BEING restricted from venturing outside the four walls of my abode during the pandemic, I busied myself with household chores. But soon boredom set in. I was pleased to discover that Sunshine Place was offering an online class in memoir writing.
Despite doubts about my “boring life,” I enrolled and started my journey in memoir writing. I have written several pieces and am proud to say that five of them have been included in two anthologies of students’ work in memoir writing.
We were all neophytes with no formal training in writing, but were enthusiastic learners. In our first session, we were asked to tell something about ourselves that not many people know about. This was something new to us who when asked to introduce ourselves would state our names and designation in the companies we were affiliated with. We were asked to write about “What’s in a name.” Come to think of it, how did I get my name?
Gloria Sun Pe’s My Name is Glorious describes hers this way:
I was born on a glorious Easter Sunday
I feel my name truly fits my personality
I am a person who lifts my feelings
Whether I am happy or down.
We discussed the class objectives, why people write memoirs, the benefits of memoir writing and our reasons for taking the class. One’s memoir helps to discover sequence and importance in one’s life, and gives the writer the opportunity to find threads of meaning and untangle them to form a “clear line” and discover meanings that you did not necessarily know existed.
The lessons occupied most of my time. Before long, we were up to our necks with homework and readings. We had to really work hard as our pieces were to be critiqued by the whole class and the teacher himself. My otherwise boring life became so interesting that even my dreams were full of pleasant past experiences. Anecdotes of my childhood, my teen years, my early married life, my job experiences found their way into my memoir writing. You don’t write about your entire life story but only vignettes of your life that may have taught you how to become what you are now, we were taught.
That first online class also formed a lasting bond among us students. In our sessions, before our teacher could even connect to Zoom, we were eagerly interacting with each other, realizing we all had similar experiences. It started the friendship of the nine students who up to now are still in touch with each other.
Sunshine Place opened another beginners’ class. The two groups merged and out of this was born the first book, Reflections in Light and Shadows.
However, the otherwise “happy” launch of the collection of short memoirs was marred by the passing of two of our members, Susie Benitez and Winnie Samson. Susie may have had a premonition of her death when she wrote her piece
“Giving Back Before the Final Curtain.” She wrote of her dream of becoming a ballerina, fulfilling this ambition by joining the Bayanihan Dance Company. She wrote about becoming a better person when she embarked on foreign trips with the troupe. The art of dance allowed her not only to train but to help others not just as a performer on the global stage but as a “culture diplomat and nation builder.”
Susie was stricken with pneumonia but while recuperating in bed, she continued to write. Her last piece was a farewell.
Winnie passed on just before the anthology came off the press. During the book launch, her grandchild read an excerpt from her poem, “Here I am.”
I look at life as how I see a spectrum
Not focused on just one color
I see many colors
Its tinges and hues.
A whole gamut of emotions
Runs through my life’s events
Experiences and consciousness.
Last December, the second anthology, Bridges of Memory, was launched. The book also included poems and short stories.
Victoria Lopez in her poem “The Wounded Sparrow” wrote about the hurts in her life:
Wounded sparrow in the tree,
Your wing is torn just like me.
Feathers of hue
Hide the wounds inside
your crippled heart.
Ma. Dolores Matias remembered her town Balangiga as a ‘howling wilderness” during the war in her memoir: “Balangiga: How my Town’s story of 117 years became my story of 65 years.”
A poem by Leyte-born Quezon City resident Lorenzo Clavejo is titled “Of dreamers, doers and believers.” Lor has just retired from a top government post and is now “living life to the fullest.”
Susie Yap, a retired banker who was born in Mindanao and lived in Kenya, Manila and Davao wrote about healing in her “The Three Questions” memoir.
Memoirs hold memories, dreams and reveal the true feelings in your heart. It may be blurting out what you have, what you have dreamed of.
In your Spiral of Life, you relate what you encounter. You will be surprised how your experiences could fill a whole book. Our teacher, Oscar Peñaranda, describes our anthology as “A slice, a glimpse to one’s soul.”
***
For comments please email nenyregino@yahoo.com
