Reading at Las Campanas

Last week, I read from Banged-Up Heart to an audience of thirty and signed a few books. You might wonder why I would have a reading six years after publication when I’m deeply into writing a second memoir. It just happened. I was talking with the Events Mgr. for Las Campanas where I live about a New Mexico Book Association event to be held here in late August. Knowing I’m an author, she said, “Why don’t we schedule you for a reading?” I thought for a moment and then said, “Why not?” Since my memoir came out six years ago, I’ve learned that it resonates with readers of a certain age and younger readers, too, for a variety of reasons.
            
​For this reading, I selected passages beginning with page 1 when I first met John in Raleigh, NC. Readers may remember that I was invited by close friends to spend Christmas with them so I wouldn’t be alone. I was also anticipating a date with a friend of Joe’s, my first official date since Joe’s death two years earlier. At the last minute, my host’s brother, John, flew from Santa Fe to be with family. (If you wonder about my anticipated date, it’s a whole chapter.)

​Interspersing passages from my memoir with narrative, I concluded with the scene when I boarded the plane in Albuquerque to fly back to Reston, Virginia, to find John, who has become seriously ill, in the aisle, unable to get out of a narrow wheelchair into his first-class seat. When the flight attendant, incensed because he has not been able to load the plane because John is in the aisle, barks, “Lady, I suggest you and your husband take another flight.” I respond with, “We have to go to Dulles. We’re not getting off this plane!”

The questions and discussion that followed my reading were straight-forward. I was asked if I were writing my story now, would I change it in any way. I said that I might have been more reflective, more critical of myself for not delving into John’s diagnosis to better understand it. I see now that John didn’t level with me about its seriousness. At the same time, I feel that understand why he could not.
           
My second memoir is another slice of my life, when I was in my 20s and 30s. It was triggered by my opening a trunk filled with letters, journals and memories much like ghosts that had haunted me for a long time.