How to Write About Marriage? Learn How to Write the Personal Essay
I TEACH ONLINE MEMOIR CLASSES and work as a memoir coach and memoir editor, and in those roles I get a lot of requests for teaching how to write the personal essay. The essay is my favorite medium and most of the essays I have written and published take on simple, domestic issues stemming from marriage and family. The key to writing from home is to stay small. You are most likely to succeed in delivering a feeling to the reader if you attempt to do so without telling us what that feeling is. Navigating this space of showing, not telling, is critical to the success of a good, domestic essay.
What do I mean by that? Just this: Let the reader do some of the work. Let them do the math. Let them read it and gather together the details without you having to say something like: Hey, look at how someone loves me. Just show us. How? Here’s an example.
Read this essay and leave in the comments what you notice about what does and does not get said, and what you feel at the end.
***
I HAVE THREE FREEZERS. There, I admit it. I do. A born and raised New Yorker, maybe I have nothing more or less than a shtetl mentality, some genetic holdover from a time when there was never plenty. But probably not, since the closest I’ve come to Anatevka was fourth row center seats for “Fiddler on the Roof” when I was twelve.
And so it remains one of the greater mysteries of my marriage – to my husband, that is – that I buy chickens and freeze them, make stock and freeze it, make pesto and freeze it, and that every once in a while in the blur that I am as I whirl between the three freezers, I put something into one of them that, well, simply doesn’t belong.
It’s good he doesn’t take it personally, though that is probably because I have assured him that this started long before our marriage, and that I once located a sumptuous pair of alligator loafers in the fridge after thinking for months that I had lost them. They were in a brown paper bag, exactly the size of a pizza slice, so it seems obvious to me what my mind did when I got home from the shoe repair. Into the fridge, I thought, and that, as they say, was that. So glad was I when I found them that there were no recriminations. Plus, at the time I lived alone, so I had no one with whom the share the joy of finding them. Cold, though they were, I merely slipped them on and instantly regained my sense of balance.
These days, I have an audience, as well as several mouths to feed. Along with providing food for the adults in my home, I also cook for our dog. He has allergies. Seven years we’ve been at it. The cost of this is 14 sweet potatoes and 14 chicken thighs each week, and so an enormous canvas bag of sweet potatoes sits on top of the chest freezer in the garage (did I forget to mention that of the three freezers, one is the chest variety?) It’s the kind of bag that ship riggers use. Strong handled and sturdy, we need it for when the price is low – a recent 99 cents/pound, for instance – and we buy in bulk. It’s hard to lose.
Or so you might think.
Saturday was a cooking day for me, and so I am writing in real time here, reporting from the front. The last of the parsnips, all of the frozen vegetable scrapings, cilantro stems and other tidbits from the freezer went into the cauldron-sized stock pot. Back and forth from the freezers I went, finding tempting stashes of things to add.
“Oh look,” I said to the dog, “Chives!” The dog gave me the look he always gives me. It’s lovely to be adored no matter what you do.
My chives are now up in my kitchen garden, so clearly the frozen ones had to go into the soup. And in they went. And more things came to mind, and apparently I was wearing one of my many pair of glasses and carrying a mug of tea while I triangulated my way between my freezers. And then the washing machine sang its little song it sings when the load is done and the triangulation became a parallelogram and I added an upstairs trip.
The soup was creating that kind of happy haze it does when the aroma has taken over the house, and everything seemed right with the world. Out to the freezer I went again when I noticed the mega bag of potatoes was gone. Missing. Thinking it might help if I could see better, I patted myself down for my eyeglasses. Gone too. And what about that tea? Wasn’t I drinking something just moments ago?
Opening the stand freezer I was delighted to find the full bag of potatoes quietly cooling inside. Not that alarming, really. Many remarkable things have been unearthed there, including a portable phone and a book. It happens. And being a good wife, I called to my husband.
“Look, honey!” He came in from the kitchen, and that look on his face was the dividend check, the little extra I get from years of investing in this life.
The glasses? They were in the laundry hamper. Obviously. But it was my husband who found the tea mug, hours later, in that grand sweep I now realize he quietly does every day and last thing on most nights, simply putting everything back in its place so we can get on with our lives.
***
Tips for How to Write The Personal Essay:
Most of my essays come from domestic moments. Before I set out to write from my idea of home, I read extensively. Specifically, when learning how to write about marriage, domesticity or cooking, I can credit the great Laurie Colwin, Russell Baker and Nora Ephron for some great provocation. I read and I learned how to write the personal essay.
Have you seen my list of books to read to write memoir? Have a look.
Want more? Join me in an upcoming online memoir class where tips like these are plentiful.
And if you have not done so already, listen in to QWERTY, my podcast by, for and about writers.
Marion – I laughed out loud as I read this. In our house, we take turns finding what the other has lost as we wander through our home and our lives. I still recall the day that my cell phone rang just as I pulled into work. It was my love, speaking in that confused, amazed, indignant, frustrated tone that signals the loss of something crucial. In this case it was his glasses, his last pair. He couldn’t drive without them. He was late for work. He could no longer think clearly about where to look. “Would you like me to come home?” I asked. “Would you?” he said. And twenty minutes later there we were, retracing his steps. “Did you check the laundry closet?” I asked. “I wouldn’t have put them there!” he said. Which of course spoke volumes. I went in, opened the washing machine and there they were at the bottom of the drum, the lenses staring up at me. I didn’t crow or chortle or get too mad. By then I’d learned what we both know all too well, that it is only a matter of time before I’ve lost my keys, again, in my purse.
Oh, that’s lovely, Betsy.
Thank you for being in the club, and willingly admitting to it.
Please come back soon for more.
I sometimes forget what rich fodder is there is marriage.
The everyday is the best place to go for material, isn’t it?
