A few weeks ago I addressed my life story on these pages, including the beginning chapter of my 'so-called' memoir. Today I am here to continue what I hope some of you will consider a review of your own life journey.
In my tired old eyes the introductory quotations I used back then still apply.
“An unexamined life is not worth living”
Socrates
“Only as we look back at the course our footprints have traced do we finally understand how we have read life’s inkblot"
Huston Smith
Returning now to our “Connect The Dots" exercise, looking for reasons to justify the time and mental effort it would require, I borrowed three brief passages from that first chapter of In Retrospect - My Bumpy Road to Growing Up. Let’s see if they resonate with you.
“It is high time to face this life of mine head on and see where that takes me. I won’t pretend to address every detail of my long life, but instead gather recollections of long-dormant memories and emotions I have generated along the way.”
“I know there are intuitions, aspirations, anxieties, and injuries that inhabit the inner ‘me’ like ghosts of times past. How are those long-ago episodes, often insignificant at the time, connected to the person I have come to be?”
“Like you, I have spent a lifetime trying to create satisfactory responses to life challenges. Will revisiting my story help me find those answers? Ask me again when I reach the end.”
So……does that sound like the starting point for a worthwhile journey, especially if you have reached your October or November years? If so, I hope you will join me now for Step 2 of Connecting the Dots.
Last week’s post was devoted to ‘Finding the Dots’……identifying those moments or events that have marked your path to Now, some of the things that have made your life what it has been. Hopefully you have generated one or more ‘Dots’ that we can use for Step 2.
Having settled on one of those Dots, our next step is to provide a narrative of that moment’s context……an overview of your world at that point, with as much detail as you are able or willing to provide about what made that event important, worthy of ‘Dot’ status. What happened then? Did something in your life change? Did you learn a lesson? Who else lived that moment with you?
Speaking for myself, those ‘Dot’ explanations ranged from a few paragraphs to several pages……depending on my willingness to provide a detailed analysis of what was happening.
Finally, once I had explained the who, what, how, and why of that event I ended that ‘Dot’ entry with a summary, in italics, of how I thought that episode had impacted my Becoming. What made it an important moment in my life?
With that you have created a rough draft of a ‘Dot’ that is ready to be 'connected.' Our next post will try to wrap all that together……not in a book (unless you want it to be), but a three-ring binder of the Dots that have traced your life.
As an example of what a finished 'Dot' might look like I am attaching below one of the shorter ‘Dots’ from my own story.
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WALLER STREET
In September, 1943 I had entered the first grade at Liberty School. That little hamlet was quite proud of its relatively new and enlarged school. It was a square, white two-story building, with four classrooms….grades one through four the in two first floor rooms, and five through eight in the two upstairs rooms. The school sat in front of a grove of tall firs. On the south side of the building was a large play field, and on the north side of the recently completed gymnasium/Community Hall.
The Liberty community, with its sprawling orchards, imposing prune-drying sheds, and busy cannery, was the prototype of good country life in those trying war years. The school, small and community-centered, was an ideal place for a young country boy to become acquainted with schooling and the business of growing up. I still have occasional wonderings of “what if” I had been able to stay there through grade school.
In early 1942, with the burgeoning defense industries offering thousands of new, high-paying jobs, Dad left Safeway and signed on at the Kaiser Shipyards in Vancouver, Washington. Every day the company bussed hundreds of workers to the shipyards from as far south as Eugene. It was on those daily bus trips that a Dad first met Bob Hawkins.
Sometime in the winter of 1942-43 both Dad and Bob left the shipyards, and the long daily bus rides, and were hired by the Keith Brown woodworking plant in Salem, making cabinets for the new Army base at Camp Adair, near Corvallis. During those early war years Dad qualified for a draft deferment because he worked in a defense-related industry. By the summer of 1943, however, the need for increased military manpower put an end to his deferment. Morse Stewart was about to go to war.
The official greetings from Uncle Sam must have arrived late that summer. I have no memory of being aware that he was about to leave. By then Mom and Dad had decided that Mom and we boys could not manage alone on the farm. Mom would have to return to work. That meant moving us to Salem, where she could take the bus to work in those gas-rationed days. Arrangements were made for our family to move in with my Grandpa Stewart in Four Corners, east of Salem, until a home could be found in town.
After having survived the shock of being left behind when my family moved, I began a period of two or three weeks during which I commuted to Liberty School from Four Corners. That meant an early departure from the Four Corners bus stop, a transfer in downtown Salem, and a long ride to Liberty. Each afternoon meant the same trip in reverse. It was unquestionably the most ambitious independent venture I had ever undertaken….. something few of today’s seven year-olds would be allowed to try. But it went off without a hitch.’
We moved into our new house at 1185 Waller Street in November. A few days later Dad left for Navy boot camp at Camp Farragut, Idaho. Although I may have wondered about the changes taking place in our family, I do not recall any particular concerns or apprehension.
I do, however, have a clear mind-picture of my first Waller Street afternoon. I was standing in the front yard of our little house, looking east across Twelfth Street toward a group of boys gathered along the street in the next block. I remember walking toward them, carefully crossing the busy Twelfth Street as I had been told to do, and approaching the boys.
I was seven years old, a first grader. During my days at Liberty School I had made several new friends, always in the structured environment of school. As far as I know this would the first time I had ever set out alone to establish contact with one or more total strangers.
I can imagine that I must have been self-conscious as I approached them. It would not have been a bold and confident advance. At some point they noticed my arrival and contact was made. It was established that my name was Gilbert and I had just moved in down the street.
Suddenly, my awkward introduction gave way to an unexpected challenge. I do not remember the words or the rationale. I do remember my bewilderment and surprise, trying to understand why these boys wanted to scare or hurt me, and why they thought that was so funny. I have a clear recollection of not knowing what to do. Then, almost before I realized what was happening, the most vocal of them, that was Phil Webb, and I were wrestling in the grass of the parking strip.
Never in my seven short years had I tried to defend myself. There had never been a reason to do so. My overriding memories of those few moments are of trying to comprehend why this was happening. My defense, such as it was, was born of fear and surprise. Our scuffling lasted only a few seconds before I rolled off the curb and thumped my head on the pavement. My resistance ended and tears began……tears of fright and embarrassment. The injury was slight. With my crying, Phil disengaged from the combat, as I clambered to my feet and ran for home.
A day or two later I was enrolled in Bush School, four blocks toward town from our new home. The changes continued…..something new every day. There were only six grades in my new school, but two full classes for each grade. It was a huge building and there were so many more kids. And, of course, in a matter of days the Balch brothers, Billy and Bobby, Emil Fultz, and Phil Webb had become my good friends. For the next seven years we, along with Tom Byerly, Alby Prentice, and brother Roger would be the Waller Street gang. To this day, seventy-five years later, I still see Phil a couple times a month.
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My introduction to the Waller Street boys was, in fact, a minor skirmish in the course of my ‘growing up.’ However, the fact that I remember it so vividly and the feelings are so real after all these years, makes me think of it as a significant event in those early years.
It was perhaps the first test of my self-confidence in an unstructured social situation. As it turned out a successful result, one that might have reinforced a wavering ego, was not part of that experience.
