AUTOBIOGRAPHY
It was September 16th. I have the day marked on my calendar. She told me her name. It was the first time she was ever asked to be in charge of organizing a nun’s retreat. Then she said, “I have your name listed here as giving the retreat next year: June 16th to the 25th.” I said, “Yes.” Then she asked, “What is your theme?”
She caught me completely off guard - completely. I don’t even know what I am going to do tomorrow. I don’t even know what I am going to preach on next Sunday? She wanted to know the theme for a retreat for next year - a retreat nine months from now!
I made a mistake. I gave her a theme. There was a book sitting on my desk, an autobiography, right there next to the phone. So I said, “The theme will be `Autobiography’.”
She said back to me, “Autobiography?”
It sounded like she had a question mark after the word, so I repeated, “Yes, autobiography.”
She finished the phone call with a hesitant, “Okay. Thank you.”
After I hung up, I said, “Uh oh!” Anyway I jotted down on my calendar the word “autobiography” and then forgot about it.
Next April it hit me that I better start preparing for the retreat. Theme? What’s a good theme? Then I remembered that I jotted something down on my calendar. There it was, “Autobiography.”
What do I say about autobiography? Silence. So I started to reflect and look at every autobiography that I could find. Surprise! In a month I had enough material for 16 talks - two talks a day for an 8 day nuns’ retreat on the theme of “autobiography”. As I was packing for the retreat, just in case, I threw into a cardboard box about 10 autobiographies. Thank God I was traveling by car.
Looking back afterwards, like most retreats that I have given, I think I got the most out of it. Autobiographies, Memoirs, Journals, Diaries, are fascinating reading. Turn off the TV; read someone’s diary!
I once made a workshop on how to keep a journal: using the Ira Progoff method of journal keeping. You might have seen his Intensive Journal Workshops advertised here and there. It’s great stuff on how to keep a journal - an Intensive Journal. Basically you’re taught how to do an autobiography or a diary. For example, you keep a daily log, jotting down what happened to you that day. But you also learn how to map out the main stepping stones of your life as well as your dreams. You’re also taught how to dialogue on paper with the significant people in your life, absent or present, alive or dead. It’s a neat way of doing one’s story. That workshop way back in 1974 has taught me to keep a journal or diary ever since.
Autobiography. Everyone, well not everyone, keeps an autobiography. Most people don’t write it down, but scratch a person, and you’ll scratch a memory. We know our stories, chapter and verse. We know the significant things that have happened to us so far. We have our halls of fame and our halls of shame, the stuff of our life that we don’t mind talking about and the stuff that we want to keep hidden forever. Isn’t that what makes us all so interesting?
Autobiography. Everyone has their memorabilia: ash trays and shells and souvenirs from the trips of our life. Everyone has a place: a box under the bed or on the top shelf of a closet, a bottom drawer, a trunk in the attic, where they keep their secret stuff. We also have our public stuff: photo albums, pictures on book shelves or on end tables or on tops of televisions, diplomas and degrees and awards framed or laminated on our walls, trophies in cabinets for winning softball tournaments or twirling contests. Our homes and our hearts are filled with the stuff that makes autobiography.
Autobiography. Everyone has a right to have a home or an apartment, a place and a space, to keep their souvenirs and their trophies, the reminders of their story - that place we call home. Everyone has a right to a porch or a bench in the summertime where with family or friends we can listen to each other’s story. We need to listen to each other, to be willing to turn off the TV and ruminate with ice tea or lemonade or beer or wine, to shoot the breeze and tell each other our stories. Isn’t that what all those men are doing who sit in the corner bar night after night, hour after hour after hour?
Autobiography. Who are the people in your life who are willing to tell you their story? Who are the people you would love to tell your story to?
Autobiography. Have you ever thought about writing down your autobiography - putting it down on paper or into a computer? If you have a computer, there is a program called “Memories” It helps you line up your story - your childhood, schooling, moving you through all the stages of your life. There are also programs that help you line up your family tree as well as your roots. Simone Weil wrote a whole book on The Need For Roots. She saw the horror of uprootedness in Europe because of World War II. She said, “To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.” (p. 43).
