Seeing Life Through My Great-Grandfather's Eyes

When I returned home on Sunday afternoon after a four-day writing retreat in northern Wisconsin, a gorgeous burled walnut secretary was waiting for me. The piece of furniture had once belonged to my great-grandparents, G. Oliver and Islea Riggs.

The burled walnut secretary in its new home.

My parents delivered it to my house because they are downsizing. I had admired the secretary for years, even though I knew little about its history.* I figured it would be a good fit for our circa 1920 bungalow-style house, which has high ceilings and dark wood built-ins. But it was even more fun than I had anticipated to walk into the family study and see it there; it looks like it has always been there, like the space was made for it.

My dad had also left a surprise gift for me on the secretary:

G. Oliver’s glasses.

These are the glasses that my great-grandfather, G. Oliver Riggs, wore during the later years of his life. My dad had unearthed them several years ago from a box in the garage.

It seemed right to find the glasses after I had spent the weekend thinking and writing about key moments in G. Oliver’s life. I have been trying to see things from his point of view as I write the chapters in my book and reflect on all that I have learned about him, his family and his career. Now I have his actual glasses.

I tried them on yesterday, and I can report that the view through them is slightly blurry, which also seems appropriate. Memory and time have the same effect on me, as I try to write about scenes from my own life that happened even just a few years ago. Some details are sharp, but some are more difficult to bring into focus without the help of photos or notes.

It’s often difficult to know in the moment what is going to seem important to you later. Sometimes your vision at the time is blurry, with or without glasses.

Fortunately, I have a wonderful teacher and mentor who loves to dig into issues like this. What do we remember, and why? At the Motherhood & Words retreat at Faith’s Lodge, which I attended with five other women writers, teacher/editor/writer extraordinaire Kate Hopper somehow knew the right mix of readings and writing exercises to use to inspire and motivate us in our nonfiction work. During the retreat (my fourth time attending — I am hooked!), I wrote an important scene from one of my book chapters, and I wrote two new parenting-related essays. 

I also had a massage — a fairly new, and highly welcome addition to Kate’s writing retreats — and I walked the new labyrinth on the lodge grounds, picking up only two hitchhiking wood ticks in the process.

I took a break from writing to walk the new labyrinth.

I came away from the weekend feeling even more confident about the direction of my book; I just need to keep writing and meeting my self-imposed deadlines. I also felt happy that I stepped away from working on my book occasionally to explore topics I had not planned to write about — these exercises became the essays I am revising this week.

That is one of things I enjoy most about the retreat — it offers the freedom and opportunity to play around with writing, in a supportive and nurturing environment, in a way that I don’t always allow myself to do at home.

I have had great success lately with essays I have written at Kate’s Motherhood & Words retreats, so I am hopeful that the new ones I wrote will find homes, too. The essay I wrote at the Februrary 2015 retreat about wig shopping with my mom was published on Mamalode on May 4: Life and Death in the Dressing Room. And the essay I wrote at the February 2014 retreat about whether to have a preventive mastectomy appeared in the Star Tribune last month: Women's Health: Mastectomy Now or Later?

I have already signed up for the next retreat in October. By then I hope to have written three-fourths of my book chapters. I don’t think I will put on G. Oliver’s glasses as I write, but I may try sitting at the secretary with my laptop, to see if it helps me travel back in time on the page. The secretary has been a witness to a great many years of family history. It is ready for a new chapter of its own.

* In case you are interested in the secretary’s history, here is what I have been able to determine, with the help of Ancestry.com and the 1882 History of Mercer County: Within the secretary I found the name of a Chicago furniture company and the handwritten words: Jos. B. Moore, Aledo. Joseph B. Moore is my third great grand uncle; he is the brother of Islea’s grandmother, Scienda Isle Moore, for whom I think Islea was named. 

Joseph Moore moved to Aledo, Illinois, in 1865 from Ohio. He worked on an 80-acre farm for ten years and then quit to work in Aledo as a cabinet maker and furniture dealer, which was still listed as his occupation in 1882.