I realize suddenly that to find myself, I have to remember who has been with me all my life…
People Line (A chronology based on the names of recurring personalities in my life):
2 October, 1967
Mom Mom Mom
doctors and nurses
Dad
1967-
Mom Mom Mom Dad Mom Faces Mom Mom Dad Mom Faces Mom
Mom Faces Dad Faces Mom Mom Faces Dad Mom Grandpa Grandma
Aunt Uncle Mom Mom Dad
1971, 72, 73 (?)
Teacher Boys Boys Teacher Teacher Teacher Boys Girls Teacher
1974-1981
Mrs. McG., Jimmy, Mike, and Keane
Boys
Pam and Jenny
Girls
Father George and Father Bill
Ms. S.
Boys Girls
Sister Loretta Eleanor
Father G and Father J
Ms. M. and Mrs. S.
Matt and Lynn
Sister Edwardia
George, Chris, and Brett
Father Jim
Ms. T and Mrs. P
Sister L and Mrs. V.
Beautiful boys
Friends
1981-1982
Father D., Father Tom and and Father X
the Hermanas
Boys Boys
Terrifying boys
The Seniors The Juniors The Sophomores The Freshman
Ron
John, Johnny, Joe, Ed, Tom, and Vince
1983-1985
Big Boys Boys Girls
Erin and Ron
Derek
Darren
Jonathan
Here I abandon the People Line because, like the other timelines, it could take up a hundred pages just as easily as one.
Already, I’ve simplified these early years by excluding any names I found difficult to trace to a definitive time or place. Those that remain are haphazard and random, selected according to subjective cerebral processes I’m not completely aware of.
There’s a huge problem regulating chronology here: my education has imposed linear dates upon my memories so that those markers are inseparable now from the chaotic whirl of images dancing through my neurons. If I wish to attempt a more complete retrieval of images, I’d have to go “step by step,” and the only “steps” I’m capable of finding are those indicated by dates of school and work, throwing me back into an education- and career-oriented chronology following people through the halls of certain institutions…
This People Line, then, is a complete failure. It excludes the owner of the store where my mother did her grocery shopping, the mailman, the next-door neighbor, the distant relative whose hand I shook at the funeral of another distant relative, and the girlfriend of that relative’s son hiding in the corner. There are forgotten children roaming the aisles of school buses I’ve already dredged for bodies. There are intimate friends without names or faces, muffled in a blur of memory loss…
As my People Line moves closer to the present, the problems posed by the limits of my cerebral processing shift into a higher gear. I’ve already begun listing boyfriends together in one neat row, for example, since I find myself incapable of dating their faces.
Teachers, friends, classmates, priests, nuns, merchants, relatives, boyfriends… Intellect has honed in on reality, cramping it with labels, measurements, and markers. I no longer know what I actually lived. Do I even remember these people and places or do I remember someone telling me about them?
I remember lying in Jonathan’s bed on weekend afternoons at the age of 16, for example, but where did I spend the rest of my days that year and with whom? Through research (a calendar, newspapers, school records, letters…) I could recreate certain memories to build something like a base for myself. But then I wouldn’t be remembering. I’d be reminding myself to remember.
Still, that’s something, I guess.
• • •
Dear Donie,
I was finishing up on my Christmas cards when I got your letter. I’ll answer it right away, before it gets lost in the sea of envelopes on my desk:
You were born Monday, October 2, 1967 at 2:46 a.m., Chicago, Illinois. You weighed 8 lbs., 8 ounces and were 20 inches long. The doctor who delivered you was Dr. Daniel O’Connor.
You were baptized on Sunday, October 29, 1967 at St. Jude’s by Deacon, Rev. Walter Aragon. Your godmother was your maternal aunt, Cathy Jefferson, and your godfather was 2our friend, Howard Almond. We had a huge christening party.
You lived on the Southwest side of Chicago until August of 1972 when we moved to Downers Grove….
My mother goes on to give me significant dates right up through Brooklyn College, where she says I started in the summer of 1988, which is wrong because I didn’t even move to New York until the summer of 1989. Just a reminder that nothing can be taken as fact till it’s been thoroughly cross-checked, and even then we have to allow for a certain margin of error…