[home] [contents] [back issues] [subscribe]

[submissions] [mission] [message board] [contact us]

The Weight of Memory
a mother-daughter journey through Oregon
by Erin Van Rheenen
      

       At Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon, they hand out maps, as if you’ve entered a wood and might get lost. My mother needs a novel, and I want something that will help me identify all the unfamiliar birds and trees. Oregon is so much more lush than what I’m used to. Its green makes the green of California look brown. My mother grew up in Portland, but doesn’t remember things’ names. I left at the age of seven, long before nostalgia would drive me to try to name what I’ve lost.
       Already, I’ve been taking notes and drawing leaves. It turns out, though, that what I saw could be birch, ash, cottonwood or alder. I got the basic shape of the leaf, but failed to notice how they were arranged on the branch.
       In the adjacent café, we sip iced coffee and page through stacks of books. The sky is its usual opulent gray, and the tables are covered with brightly patterned oilcloth. A group of middle-aged women, sharp-tongued and fashionable, have finished discussing The Power and the Glory and are now talking about a couple they know. A man wedged in the corner reads 32 Days to a 32-inch Waist.
       We’ve driven up from the Bay Area, through rain and sun and more rain, through sharp mountains and rolling green hills, past farmhouses and horses standing under trees, trying to escape the drizzle. Just past Sutherlin, Oregon, was a home-made billboard reading The Pope is the Anti-Christ. “Allons,” my mother was repeating after her French tape. “J’ai besoin d’un chasseur.” (“I need a porter.”)
       We’d been planning this trip for more than six months. I wanted to come because a novel I’m finishing has as one of its final settings a lake in Oregon. I wanted to see if I got it right, to make sure I hadn’t simply superimposed Bay Area flora and fauna over Oregon. My mother’s idea for the trip was different: She wanted to make a sort of mother-to-daughter transfer, to show me her town and tell me her story. I think she’s glad I finally seem interested. She’s been waiting a long time . . .

. . .

 . . . I ask to see all the houses my mother lived in. There are many of them, in all parts of town. We pull up to the curb, sit in the car, and look. My mother says what she remembers and I take notes. After a while we get out, walk up the block and back, then take photographs of each other in front of the house. We rarely smile. The photos are a record of the house still being there, and of us each being her current and particular age, 60 and 38 . . .

. . .

 . . . I notice that people are telling stories in my presence. It used to be that they wouldn’t, which meant I had to make up my own. But whatever had given people pause is gone. Maybe it had been my youth; everyone knows how judgmental certain kinds of young women can be. That I am no longer so young or critical makes me feel as if my edges are eroding, which isn’t an altogether pleasant feeling.
     My youthful pose may have served another function: without the influx of so many other people’s stories, I was sure of where my own began and ended . . .

 


. . . To read the rest of this story, please subscribe.