Splinters of Light

For our wedding, Aunt Patty gave one of her mosaic art pieces to us--a small square mirror surrounded by many fragments of glass, mirror, pottery, metal even small toys and jewelry. Like the colored, variously shaped bits of that mosaic, grandma's stories emerge. Depending on how the lens of memory bends the light that day, like so many sparks of light reflected on the wall, each story is layered into the collage of memory, never quite the same. Lil's memories are different depending not only on how Lil remembers, but on how she wants to remember--what stays with her, what feel significant--not only depending on whom she is talking with, but on the themes that emerge brightest for that listener, each receiver making unique meaning of the exchange.

In this way, the story of Mabel's first husband emerges one day as a young man lost in war, and another day as a suicide. Uncle Karl's death lives brightly in Lil's memory down to details like what he said after dinner and how long he was gone resting before someone went to check if he wanted dessert, when all the rest of the family confirms that Lil was not there the night Karl died.

Memory is a funny thing--that something did not actually happen does not make it any less true to the rememberer. That two people have entirely different experiences of the meaning of the same event does not make either wrong or either right. That where Lil was once passionate about political beliefs which have now become less vivid does not make her passion any less real, that she was not physically present for Karl's death does not take away from the significance she feels around somehow sharing in that experience.
 
Giving so much attention to the drawing out and recording of Lil's memory over this last year, and especially these last few weeks, has brought into focus for me how much of memory is communal, shared, and interpersonal, existing in the spaces between and among us as a family, as much as within the minds of each member. Not only do our memories make us who we are as individuals, they make us who we are as a family.

When memories are shared among so many, however, the politics of memory become so much more complex. Our deterministic culture all too often seduces us into believing in the fallacy of unitary truth. Embedded in such a concept of truth are all sorts of values and dearly held beliefs, and when our truth is denied, it can be a deeply painful experience--frustrating, invalidating, even abandoning.

The way I experience it, when Mike feels the family is losing hold of the importance of Lil's history in Communist party politics, indeed the history of Mabel, Walt, Lil's mother and others, it is important to him not just that knowledge of facts or events is ebbing away, it is that a whole vision of the family, a whole sense of meaning, a very sense of identity feels denied, rejected, and erased. At the same time, when there is the sense that only one truth can hold sway--that there is only one right way to represent the past--the concerns of other family members--like papa--feel like they may be discounted or ignored.

Questions about how political involvement is represented within the discourse and identity of our family isn't so much about facts, I believe, as it is about sense of family belonging, meaning, and what those ideas represent for each of us. When only one truth, one version of experience is allowed, someone is going to feel excluded or devalued, someone's interests will be shut out, and when I see that happening, I feel scared that whatever we do not deal with now will be much harder and more painful to talk about after Lil's death.

It makes me want to ask hard questions now: What is desire for meaning if not a hunger to belong? So, given that, why is it that we sometimes find the meanings created by others to be difficult to let in, threatening even, to our own sense of self? Is it because a conflicting version of truth threatens our truth, as if in some economy of scarcity, only a certain sum of meaning can exist and conflicting meanings must necessarily squeeze others out? Is it possible to allow the equal validity of competing truths?

I certainly do not deign to try answer that. Conflicts of meaning can be gut level stuff.

As I work with friends on Referendum 71 (the Washington domestic partnership rights act) I feel viscerally the power that the truths of others have to threaten the embattled truth of same-sex partners, striving to have their commitment recognized as equal in a world where the very act of loving their life-partner is so threatening it can get them killed. And though Mike can go to the national AFL-CIO convention two weeks ago and be amazed to see members of the Party openly participating, the same hatred of cultural dissidents which erupts as anti-gay violence on Capitol Hill has loomed large over Communists and other radicals in ways Mike has experienced all too personally and repeatedly. This is real. This is core and lifelong, but it is about far more than politics. It is about who we are as a family and who we will be to each other as we step up to  name those difficult dynamics which are far easier left unspoken.

Politics in this family matter not in some theoretical or intellectual way but as core element of family meaning and connection. I see that vividly right now in Mike's connection to Lil and the significance of Lil's life to him and to each of us in our own way. His sense of loss and even betrayal when he encounters ways in which  other members of the family do not understand or value the parts of family history which he values most, is not a matter of political disagreement, but rather a rejection of an aspect of our heritage that goes to the very identity and sense of meaning of family.

As grandma's memories of those times fade, Mike has stepped into the role of carrying the family memories of political history, raising a standard woven of his own values, the values he learned from grandma, and the values she represents from the family and in the larger progressive community. It is fascinating to hear all the details Mike remembers which grandma has forgotten or does not think to speak of--how active the members of our family were back in South Dakota, running for office, agitating for progressive politics as far back as they have been in this country. While he was here, Mike pulled out the big History of Montrail County book and showed me references to grandma's grandfather, who was a socialist activist and a Lutheran minister, as well as many other Husa family folks. I don't have that book with me to reference right now, but I promised Mike last night as he was leaving that I would get him copies of the section on our family he pointed out.

I realize, as I write this blog today, that there are so many details I am leaving out (or getting wrong), and it makes me sorry I had so little time to talk with Mike when he was here. He mentioned that he is hoping to come back in November, so I hope to get more from him then, and I warmly invite both Mike and Anne to comment here and fill in more details. Most of all, hearing Mike's stories, and holding at the same time the memories and hopes and concerns of other members of the family (especially papa) it humbles me to think how little I know Lil, coming to know her truly only in these last years of her life.

I know there is deep frustration between Mike and papa around the politics of what would be said at grandma's 100th birthday, but it feels like what is going on here is about so much more than that--it is about hurts and frustrations and erasures which go back years. Hearing the passion and longing and pain in Mike's words as he speaks about grandma's political history and the way he has felt silenced around it, hearing the quieter resignation and hope in papa's as he laments his inability to communicate well with Mike through their mutual hurts, feeling the concern and hope in myself that some of this pain might be aired and eased by naming it only makes me feel more strongly how important it is to talk about these hurts and differences, and to talk about them now with each other and with grandma.

I realized this weekend that one of my deepest fears in all this is that Lil is the main link Mike has to our family and that once that link is gone, I will lose my relationship with Mike, my access to all that he knows, the chance to learn from Mike the rich heritage of the family he so treasures and which I find so inspiring. And that would be a very great loss indeed.

Through all this, I have come to believe more and more strongly that who Lil is now--how she now constructs her understanding of herself--is only one piece of all she has been, not only to herself but to others. None of us can be defined within a singular, delimited truth. Lil is not only Lil as she experiences herself, but as she is experienced by every person with whom her life has intersected. The meaning of her life is not only her own meaning but also the meaning each of us brings to that life.

If I believe anything about Lil's life, it is that there is no one right interpretation, no one truth which pushes out the others, but rather a web of complex meaning filled with richness, multiple meanings, and even with contradiction. Mike's passionate and vivid experience of Lil not only as mother but as progressive role model and political mentor, both within and beyond our family circle, are a critically important piece of that mosaic, and a story I dearly hope he will tell more fully.