Dear Anette Nilsson,
I think that if I tried to count the number of times I have put aside “red flags” of romantic partners due to my love (or disillusionment, really) for them, I would lose count.
In your memoir Soul-Happy: A Viking Woman’s Long Road Home, you write the following about accepting coke from your to-be ex-husband:
“Calvin wanted to do something special for me. And he loved me. Discernment never got a chance; I accepted the pen case he handed me and bent to do the move I’d seen over and over by now” (64).
When I try to recall, really recall, the moonshine in the back of Lewis’ car or the “I love you” from Jack, two weeks into a relationship, I think not of how these men themselves kept me from leaving them, but how my desire to be loved kept me begging for their love.
Reading this passage reminds me of a collection of lines from the song “Big Black Hole” from the band we just met, how it seems the both of us sing the same chorus: “And still, you don’t owe me anything / But you’re throwing me pennies and I’m / Holding a cup and a cardboard sign / You don’t owe me anything.” I want to believe that I wouldn’t do the line, but I’m not entirely sure. With Lewis, the Moonshine Man, I drank underage. Who’s to say it wouldn’t have gone further had I stayed with him longer?
In Soul-Happy, you reckon with the lies the men in your life created while they were in your immediate orbit, as well as the possible reasons why trauma in your family has remained steadfast, as in the case of your mother. I find the sharing of your reasoning as to how your mother became a woman with “knitted brows” and who was “going off” (117), important.
While you explore the possible harm inflicted on her during her childhood, I think your writing of the following adheres to a moral code or responsibility for creative nonfiction writers to allow others to share their own stories: “That’s what I think. In reality, I know nothing. I know only what the clues strewn about my childhood tell me” (118).
By sharing your understanding of how your mother became the rough-around-the-edges woman you saw during your childhood and young adulthood, you still offer her a space in the narrative. You leave room for speculation, which I admire.
You also remind us, readers, that healing, though it can be a largely individual process, does not have to be done alone — especially when you might have experienced similar events as those in your familial circle.
When you write, “The shocked look on Sallie’s face is so brief it barely registers. She, too, is chuckling now. We are both letting go, of a childhood and years where Czechoslovakia played a role that we couldn’t put a name to but left us with an uneasiness that we tucked away, that we never shared. We do now” (210), it reminds me that grief does not have to be dealt with alone. We do not need to hole ourselves up in our rooms and process the confusion, sadness, or even the strange sort of laughter that sometimes accompanies loss.
Thank you for your vulnerability and persistence when writing Soul-Happy. We do not need to hold out paper cups — waiting for people to love us — when we can push through and restore ourselves.
Very sincerely,
Carlin Steere
FanMail/Interview Editor
Carlin Steere
