‘Immersion Memoir’ and Returning to My Childhood Home Part 1

As I was reading a recent essay by Suzanne Farrell Smith called “The Inner Identity of Immersion Memoir”, I began thinking about my own trip back to my childhood home on Charles Street in Toronto a few years ago.

My old house was being leased after being occupied by a print shop for the past 25 years. I called up a realtor friend and asked her to show me through the house. Armed with a camera and notebook , I went in search  of childhood memories, hoping the experience would trigger more than I’d been able to access to date. Although only the first floor and the basement were available to us,  I tapped into the architecture in my mind and compared it to what remained that day.

Here are some of my notes from November 18, 2008.

I sucked in my breath as I entered my childhood home on Charles Street. Fifty-eight years since we moved. The main floor and basement were up for lease and a real estate agent friend arranged access for me. The first floor was stripped to the brick wall and studs. The original room divisions were obliterated. My stomach lurched.

I struggled to recognize the house of my childhood. The bones were still there, a few familiar markers. Outside I had climbed the metal stairs and heard a clanging sound instead of the thud of the former wooden steps. The hidey hole was still there under the front porch with its winding cement steps to the basement door. To my left in front of the basement window a cement pad replaced the metal doors of the chute to the coal bin below. The old front door had been replaced with a barred metal commercial entrance. Gone was the old carved glass windowed door with the bell to turn beneath. The transom above also looked different with a decorative metal flower in lieu of bars and the old curtained transom window opening inward probably considered a security risk.


In my mind’s eye the house I grew up in for the first 9 years was huge. The rooms seemed so spacious because of the very high ceilings. The living room faced the street with a large picture window. When I was nearly 4, I remember looking out into a white snowy night waiting for my mother to return with my baby brother. It was February 1945. Jim has just turned 62. Amazing that I can remember that night. There was a fireplace and mantel but it was never used. We had a radio, one of those big ones that stood on the floor. I used to lie in front with my head in the speakers to listen to a children’s program from Buffalo. I think it was called “Through the Garden Gate”. When I was 8, I even won a contest they held. I drew a picture of “The Garden Gate”. My prize was 2 tickets to the movie “The Wizard of Oz”. In the living room a stained glass window of a robin was behind the chesterfield. I used to love looking at it. Years later I saw someone removed it and probably put it in an antique shop. How sad to have it removed from its context. In the corner of the living room stood a big wooden box, low with a lid that opened up like a trunk. I think my Dad made it. I loved having my doll’s tea parties on it. The rest of the room is a blur, a carpet I think, a chair I recall my father reading his paper in. The painting on the wall of the Bow River; Sadie and I used to sit in front of it and make up stories cuddled under a blanket. One day the plaster ceiling came crashing down on my that wooden box. Luckily there were no tea parties in progress at the time.
(from earlier freewriting about my house)

I walk through the glass door from the now tiny front hall and see a brick wall straight ahead with some horizontal planks covering the old fireplace – now a chimney for the high-efficiency gas furnace. My bearings are lost. There are no room dividers and a big pile of debris fills the room. Remnants of one wall between the former kitchen and my parent’s former bedroom (really the dining room) tell me where the walls once were. The staircase is now walled and the once spacious hall is gone given over to the open room. The glass paneled French doors are gone to the living room and between the living room and dining room. We search around and find remnants of old plaster, high carved baseboards and window trim. The very high ceiling appears to be original and bears an old stamped pattern. But my favourite stained glass window with the robin on it is missing, as is the stained glass in the top of the rounded large picture window. I recall sitting on the back of the chesterfield looking at that robin in the stained glass before flipping myself backwards down to the cushions.

To be continued...

Have you ever gone looking for your past in old buildings or landscapes?

" Life Goes On But Your Memoir Mustn't"

After attending a two-day workshop last week called “Illuminating the Path: Finding Theme and Structure in Your Memoir” with Allyson Latta, I try to sort out my notes, my thoughts and wonder how it all applies to my story.

