Writing About Family, a Guest Post

WRITING ABOUT FAMILY is by far one of the most vexing tasks facing every memoir writer. And when authors Barbara Hoffbeck Scoblic and Susan Rudnick approached me with a fine idea of a Q&A on this topic, I immediately said yes. Both writers recently published memoirs that share similar themes.

Barbara Scoblic’s memoir is Lost Without the River (She Writes Press). Susan Rudnick’s memoir is Edna’s Gift: How My Broken Sister Taught Me to Be Whole (She Writes Press). The commonalities in their books led to the following conversation/interview with each other, completed recently in New York City. Both authors have siblings who were disabled and had a profound impact on them. In this interview, they explore their relationships with their sisters and how those relationships were a driving force in their lives and in their books. I am proud to run their conversation here as a fine example of writing about family – and thriving, not merely surviving. Please read along and learn.

The Sisters Behind Us, a Conversation

Q: There were differing years between you and your sisters. For Susan, you were older by only one year, and Barbara, you were the youngest of seven, and your sister was the oldest.  How did that affect your relationships and the impact on you?

Susan: We were like twins when we were little: matching outfits, playing with our dollhouse, singing with our mom. Then it was so painful when the differences emerged: all the things she couldn’t do, which led to very different adult paths.  But our childhood bond was indelible and was the core of our loving relationship throughout our lives.

Barbara: Because of the twelve-year age gap between us, coupled with the severity of Dorothy’s physical handicaps (she was never independently mobile), I had a very different impression of my older sister growing up. Actually, from my earliest memory, Dorothy was always just there, lying in her crib. I wasn’t aware of the difference in our ages. My first memory of being valuable came when I was about four and my mother asked me to help feed my big sister. It was an event that bolstered my fragile sense of self-worth. Dorothy‘s complete dependence on others offered me my first lesson in responsibility.

Susan:   So I see for each of us the influence was profound. In my life Edna was more actively intertwined, and for you she was always there, but a background presence.

Q: How was your childhood influenced by your sister?

Barbara: At that time there weren’t any counseling services to provide advice for my parents or for any of us. Much of my mother’s attention was focused on caring for Dorothy, so the rest of us kids were often left to our own devices. I recall begging her to play with me. She always said she didn’t have time. The sting of classmates’ taunts and questions caused my older siblings to retreat socially. They stopped inviting their friends to visit until Dorothy was sent away to live with the nuns when I was five.

Susan:  So you had an awareness of the shame that your siblings felt around your sister. I felt some of that too. But, as well, here are several things I learned from her at an early age.  I knew I wanted to help people when I grew up.  I taught her some things like how to float, and tried to help her learn how to walk up the stairs properly.  I knew I could make a difference in that way.  I learned that life isn’t fair. I couldn’t really comprehend how come I was okay and she wasn’t. I felt very guilty about this, and that also played into wanting to help people.  That was a way to equalize things.  I also learned about goodness and meanness. Some people were downright cruel to Edna, both adults and children who ignored or made fun of her.  And then others went out of their way to be nice. And sometimes those weren’t the people I might have expected: like the school bus driver who always had a friendly hello, or the woman who cleaned our home and always was there to listen to Edna and loved her.

Q: How was your adulthood influenced?

Susan: By the time I reached adulthood my sister still felt like a burden at times. Sometimes she still could be embarrassing to me, because she wasn’t like other people, and I still felt guilty about the fact that she was who she was, and I was who I was.  But I was also aware of how special she was. I liked to say that she was differently abled way before the term was invented.  She was aware that she had disabilities, but those were simply facts for her. Nothing to be ashamed of.  And the way she was accepting of herself was the way she treated everyone else, including me. She was my source of unconditional love and acceptance that I could always rely on. More and more she became a model, in the deepest way, of how I wanted to live my life and treat others.

Barbara: Because I was still so young when Dorothy was sent away, there was always a mystery to be solved. One that was never discussed. What had caused the tragedy? Was someone responsible for Dorothy’s disability, or was it just a cruel act of God? Could it have been avoided if someone had acted differently? Why didn’t anyone talk about it? Was my mother afraid each time she was pregnant that the new baby might be maimed, too?

This caused me a great deal of anxiety during my pregnancies and subsequent labors. Might my child be handicapped as my sister had been?

Also, perhaps Dorothy’s condition has caused me to be ultrasensitive to the cries of young children who are cold, overheated, or crying, and to those who are being mistreated, either verbally or physically. I feel a pang in my gut each time I witness one of these scenarios whether I see it on tv or on the street. I’ve learned to force myself to pass children without offering advice. No one wants to be told how to take care of a child.

