it does for 99 percent of all people, in the past, in the now and probably also in the future.
I’m not writing this out to be morbid or try to make you feel sorry for me.
I felt like writing it, and it actually helped.
Now, for some reason, I don’t feel so afraid of being forgotten, of having lived a chaotic life with no real impact or direction beyond what I could scrape together for myself and my family.
It’s odd how this fear of the unknown is so deep.
I shouldn’t be afraid. I believe in the angelic hierarchies as defined in the Kabbalah and in the visions of life beyond life as explained by Jane Roberts, Rauni-Leena Luukanen, Raymond Moody and many others. Some days I know they are true.
And yet, I fear the end of my days and that those days I had were wasted. And that feeling gets stronger year by year. I wonder if you feel the same way if you were a traditional Christian or Moslem?
So nothing you read in this introduction might come down on printed paper in the end. And yet, every word may be kept, if I find out that the journey is worth sharing.
The journey where I write about my fears and my regrets, mostly, but also the moments of light, as when I had my first and only child.
Contents
The book will be divided intro three parts and the first deals with my formative years in Utah and the Church of Latter Day Saints, my father’s (company’s) move to Paris that coincided with the 1968 riots, my escape to my aunt in Cleveland and breakup with my parents.
After that I will tell you about my years in New York in the 1970s working odd jobs, my experiments with drugs, meditation and that one time I almost got into an argument with John Lennon (and didn’t know who he wasโwhich part is the most embarrassing I will leave to you).
Finally, but still in part I, I will take you with me on a tour around Europe that ended up near a NATO base in Italy where I met a handsome young Scottish soldier, stationed there. (Well, I met him at a bar in Genoa, but it’s all the same to me.)
I will try to make sense of how I thought I had found the man of my dreams, even if he was a soldierโor perhaps because he was a soldier, who appeared to have a heart.
And how we moved to his native Scotland, and how I became pregnant with Caroline in 1978 and … how the romantic dream evaporated as the highland mists in the mid-1980s after that damn war in the Falklands which changed my husband.
Or perhaps Calum was always like that, prone to feeling sorry for himself and being angry at everyone else, and it just came to the surface after the war?
There you have it. I am not even finished describing the first part of the memoir, and I’m already analyzing what happened, so many years agoโlooking desperately for that thread.
But it feels more right than when I started. So I will continue. Even if this is never published and read by anyone else. Not even my current husband.
I hope you will stay with me on the journey.
Stories 1968-1983**
Jโai Pas Peur – DEBORAH, May 1968
Streets Full of Actors – DEBORAH, May 1968
Out In the Haze – DEBORAH, early 1970s
Working Class Hero – DEBORAH, 1971
Without Any Fear – DEBORAH, 1975
Blind As the Moon – CALUM, May 1982
The Seat With The Clearest View – DEBORAH, CALUM, spring 1983
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Cover photo by Hussain Zidhan on Unsplash
Middle-aged woman by Donna Buchanan on Unsplash
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54-300424
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Songs:
Fleetwood Mac – “Seven Wonders”
Kate Bush – “Wuthering Heights”
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** = These are the stories I have written for this time-period as of April 2024, but rest assured there’ll be more down the line!
Most don’t have a fancy layout, but they are also relatively short and thus easy to read even so (I hope).
There will be future posts numbered 1.2, 1.3, etc., as I add new stories and each post will have a new story featuring another member of the cast and their perspective on these years.
– Chris
QUICK LINKS
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P.S. I am in the process of replacing all B/W photos on Depending on the Morning Sun with color photos (if they are available). This is a WIP.