The Unpleasant Pensieve

This morning as I was having breakfast down in the yellow and blue kitchen here at Ragdale House, a place that calms me like an idealized version of the kitchen in my childhood home in Wisconsin, I had a conversation with the Ragdale housekeeper, R. In a mixture of English and Spanish, I learned that she’s from Nicaragua and has three teenage and grown children. She told me a little about her life, that she had her first child at 17 and that she’s now 38. She loves her children, but childbirth was traumatic. Each time, especially the first, there were complications and too much pain, requiring a weeklong hospital stay. Her English kept slipping into Spanish as she described the pain, the faith in God that helps her, and how she doesn’t feel alone even though she is divorced because her children and Jesus give her comfort. Her mother and father hope she marries again, but four years after her divorce, she isn’t ready. She said that people should get married forever, but not if there is violencia domestica. Her husband was violent, doubted her when she worked late, and didn’t want her out of his sight. She said that no one should stay with someone if there is violencia domestica.

It was as if she read what I’d written last night, until 3 a.m., one of the chapters in the new draft I am writing, the manuscript that I would almost do anything other than write. Because the way I need to write this, now, this time around, is to go deep into it. Like a journey into the pensieve from the Harry Potter movies, the cauldron where memory is stored for later examination and use. Only my pensieve calls forth a memory that is both real and imaginary — the real facts as I remember them and as my mother drilled into me when I was small, rather than talking to friends or a therapist. Facts she now clams up about because I am writing about it. And the imaginary facts: bits of character, a throwaway gesture or an afternoon that, in my nearly 40-year-old memory, has become a habitual action, a way of life.

But the conversation with R today reminded me that, as unpleasant as it is, I must write.

“Your mother, too?” she asked, when I told her that I was writing about domestic violence (among other things).

“Yes,” I replied.

I had already answered her questions about how old my children are and who is taking care of them while I’m here at Ragdale: my mom and my husband.

“He’s a super-dad,” I said, proud of my husband, who I not-so-secretly think is a far superior parent to me.

“Your mom must be so proud,” R said. “What we want is for our daughters not to have our kind of marriage. And for the sons not to see that and thinks it’s okay. She must be so happy you found someone good like that.”

And I agreed that she was. Then I went upstairs and started writing more hard stuff. That conversation was a gift, the universe in a small act of synchronicity.

I can see why most people gloss over the past and act like everything is fine. I have a long way to go.