Q: What did your parents communicate to you about your sisters? Was your mother’s way of talking about your sister different from your father? How did your parents view your sister?

Barbara: My mother communicated her love for Dorothy in the way she cared for her each day. But no one ever talked about Dorothy‘s condition. My father ignored Dorothy completely. I can’t remember him ever touching her or saying her name.

Susan: As a child I don’t remember if my parents talked to me directly. In my book I have a chapter about how, as a child of 6, I went to the library to try to find books to help me understand her. I think now they just didn’t have the bandwidth at the time to consider how I was processing all this. But I did glean indirectly that my mother wanted to help her to “catch up”. She hired people to help with reading and also an Occupational Therapist who came to our house.  My father, a natural pessimist, wasn’t convinced she would catch up.  Neither of my parents were people who would easily speak of their feelings. When I became an adult, I can remember my father saying “poor Edna,” about one issue or another.  As Edna grew up and never fit anywhere, not in either of the two boarding schools she was sent to, I know they worried deeply about what would happen to her.  They were incredibly relieved when they found Camphill Village, an adult spiritual community founded on the principles of Anthroposophy, as developed by Rudolf Steiner.

Q: You both had editors who helped you find the narrative threads in your books. What role did they play vis a vis your relationship with your sisters?

Susan: For me, my relationship with Edna is the core of the book. So, in part one, it was easy to include her, as we grew up living together.  In fact, every chapter concerns her.  But after she went away to school at age 14, we never lived together again. So my day to day life with struggles growing up, romantic relationships, adopting a baby, played out without her actual presence. An early version of the book didn’t have much of her in the later chapters.  My editor was insistent that I find ways to include her. “How will I do that?” I asked, feeling anxious. “Look, and you’ll find it,” she responded.  And I did. For example, when my second marriage ended, it really coincided with the painful situation where the village didn’t allow Edna and her boyfriend Bill to marry.  They were recognized as special friends, but no more.  I was able to reflect on how each of us handled our respective situations.  It was only after I found ways to thread her into my adult life, that the title “Edna’s Gift”, emerged. And it was only then that I realized the main theme was how she was my life teacher, and that she was the driving force of my book.

Barbara: My editor had a major impact in how I told my story. At the beginning of this process, I had a stack of short personal stories that described the hardships my parents had endured, and that told of my siblings’ and my love of the farm, but I had no concept of how to pull them together into a book. I kept juggling the stories, trying to find the connection that would pull the reader along. At that point my editor said, “Dorothy is the thread that sets your story apart from so many others.”

Another advisor warned me not to give Dorothy’s story away too soon, to keep it a mystery for the reader to ferret out. In acting terms, she’s “the silent witness.” The one who drives the narrative, but never speaks.

Q: An interesting story doesn’t make a book. The book has to have a narrative arc, which may make it necessary to eliminate some juicy stories. Did that happen to you?

Barbara: In a way this did happen to me. My mother’s ancestors lived incredible lives. My great-great-grandfather traded with Native Americans at the time of the Lewis and Clark expedition; as a teenager my great-grandfather, joined the hordes of men who were part of the 1849 Gold Rush. Under incredible odds, he not only discovered gold nuggets, but survived thieves. Then he set sail from San Francisco to Panama. He tramped through the jungles of the Isthmus to board a ship for Philadelphia where he exchanged the nuggets for US dollars. I thought these and other colorful stories of my mother’s forebears should be included to balance out the stories of my father’s ancestors. My editor nixed the idea, explaining that all of the stories in the book had to relate to the farm.

Susan: I, as well, had to leave out some things that were hard to do, but in the process came to understand that it was necessary. My parents had a very compelling story of their refugee wanderings and how they finally came together. Originally, I had a whole chapter on this. My editor felt it was too long and didn’t fit the arc of my relationship with my sister. This was confusing to me at first, because, of course my parents were so much a part of my early life. But then I understood that while I did need some broad strokes, I didn’t need all the detail. I was able, with her help, to thread some of their story into other chapters.

Q: Have you continued to learn as your book is out with readings and reviews from others?

Susan: So many people have come up to me with their stories about their siblings or their children. I realize that the book is a way to connect with the universal theme of  the challenges of living with differences.  Most of the time we tend to hide, or at least not lead, with our vulnerabilities. Well, my book is a total coming out with vulnerabilities. The second of them of it deals with my more invisible disability, that I was born without a uterus. So, when I speak to groups that allows others to speak of their challenges and differences, that feels so fulfilling.