“Life goes on but your memoir mustn’t”, a quote from Adair Lara in Writer’s Digest, became our mantra and challenge. Where do I start and finish my story? How do I construct the narrative arc of my story?

Should I begin chronologically with my early life on Charles Street then move on to the suburbs and what develops there? Or should I start with the move, flash back to longing for my early life in the rooming house, then move on to the crisis, climax and resolution? Another possibility is to start with moving back to the city for university (in the neighbourhood of Charles Street), then reflect on memories of my early years. I wasn’t planning to write about this period in university but my writing group tend to favour this approach. I had another idea about my life on Charles Street but I think this would work better as a short story, so I will set that option aside.

According to Adair Lara and Tristine Rainer, to figure out the narrative arc, the emotional framework of your memoir, you must figure out ‘the desire line’. What is it that you want? This is what drives the narrative and moves the character to the conclusion. In “Elements of Effective Arc” (Writer's Digest July/August 2010)Adair Lara suggests jotting down a list of actions and obstacles:

I wanted _______________ (the desire line).

To get it I______________ (action).

To get it, I then____________ (action)

But ______________ (obstacle) got in my way.

So, I _____________________ (action).

(And so on.)

When I look at this framework, I think that my over arching desire line was to go home again, ie. to go back to the place where I felt confident and secure. What I need to do now is to examine each scene of my memoir and identify my desire line, actions and obstacles for each step of my journey.

Have you identified your ‘desire line’?




Copyright © 2010, Ruth Zaryski Jackson

Valentine's Memories

My brother Jim was born on Valentine’s Day 65 years ago. I still remember staring out the front window of our house on Charles Street at the snow and lights,wondering where my parents had gone. I was the firstborn, almost four, and my life was changing. Since then, Valentine’s Day in our family was always about Jim’s birthday.


We did exchange valentines at school. Secret valentines to our crushes and others to our friends. How many did you get? Were you as popular as me? Did you have any secret admirers? It was all about friendship and love and popularity. I didn’t mind the first two, but I hated competing with others for votes. It cheapened the sincerity of friendship for me.

In high school there were Valentine’s Day dances or sock hops. Were they the same as Sadie Hawkins Dances where the girls could ask the boys out? That was a big deal in the 1950s. You were supposed to wait for the boys to ask you. They had the responsibility of walking up to you in hall at school or phoning you to ask for a date. Girls were supposed to be passive and wait for a call. But that social rule was reversed for Sadie Hawkins, and girls could ask the boys. The pressure was excruciating; I may have screwed up my courage a few times to ask someone. Being rejected didn’t make it any easier, even if it made us more empathic.

In 1976 I got married on Valentine’s Day, so now the day is associated with the day my husband and I took our vows. It was a beautiful wedding at our home with all our friends and family. The room was filled with daffodils, love and laughter. When I look back, I remember my naïve hope that it would last; and it has. Not without bumps, sometimes big ones. The memories make Valentines’ Day a very special one for me.

Experiencing Memory

I have been thinking about how I experience my memories.

If I close my eyes, I can picture my old Charles Street neighbourhood as it was in the 1940s. My house is still standing, though altered, and transformed lately into The Gourmet Burger. The urban streetscape has changed drastically. In my mind I still see the row of narrow attached houses across the street, with English basements and steps up to the front stoop. I see the lane behind the stores on Yonge Street. I see the Sweet Caps sign painted on the brick wall far above the little grocery store at the corner. I see the chunky apartment building at the corner of St. Nicholas, a woman tossing coins down to us from the heavy railed balcony. I can visualize different houses on the street, the oversized Romanesque-style Victorian like ours, smaller row houses, and ones with large front porches. I see myself walking to Wellesley Street School, down the cobblestones on St Nicholas Lane, walled with furniture warehouses at the bottom behind Rawlinson’s near Wellesley Street. I even had visual memories stored in my head that I only recognized years later when I was a student at University of Toronto. I would come upon an archway at the end of St. Mary’s Street, a stone facade or a street scene and remember being there as a child. Old photographs whether archival or personal help me to cue and elaborate scenes. Talking to my mother and brother help a little.

