This morning, awake before the sun is up but not yet ready to begin the day for real, I turned to my iPad and browsed for something to watch. “Amy Tan: Unintended Memoir” from the PBS “American Masters” series catches my eye and feels well suited to a quiet morning. But only minutes in, this quietly powerful documentary has my mind sparking to life as I watch Tan sift through family photos and the memories they evoke for her. I feel envy and longing, for those deep roots. For her visceral connection to her past.
The sparks flare when Tan reads these lines from her memoir “Where the Past Begins”: “I am a writer compelled by a subconscious neediness to know, which is different from a need to know. The latter can be satisfied with information. The former is a perpetual state of uncertainty and a tether to the past.”
I continue watching for another half-hour, but can’t get that line out of my head. I pause the show, open my library app and borrow Tan’s memoir.
Now fully awake, I grab my laptop and head downstairs to make coffee and begin writing. I, too, feel a neediness to know and a perpetual state of uncertainty, but mine arise from the lack of a tether to the past. I’m adopted.
Just the other day I was thinking about memory, and lack of memories. Some people seem to inhabit worlds lush with memory, rainforests where recollections drape like Spanish moss and colorful moments unfurl like vibrant orchids. My memory landscape resembles Western prairieland, vast swaths of gently waving grasses obscuring what lies beneath, a restless, monochromatic scene punctuated by the occasional glimpse of the past rising like a lone cottonwood growing near a hidden spring.
I remember generalities. We went on road trips most summers – my mother was a teacher. Winters were long and cold – I grew up in Minnesota. I remember details about places and can see in my mind the dirt-grabbing seam in the bumpy vinyl floor of the kitchen or the way the sheer orange curtains in my bedroom billowed in the hot summer breeze.
People and events, though, appear as brief flashes. My horse bolting after a sonic boom during a ride in the Black Hills. Jumping into the cold lake after a sauna at my great-aunt’s cabin in northern Minnesota. Tossing snowballs out of a fort dug into the 5-foot pile of snow at the end of the driveway – one hitting a passing car on the roof, my brother and I stifling giggles as we hid under the snow, waiting for the angry driver to move along.
I don’t remember conversations. At most, I remember a line or two, some for their painful impact, some for their humor, some so mundane I almost resent their taking up space that surely could have been better used. But I can’t resent them because they are a rare commodity.
Whenever I read a memoir that details coming home from kindergarten to a special snack or I listen to a friend talk about the way their mother read “The Story of Ferdinand” using different voices for Ferdinand and the matador, I wonder how much they really remember and how much is created as they share the story. Are they all living in that rainforest of memories? Am I alone here on the prairie?
In the past year, as I’ve spent time connecting with other adoptees for the first time in my life, I’ve realized I’m not alone. Many of us have trouble remembering connections with people in childhood, and beyond. There is still a part of me that wishes I had a treasure box filled with photos, old report cards and other tangible bits from the past, like Amy Tan. Maybe if I did, the memories would appear on the horizon, coming into focus the closer I got to them. But I don’t have that box, and I’m learning to appreciate my own landscape. It feels good to gather with other adoptees around the campfire of our neediness to know; it warms away some of the chill of uncertainty.