Writing Martine: A Memoir
Writing
August 14, 2020
Oh my.
Elizabeth Ferris, my editor, returned the manuscript of Martine: A Memoir to me.
I’d been looking forward to this moment for weeks! I’ve never been so excited to open an email and download a document. Moments later, my printer was humming and shoving out pages while my eyes darted as I scrolled through the digital text.
It is like the house is finished! And it is beautiful! The architecture is sound, the rooms are inviting, the fire is burning in the hearth, the art work is colorful and varied and pulsating with life!
Now for the finishing touches. Moving furniture around a bit. Bringing in some items I’ve been saving. Making sure the furnishings are arranged in such a way that visitors can enter, feel immediately at home, and wander from room to room easily, pausing to sit and chat or have a bite to eat, and making their way to the exit without confusion.
I shared my excitement with my husband. I told him I’m going to polish this manuscript until I feel I have done my very best and offer it to the world with no regrets, no fear, letting it go out to send its message.
Thank you so very much for being a part of this project.
April 24, 2020
What is in this bag?
A paper manuscript for Martine: A Memoir, delivered today to editor and awesome woman Elizabeth Ferris!
Included are writings from classes with Valley Haggard, Erin Lessin Mahone, Sadeqa Johnson, Katharine Armstrong Herndon, and Douglas Scott Jones. Did I forget anyone?
Thank you to Life in Ten Minutes and the Visual Arts Center and James River Writers! Also Trudy Dean Hale at Porches!
April 6, 2020
It is Holy Monday and I’m continuing my holy calling of writing Martine: A Memoir.
February 24, 2020
Wax paper roll story board!
February 17, 2020
On the right, first draft, on the left, second draft—190,000 words. This week's goal: cut to 120,000 words! Martine: A Memoir will likely be 24,000 to 85,000 words.
December 26, 2019
More than a year of writing fills thirty-nine journals, the blank pages of salvaged notebooks repurposed for my memoir.
December 15, 2019
On December 15, 2019, our family gathered to cast Martine’s ashes into the San Francisco Bay, under the Golden Gate Bridge, at her favorite sunset hour. We gave her a service to honor her life, using her name.
In January of 1983, our family didn’t know Martine had died at some point in mid-December. Martine’s body was taken from the San Francisco medical examiner’s office to a funeral home nearby and cremated. Her ashes were placed in storage, alongside others, unclaimed, some unnamed, all waiting. When our family learned the news and claimed Martine’s ashes, they were sent to Florida, where our parents lived at the time. Our parents carried her ashes when they moved to Raleigh. There, my parents interred her ashes and commemorated her using the name they’d given her at birth.
These ashes, disinterred by me on September 13, 2019, released from the niche in the memorial garden, behind what I now know was the “deadname” plaque.
December 3, 2019
I had a visitation dream. Martine appeared, there was an ocean vista, a Japanese garden, beautiful places I could see but not enter. It was not time, I have work to do. I am telling your story, our story.
November 26, 2019
My brother David brought pictures of Martine. Here she’s pictured at Christmas, 1975.
November 7, 2019
While in San Francisco, Martine lived in a single-room occupancy (SRO) hotel room. I learned the history of these hotels while visiting the Tenderloin Museum.
November 6, 2019
Today I sat in Room #303, where Martine took her last breath. I looked out her window.
You can read my reflections on visiting Room 303 in this blog post.
November 5, 2019
I’m on my way to San Francisco, driving up the coast. I’ll visit the city, the neighborhood and the room where she left this realm for the mystery which awaits us all, to be held in divine love and grace.
September 24, 2019
I transcribed a class assignment that I’d written the first week of school at Westlawn Junior High in Huntsville, Alabama, to introduce my thirteen-year-old self.
Hi. I have three brothers. David, 9, is in fourth grade and drives me crazy! (not really) Bobby, 18, sleeps all day and works all night when he’s not working on his motorcycle. Martin, 19, lives in Tuskalooska [sic] in a 2’ x 4’ apartment and rides around on his bike. I guess we all get along pretty good, not great, though.
September 18, 2019
“How do you write a memoir?” John, my best friend’s son, asked. I showed him the evidence of our lives, lovingly compiled and stored in my old suitcase: school assignments, cassettes with Mom’s voice, mementoes, childhood journals, and family treasures.
September 13, 2019
I disinterred Martine’s ashes, released them from the niche in the memorial garden behind what I now know was the “deadname” plaque. These ashes tenderly received, into a box, which had held our mother’s, then our father’s ashes.
Martine: A Memoir follows these ashes, sent from California, where Martine had died, to Florida, where our parents lived at the time. These ashes, carried to North Carolina, when our parents moved to Raleigh. Ashes I disinterred so our family would be able to give Martine a service using her name.
August 26, 2019
41 Likes, 0 Comments - Brenda Walker (@pastorbrendawalker) on Instagram: "On the porch of The Porches, writing #MartineMemoir! So excited to be working on my memoir!..."
I visited The Porches, a writing retreat in Norwood, Virginia, to continue working on my memoir. I loved my writing days on the second-story porch and long walks in the country.
July 23, 2019
I visited the street in San Francisco where Martine died.
When the dear proprietor of The Blooming Alley found out we were going to place the flowers on the street where Martine died, she donated the three white roses and wept with me.
28 Likes, 1 Comments - Brenda Walker (@pastorbrendawalker) on Instagram
Martine, three white roses in your memory. You loved this city. You left it for the eternal city which we cannot yet know. I am telling your story.
We stopped at the Cliff House. In 1953, our grandparents, both sets, came from Alabama to fetch our mom, to take her home to give birth to Martine. While in California, they ate at the Cliff House. I describe their journey in this excerpt from Martine: A Memoir:
Martine, I have digitized the 8mm film of our parents in San Francisco. Mom wears a 1950s maternity top and skirt. Our grandparents, both sets, have come from Alabama to fetch her, to take her home to give birth to you, which she will, on July 19, 1953.
Mom’s parents, Granny and Pappy, and Dad’s, Grandmom and Pop, gather their suits, ties, skirt suits, loafers, pumps, hats, gloves, pocket books, and broaches, and they load up suitcases that spring open when a metal clasp is levered. They set out on highways newly built from Birmingham, Alabama, to San Francisco, California.
At the naval base in Valejo, which is now a museum, they pick up Mom and Dad and take them touring before Dad is to be deployed on a Navy voyage.
They eat at The Cliff House, which is still perched on the Pacific coast and I have looked out its large windows into the battering waves of the sea upon the rocks.
They travel from California, to Alabama, a trip you will take, Martine, but backwards and by thumb, not oversized sedan, loaded with luggage, containing dress clothes, but by thumbing holding a dark green duffel bag, your long blonde hair rustling in the breeze, your nostrils filled with the ash of tossed cigarettes, the dust of passing cars, who do not stop, but someone stops and how many someone’s does it take from Tuscaloosa all the way to San Francisco?
Pappy uses the camera that filmed our parents’ wedding. From the back seat in grainy footage he captures the Golden Gate Bridge.