I met Myles Hopper when Lisa Rivero and I co-edited Family Stories from the Attic (Hidden Timber Books, 2017). Myles and I worked closely together on his essay, “Exodus Redux.” I came to know him as a writer with great introspection and dedication, one who strives not only to uncover the pieces of a story but to retell it in a way that builds meaning and insight, for the author as well as the reader. Today he shares excerpts from his forthcoming book, THE COLOR RED: That Was Then & This Is Now, which speaks to the power of writing and the art of the story.
The Color Red is a collection of stories that comprises a memoir, rather than a chronological autobiography, which isn’t how I remember my life, nor is it the way many other people remember theirs.
The experience is like standing in an editing studio ankle-deep in old-fashioned, raw film footage, searching for missing pieces. Some can be found, and memories can be refreshed; others, alas, are lost, perhaps forever.
Nevertheless, the search has been productive. The result is this book, in which characters and events move back and forth in time, the same way memories present themselves in unexpected flashbacks and associations.
Preparing this collection has been a long process. A story of mine, first drafted in 1992, languished in a file folder for the next twenty-five years. Before it had been relegated to that folder, another author had encouraged me to write the rest of the stories I wanted to tell. I told him I probably wouldn’t––actually, I told him I couldn’t––though writing was what I most wanted to do. To his “Why?” I said, “Because, I don’t know if I’m able to tell the truth, and if I don’t, none of this is worth writing about.”
“The truth about what?”
“About my relationships with members of my family, maybe my father, most of all. There was a great deal of love and caring, but there also was violence and rage, and I still have trouble dealing with the lifelong aftermath.”
“Then I guess you have a decision to make.”
Though it took many years, I made that decision to finish what I had begun. It has helped me to keep in mind Joan Didion’s final sentence in her preface to Slouching Towards Bethlehem, where she reflects upon how her interests as a writer run counter to those she writes about: “…writers are always selling somebody out.” [emphasis hers]
I was determined to avoid writing only for myself, about myself. My purpose has been to write this book in a way that might provide readers an opportunity to gain new perspectives on some of their own life experiences, to discover something of value that might have eluded them, to gain a deeper understanding of themselves.
These stories acknowledge childhood trauma, tragic losses, and confusing, sometimes violent relationships within a family; they also celebrate the love and reconciliation, acceptance, and forgiveness. The result can be transcendent.
Winter 2017
December came and went, and it was my seventy-fifth January birthday. On that day, I had already lived five years longer than the too-short lifespan of my father. Frequently, throughout the winter, my thoughts drifted to how difficult it had been for me to unravel our complicated relationship. I recalled the day when, in my mid-twenties, a half-century earlier, I had been regaling my therapist with stories of my father’s magnificence.
“So, your father can walk on water?”
“Huh?”
Thus, began the healing. It has been a slow, sometimes imperceptible, process until heart and mind could remain open to understanding life experiences in new ways. I needed to arrive at a place where my love and admiration of a father––gone now more than thirty years––weren’t expressed in order to camouflage my darker feelings. I have needed all of that time to cease repressing or denying what was painful and debilitating. Only then could I allow another reality to emerge and coexist. To heal has required embracing the “other” and transcending the limitations of being lost and drowning in the lonely “self.” To heal has required relegating certain memories, photographs, and spoken words to a place called “that was then,” and cradling close to the heart the ones that are called “and this is now.”
Now, when I think of the person I was then, I imagine him walking slowly on a path under a canopy of foliage, all veiled in a gray, pre-dawn fog. He isn’t aware of my presence close behind him. His unhurried steps slow until he comes to a halt, and I give the slightest of nods as I pass him.
At the sharp bend in the path, I look back just as beams of sunlight penetrate the canopy. In the light and warmth, he begins to dissipate along with the night fog. I watch until I see only green leaves glistening at daybreak.
Midsummer 2017
In late afternoon, I leave my writing behind and walk outside to the garden. The oversized terra-cotta pot has been back in its place since early spring, and now the white rosebush it contains is blooming, as is the rest of the garden. In the midst of this loveliness and tranquility, it takes only a few seconds for a perennial fantasy of mine also to be in full bloom. In it, my father is alive and I ask him to work with me in the garden––mine, not his. He welcomes the request, and I welcome his suggestions regarding the placement of new plants and the appropriate preparation of the soil.
At the end of the day, we sit on the patio, enjoy a glass of scotch, and admire our accomplishment: Not only has the garden been improved, but we’ve spent the day working as father and son without an angry word between us.
It waits until our second glass for me to tell him how much I learned as a boy and as a man during those times when we had been able to work and play together in peace. Then, I tell him that I have provided my children the chance to experience a garden’s peaceful beauty, but never have demanded anything from them in return. I tell him that they, now adults, take pleasure in asking me which plants they should choose and how to care for them. They do this not because I am a gardener, but because I am their father.
I know he understands everything he has heard from me, because he gives one of his self-conscious laughs, more like a quiet clearing of the throat, revealing the depth of his emotions.
By the time I emerge from my fantasy, shadows have grown long and advanced across the patio and the garden and onto the lawn, but there is one more task to complete before dinner. I select the proper spade for transplanting a languishing rosebush, so it will receive the sun and nourishment it has been deprived of for too long. At the new site for the rose, I lift a handful of the loamy soil and inhale its clean, sweet aroma.
On this day, nothing eclipses my sense of well-being, not even as my foot presses on the shoulder of the spade, and I remember standing at the side of my father’s open grave and releasing a shovelful of earth onto his coffin.
Myles Hopper is the author of the forthcoming collection of stories, THE COLOR RED: That Was Then & This Is Now––a memoir. As a cultural anthropologist, he taught in several universities in the United States and Canada, and consulted with nonprofits engaged in strategic planning and organizational development. Writing is now his full time pursuit, with the exception of occasional consultations with organizations whose mission he supports. He and his spouse are parents of two adult children and live in Shorewood, Wisconsin.
Julie: This story is the result of a private quest to understand the lives of women in my family. Reading some of the family history information collected by a distant cousin, it astounded me when I realised that I knew some anecdotes about my great-grandfather, but nothing at all (not even the first name!) of his wife. I also knew very little about her daughters, including my great-aunt Becker, except my grandmother’s often-repeated phrase that Myrtle “had a flair for writing.” I surmised that if my aunt had been a writer, there should be some documentary evidence that I could discover. So I went on a quest through the wonderful digital archives of the National Library of Australia’s TROVE to discover these women who were largely unknown to me.
Yvonne: I first wrote “Letters on Repeat” for my Grandma LeTourneau (pictures below), who had passed away in 2007. I wanted to get to know her when I was a young adult, so I wrote her several letters. Soon, she wrote back.