Made of Memories

When I was 5 or 6 our family phone would ring, and I'd race to answer it, “Hello?”

"Susie? Is that you?"

The first time my Aunt Martha did this, I was horrified. "No, I'm C.J., Aunt Martha!"

In my family we value being able to commit to the bit, so she kept this up every time she called. Eventually I caught on that she was teasing me. It was the first time I had an inside joke with an adult. I'd call her Mean Martha. She'd call me Susie. We both knew the truth: she was the least mean person I’d ever met.

Arthur Miller wrote that "we are composed of memories. Some water, some blood, some organs that move it all around, but what motivates us, what defines us are memories." I think about this often as a writer, how the past becomes the raw material we work with, how the people who shaped us become parts of characters we create.

There was a weekend during my freshman year of college when homesickness overwhelmed me. After a sporting event near her house, Aunt Martha asked me to stay overnight instead of getting on the team bus, just so I could have a few more hours with my parents. The next morning, she drove me all the way back to campus herself. Hours in the car, out of her way, just because she loved me.

Me.

After we die, we live on. Mean Martha is made of memories for me now. Wonderful, funny, achingly kind memories of her sweet smile and the mischief she modeled to a little girl who loved to answered the phone. And in my writing, in the characters I create who show unexpected tenderness, who make long drives for people they love, she lives still.

Her memory will forever be a blessing.