Inspired by Pulitzer Poet Lisel Mueller's poem below, I wrote my own version of a minuscule memoir.
Curriculum Vitae
1) I was born in a Free City, near the North Sea.
2) In the year of my birth, money was shredded into
confetti. A loaf of bread cost a million marks. Of
course I do not remember this.
3) Parents and grandparents hovered around me. The
world I lived in had a soft voice and no claws.
4) A cornucopia filled with treats took me into a building
with bells. A wide-bosomed teacher took me in.
5) At home the bookshelves connected heaven and earth.
6) On Sundays the city child waded through pinecones
and primrose marshes, a short train ride away.
7) My country was struck by history more deadly than
earthquakes or hurricanes.
8) My father was busy eluding the monsters. My mother
told me the walls had ears. I learned the burden of secrets.
9) I moved into the too bright days, the too dark nights
of adolescence.
10) Two parents, two daughters, we followed the sun
and the moon across the ocean. My grandparents stayed
behind in darkness.
11) In the new language everyone spoke too fast. Eventually
I caught up with them.
12) When I met you, the new language became the language
of love.
13) The death of the mother hurt the daughter into poetry.
The daughter became a mother of daughters.
14) Ordinary life: the plenty and thick of it. Knots tying
threads to everywhere. The past pushed away, the future left
unimagined for the sake of the glorious, difficult, passionate
present.
15) Years and years of this.
16) The children no longer children. An old man's pain, an
old man's loneliness.
17) And then my father too disappeared.
18) I tried to go home again. I stood at the door to my
childhood, but it was closed to the public.
19) One day, on a crowded elevator, everyone's face was younger
than mine.
20) So far, so good. The brilliant days and nights are
breathless in their hurry. We follow, you and I.
~ Lisel Mueller
Curriculum Vitae
1) I was born on the plains. A city girl from Dakota, I say, laughing.
2) Second of four children, I had a noisy childhood building forts, swinging from trees, sleeping in a yellow canopy bed and reading stacks of books.
3) We spent honey-colored summers at a lake cabin, swimming off the dock and having boat picnics.
4) At Catholic school I was earnest and liked tests. I played well with others. There weren't enough hours in the day to read.
5) Ballet, tennis, soccer, cheerleading, skiing, French class, editing the newspaper kept me busy sampling personas. I didn't rebel too much, but I dreamt of being reckless.
6) First love, or what I thought was love.
7) At eighteen, I went abroad to live in Istanbul. Just as I was gaining confidence I was treated as a fragile princess.
8) At university, I become more me. Loved and was loved by a good man, but I left him to go love the world.
9) My education continued on the Grand Tour. I then worked at a London off-license learning the wine trade. I lived on smoked salmon sandwiches, champagne, tea. My friends hung in the Royal Portrait Museum.
10) Wound up in San Francisco. Heady, serious love affair. Three years of gleeful, careless melee during the internet boom. Rode the wave and, all too predictably, crashed on the shore.
11) After reading about heartbreak in novels, I suddenly understood personally, physically, to be torn asunder.
12) Napa Valley interlude.
13) Ten nomadic years, stepping up for adventures of any kind. Peered around many corners to find me again.
14) Love walks in the door. A new chapter began involving a lot of time in Canada, a surprisingly beautiful place. O Canada, I was happy to be embraced.
15) More travels, more poetry, love grows.
16) South American explorations. Sailed to Antarctica to reinvent myself yet again. Walt Whitman was right, I do contain multitudes.
17) Elopement and then proper wedding to a man worth the wait. Life continues to live up to my optimism.
18) Nine months to experience the wonder of pregnancy and then the awe of birth. A perfect tiny person, a little boy, grew inexplicably underneath my heart. Said heart expands a hundredfold.
19) Crystallized moments of daily family life, a new home, the joys of writing.
20) The wide world beckons, Come, come, you have seen nothing yet.