Barbara: Absolutely. I’m continually surprised by people’s reactions to Dorothy, and how they express those feelings. The first to comment about this was a magazine editor whose brother has mental and physical disabilities. He wrote to me about how happy he was to find a book that told the story of how a sibling in Dorothy’s situation “gave as well as received.” I hadn’t realized I’d captured that value in my story.

Several others have also expressed gratitude for Dorothy’s story because, having a close relative who faces similar challenges, they’re happy to have the complexity of living with a person with disabilities acknowledged. As I talk about Dorothy at book events, I realize that her story touches readers from all walks of life.

Q: What was the hardest part of writing the book?

Barbara: The most difficult part of writing the book was putting “me” into it. Because I’d written the childhood stories as fiction, basing them on my family and the farm, I’d been able to write from an emotional remove. When I began changing the fictional “Sarah” to “Barbara,” there was no hiding. I clung to the same habit as I wrote the adult segments. “Where are you in the story?” my editor noted on the side of the manuscript several times. As I continued to write, especially about my later years, I became self-conscious, aware that I was offering up my actions to be judged by my contemporaries. I never found this aspect of writing a memoir easy. But now that I’ve had the opportunity to answer readers’ and listeners’ questions, I’ve become more comfortable with opening up about my childhood and how it shaped my life.

Susan: I was very much in my book and needed to find a way to make it more universal. That came with finding and staying true to the narrative arc. When I discussed the theme of Edna being the source of unconditional love with my editor, she agreed that was it. I remember telling her that I thought that was already in the book. She explained that it was there, only it was too implicit.  I needed to articulate and make it more explicit. But I was to be careful not to explain it with too heavy a hand.  I needed to connect the dots, but lightly.  This task I struggled with for nearly two years.  But now I really understand something about the way the reader does need to be guided from chapter to chapter in a way that makes her want to turn the page.

9. Was writing or completing your book a healing experience? If so how?

Susan: Yes definitely, and in a surprising way.  One of the most difficult aspects of growing up with Edna was that I ended up tamping down my excitement about all the things I could do that she couldn’t. (This in no way came from her. She, in fact enjoyed my accomplishments, particularly when she became an aunt to my adopted daughter.) But especially when I was young, I didn’t come home excited about how much fun it was to go roller or ice skating. I didn’t want her to feel bad.  But in writing and publishing my book, I have been celebrating and enjoying in a full way all that I have done.  And I truly know Edna would be so proud of me too.  That is a profound healing for me.

Barbara: Yes, in so many ways completing the book was a healing experience for me, too. My relationship with my father had been a difficult one. I continued to carry resentment of his rejection and my seemingly lowly place in the hierarchy of our family into my later life. I’d always known my father‘s life had been very difficult, but it was only when I began to research and recall in depth the earlier years did I begin to reach a better understanding. For months I focused on the timespan of my childhood: researching, writing friends from that time, and calling my sister and brothers over and over, listening to each one’s recollections and present-day feelings about those long ago years. I fell into a period of mourning–for the pain endured by people long dead, for words spoken and those left unsaid. I dreamt of my parents, and my life on the farm, and woke some mornings with tears in my eyes. The emotional toll caused me to ask, “Is it time to stop writing this story?” I pushed on, and as I began to write of these issues, I began to understand, accept, and forgive.

Q: What do you regret not putting in the book?

Barbara: Oh my, I still contemplate whether I should have told about the influence that Dorothy’s disability made on my siblings. I relied to a great extent on the memories of my one surviving sister and my three brothers to gather information. I worked hard to state their stories accurately. I listened, took notes, wrote, and then called them back to check that I had gotten it right. As I did this, I became aware that Dorothy’s presence had affected each of them very deeply in different ways, even today. I didn’t put that larger story into the book. I thought it was too personal. Perhaps one for me to tell at another time.

Susan: I really don’t have any regrets.

Author bios:

Barbara Hoffbeck Scoblic‘s writing career began as a reporter for the Sioux Falls (South Dakota) Argus Leader, and continued in New York City at G.P. Putnam’s Sons. She now lives in New York City where she’s working on her second memoir. Lost Without the River was published by She Writes Press.

For over forty years, Susan Rudnick, LCSW, has been listening to people tell their stories.  In Edna’s Gift she tells hers. Susan, a Zen practitioner, has published haikus as well as articles about psychotherapy. She lives with her husband in Westchester, New York. Being a parent is her greatest joy.

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