My recollection of sounds is mainly an ear for accents in speech. I can be transported back to the rooming house in an instant if I hear a Scottish accent or an Irish ballad. These voices of my childhood have stuck deep inside my head. Other sounds of the neighbourhood can be retrieved when necessary but it is a more conscious effort. Music can be a good trigger for scenes.

I have a few kinesthetic memories of the touch of someone or the texture of a rose petal but for the most part I have to think about these before I write about them. Taking the time to focus on the sensation of touch requires effort for me.

Tastes are not strong memory triggers for me. When they are, the memory is related to a particular scene, e.g. eating a new food, the taste of Ukrainian cooking or my mother’s baking. I almost never eat butter tarts because Mom’s were so good.

Smells and memory do interact for me. The smell of lilacs conjures up scenes from my childhood in a flash: picking lilacs, Sadie’s talcum powder, my April birthday, Dad’s digging up clumps and planting them in the backyard. I think of the smell of spices, the smell of baking, and the smell of certain foods. A lot of memories come flooding back given the right scent.

I experience most of my memories visually, like a little movie projector playing in my head. While this is my dominant mode, I do remember some scenes through my other four senses. When writing, I try to scan all five for sensual details.

Into the Middle

After reading Martha Alderson’s article Writers Travel Two Journeys a few days ago on her blog, I realize I’m now clearly in the middle of my memoir. I have finished my freewriting and searching about the transition between the end of the Beginning and the beginning of the Middle. Her tips about ‘the point of no return’ helped me to recognize what for me was the point of no return: moving to the suburbs at the age of nine. I had no control over the move and there was no going back. Much as I’d dream about returning to my home on Charles Street, I couldn’t go home again either metaphorically or realistically. Many things had changed.


I heard an interview recently on CBC with Salmon Rushdie in which he talks about two archetypes regarding home: the dream of going home again and the dream of leaving home or the spirit of adventure. An inherent conflict exists between the two, between the comfort of home and the journey of the traveler. This pull is at the heart of so many great stories.

The meaning for me in Rushdie’s comments was that my struggle was a universal struggle. If it hadn't occurred when I was forced to move at age nine, it might have naturally happened later in my life. But, then the effect would have been different. In that case, I might have put more energy on the opposite side of the coin, the leaving home for adventure side. My story and perhaps my character would have been different.


But this was my history and this is the story I have to tell. The trick is to make it engaging for others by telling the small personal details while tapping into universal archetypes and themes.

Plot in Memoir

When I first heard Martha Alderson in an NAMW Teleseminar talking about plot in memoir writing, I was confused. How could a memoir have a plot? Wasn’t that for mystery or romance fiction? I checked her website and blog and forgot about it until recently, when I was trying to figure out how to structure my memoir.

What was unique about my story, in our family at least, was that we lived in a rooming house for the first 9 years of my life. I was the first born and the roomers were my extended family until we moved to the suburbs. A huge area of downtown – 20 square blocks - was my backyard. At first I wondered if I should just concentrate on the Charles Street stories and try to publish that part on its own.

Then I went back and had another look at the concept of plot. If I only did the Charles Street stories, there wasn’t much plot. “Girl grows up: first 9 years in downtown rooming house.” I examined all the readings and plotting tools Martha has on her blog especially The Plot Planner and the Scene Planner. I read all her tips about plot and memoir. I thought long and hard about the boundaries of my story and how much of my life story I wanted to tell.

The Plot Planner helped me to define the time frame and helped me realize that the Charles Street Stories were only The Beginning of my story. Moving to the suburbs was only the end of The Beginning ¼ of my book. The Crisis came later, in The Middle, and the Climax and Resolution, in The End.

I had to keep my eye on this ball and make sure the stories I include follow the plot of my character development and growth to adulthood. Otherwise, my story will just be a rambling mess of little stories that will fail to engage the reader, even my own children.

Photo: My house on Charles Street, 2009