Now I was waiting to hear that at least one of those freezers had a stock of Creme de la Mer–just in case, or your favorite red lipstick–also just in case. That I would understand, or for storing cashmere crew necks, which I understand store best in freezing cold storage. Chickens? Chives? Lordy–the things I learn about you.
Not even a small freezer bag of lipsticks?
Small bag.
The good stuff. The stuff I did not buy at the drugstore.
How did you know?
So funny, Marion, and so true. I love your home, your husband, your dog. Thank you for inviting me in.
Thank you, Julia.
I am delighted by the affection and friendship.
Damn… I’ve lost my expensive prescription glasses with the detachable sunglasses. Can you help me find them??
Great post!
Found ’em. In the freezer.
Oh THAT’s what husbands are for. Been so many years I forgot how great they can be around the house. I’ve been losing things left and right all this time.
Cheers!
Ha ha ha.
Yes, they can be great around the house.
Thanks for coming by for a laugh.
I have a clear childhood memory of my mother standing in front of the freezer, dumbstruck, as she pulled out her purse. When I laughed she said, “I’m not worried about the purse. Now I just need to find the damn ice cream.”
Now that I am of that certain age, I completely understand.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Laughing so damn hard right now.
What a kind gift this is you offer.
Thank you.
And what a fabulous thing for you to write about.
Go on.
Marion, I’m guessing you can hear my laughing all the way from Portland, OR to the east coast! Such a funny story you’ve shared, and one which many of us can relate to in one way or another. I don’t have a chest freezer, and I only have one freezer other than the one with the fridge. But I do manage to lose things in that tall freezer residing in a garage that is really my husband’s workshop and not a garage at all. I’m wondering now if that’s where he’s lost all those books of blank checks he was looking for and perhaps it’s where I might find the springtime blouse I can’t find now that it’s spring. I’ll go look!
Oh my gosh, Marion, you had me laughing out loud as I recalled my own stories of “losing “my eyeglasses which were sitting on my head or finding the box of Triscuits in the refrigerator and wondering who could have possibly done that?? I’m so happy I’m not alone in this. Thank you for sharing!
The cilantro stem, the dividend check (just beautiful – a ROI), something about the sturdy bag reminded me of my grandmother’s cool damp cellar. I had to read the essay twice to know why the last sentence struck me – the grand sweep, but it was your words “that I now realize” he does…I do the grand sweep of our night stands every morning. It is part of my morning rhythm after he leaves for work. And moreso, I pick up clues – an empty ice cream bowl tells me he stayed up later than me and will have a story to tell about an episode or a news piece, business cards tell me he’s mowing today, the gold PO Box key – he’ll be calling for it any minute. As I do the sweep each morning, I think of him and wonder if he knows how it happens. I suppose I’m waiting for that ROI!
It is lovely how you provided a portrait of a loving marriage through your articulation of your meanderings in the kitchen, the items you lose, and those that are found by your husband. Thank you for the lesson!
Hiya Marion: I’m glad I’m not the only one leaving things in odd places. Your husband should start a support group for men whose wives are forgetful! :) It’s the artist/creative inside us! My older son also has had to suffer with my absent-mindedness–but he thinks I lost my mind. I always reply, “I wasn’t always like this. It wasn’t until I had kids.) Said in jest, of course.:) Thank you for sharing!
Hi Marion
Oh, I relate to misplacing items – sometimes not finding them for years. This morning I happily found, from a pile I’d pulled out behind my desk, a hard copy of your recommended memoir books, which I wanted as I research my first memoir essay (after working on book-length projects). It’s about my years as a homeschooling stay-at-home mum, my failings and asking forgiveness of my two beautiful children, now rewarded with their amazing love in hard times.
Here’s what I heard in your essay:
You’re a born and raised New Yorker, genetically but distantly Jewish. You love to keep food frozen and at the ready in your three freezers, which include a chest freezer on which you keep a canvas bag of sweet potatoes for the dog.
On Saturday, while whirling around creating a cauldron-sized soup–with parsnips, vegetable scraps, cilantro stems, chives and other tidbits–and carrying a mug of tea, you had to attend to your clothes washing.
Once the soup was on, creating a happy haze of aroma through the house, you noticed the sweet potatoes were missing, as well as the glasses you’d been wearing and your tea. You found the sweet potatoes in a standing freezer. Showing this to your husband, he rewarded you with a look, a paycheck for all the years you’ve invested in his life. The glasses turned up in the laundry hamper but your tea mug wasn’t found for hours, and then by your husband.
What you did not say in the essay:
Apart from your preamble about the art of memoir which should show rather than say, Hey Look at how someone loves me, you don’t actually say your husband loves you or that you love him and the home you’ve created. But these facts well up through the peace you describe at home, despite the chaos sometimes caused by misplacing items. There you have an audience of an adoring dog and a husband who not only shares your joy of finding things in unusual places but who balances your tendency to leave such things out of place with his quiet nightly routine.
When you lived alone, it took longer to regain your sense of balance after misplacing your loafers than these days when your husband quietly ‘sweeps’ through the house at night to find misplaced items.
How I feel after this review is grateful for the peace you feel and share when New York is in chaos with so many affected by coronavirus. However, this was not a clear feeling on my first read.
As an Australian, I often feel at a loss to fully translate others’ communicated lifestyles into exactly what is meant, as I did when I first read this essay. Using maps and looking up word definitions helps (eg. shtelt). For example, I love listening to your inspiring podcasts, yet I often feel I lose a lot of rich context, especially when interviewed authors are from your area and you have shared history, far from my western Sydney townhouse. I’ve not been to New York, though I’ve stayed with friends and family living in Minnesota and California. These days I travel in books and online as I learn to live with low-grade lymphoma that limits even local travel.