James Romberger's response to Ella

[Anonymous]

#583

The speculations that Rebecca Blevins Faery makes in “Ella: Family Stories, Family Secrets” about the fate of her great-grandmother are similar to the guesswork I indulge in for my piece developed from the memory chain exercise. Perhaps Faery has more solid evidentiary basis for some of her imaginings than I do about whatever it was that made my mother lock herself away for a period after my little brother’s birth, but still, these sorts of never-to-be-resolved mysteries are frustrating to the extreme. Family secrets can ruin the lives of their initiators and over the years filter down to taint the interactions of successive generations, perhaps gaining more significance than they deserve.

Any of Faery’s scenarios for Ella’s abandonment of her husband seem plausible to me, but what I find more compelling in her writing is the idea that so many generations can co-exist in time, because her female family members all gave birth so young—so that when Faery was a child, she was able to meet her great-great-grandmother. I recall my great-grandfather from when he lived with my mother’s mother—I had thought that that was unusual! He was a Lutheran pastor, roundfaced with tiny glasses perched on his nose and quite senile. Marguerite hypnotized me once and I told her of being so small that I was able to climb up onto great-grampa Reverend Herbert’s old wooden desk and pull the polished rolltop cover down, closing myself inside. The old man was very upset when he found me in there, although I had not harmed his papers. He died when I was around five.

Faery was eight and so slightly older in her reminiscence, but what remains with me about her account is the wealth of detail that she remembers: her evocations of the physicality of the blind Grandma Seagroves and the environment of her house, the sensory impressions: sweltering heat, pungent smells, iced tea “with not enough ice” and the little girl’s fear of the aged, dying woman, all richly described; they bring this passage to life.

[Sondra Perl]

#607

James, I think you make a great point when you write: “What I find more compelling in her writing is the idea that so many generations can co-exist in time.” So much of Faery’s essay hinges upon interactions between generations, the ways in which stories get passed down from person to person. I think this says a lot about oral traditions, how there needs to be direct person-to-person contact for stories to be told, for secrets to be revealed. My parents were in their thirties when I was born, and by that time my great-grandparents had been dead a long time. What I know of them now derives mostly from secondhand stories and old photographs, memories which are limited and, at times, unreliable. It really highlights the ephemeral quality of speech, and consequently it emphasizes the importance of writing. I may not have been able to hear my great-grandparents speak, but I can read what they wrote. Unfortunately, there isn’t anything they left behind for me to read, and I wonder if they knew how to read and write. At this point, I’m not sure if anyone could answer that question. For me, this is one of the most important reasons for learning how to read and write: the ability to record ones story. Without writing, stories are so easily lost, and experience is forgotten. In light of these ideas, I wonder how things might have been different if Faery had access to Ella’s writing, her own essay. In the end, it seems that the voices that get heard are the ones that are put down on paper.

• This reply was modified 11 years, 6 months ago by Sondra Perl.

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