I remember one time thinking, “As an adult I never sat down with my dad and listened to his story.” My dad was very quiet - as introverted as an owl. So one evening I asked him to tell me his story. At one point I said, “Dad, let me get paper and pencil. This stuff is worth jotting down.” My dad, the introvert, had begun to extrovert his story to me. He told me about starting in Ireland and then coming to America with only $25 and one suit. He recalled that they had told him, “When you see America, put on a clean set of underwear and put on your good suit. Then put your old underwear in a paper bag and throw it overboard.” My father dumped dirty underwear in the Boston Harbor on May 9, 1925. He told me about looking for work in Boston, Portland (Maine), Philadelphia, and finally settling in New York City. He told me about writing letter after letter to my mom in Boston asking her to marry him. She kept on putting him off. Most of his life he worked for the National Biscuit Company in New York City, unloading flour, sugar and all those tasty ingredients that make up those great cookies by Nabisco.
Those notes on pieces of paper are precious ingredients, because my dad’s life is part of my life. A good part of his story is my story. Parts of his autobiography are my autobiography.
As I take time out to put together the story of my life, I discover that I have memories of my dad that I didn’t know I had. They were just sitting there ready to be recalled. My dad loved poetry. One day, there I was a little kid, opening up a book of poems that my dad loved. Inside on a certain page was a dried up red rose petal. I never saw such a thing in my whole life as a dead rose petal inside a book. I went to my dad, who was sitting there in his favorite chair. Pointing to the dark red petal, I asked, “Dad, what’s this?” My dad was known for his smile, but when I pointed to the rose petal he had an even bigger smile. Now, every time I picture my dad, I picture him in that chair, that day, wearing his light blue work shirt, with that smile. I always hear his one word answer to my question why anyone would put a rose petal in a book, “Memories!”
That’s a precious story in my autobiography. One of the regrets I have about my dad is that I never got a tape recorder and put him on tape. I would love to have his voice on tape now. I have notes on him on paper, I have memories of him in my mind, but I don’t have him on tape.
So when my brother was dying of cancer, I said to him, “Why don’t you make some tapes - eight tapes - one for Joanne and one for each of your daughters. After you die, each of them can have that as a precious memory.” His answer was, “Nah! I don’t want to do that. I’d rather be in their memories as I am.” Then he added, “Besides, this way, they can make up even better stories about me after I die.”
About a year after my brother died, I got the thought about taping my mom - getting her story. I had heard bits and pieces about her story through the years. But I thought, “Let me see if I get her on tape.” One evening, when I stayed overnight in Brooklyn, I sat with her and asked her to tell me her story and we’ll put it on tape. She too was a bit reluctant, but as she got into her story, she forgot the tape recorder. She was 81 years of age at the time, very healthy, still had a job, still making money, still full of life.
I noticed the same thing happened to her that happened to my dad when I sat and asked him to tell me his story. It’s magic. It’s sacred. Asking a person to tell you their life story, their autobiography, and taking the time to sit there and listen to them is magic. It’s a sacred moment.
My mom gave me all kinds of details that I never heard before: her childhood in Ireland, her landing in Boston on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, December 8th, 1919. She told me about working as a maid in the Adams House - a hotel in Boston, sending most of her money home to Ireland, working for a family whose daughter was a good friend of Anne Morrow and as a result my mom met and served Charles Lindbergh a few times, going to the dances, and for years receiving all kinds of letters from Mike in New York asking her to marry him. Finally, one letter changed her mind. My father had written, “This is the last time I’m asking. If you don’t marry me now, I’m going to join the Irish Christian Brothers.” It worked! She finally said, “Okay.”
She filled up a side and a half of a tape with all kinds of pieces of the puzzle that was her story. Some I heard before; some I had never known. Then she said, “The moo is out of me!” That was her way of saying she was tired. She wanted to have a cup of tea and some cookies and we’ll get back to the tape some other time. I said, “Next time I come to Brooklyn, we’ll get Part Two of your story.”. She said, “Good.”
There was no next time. A couple of weeks later she was killed while walking to Mass before going to work. It was a hit and run accident. That tragedy became part of my two sisters’ and my story - part of our autobiographies. Looking back now, 5 years later, I am very grateful that I taped my mom. Only recently I told my sisters about the tape and I gave them each a copy. I figured they would be ready for it now, to hear my mom’s story, to hear her voice once again. And I’m happy that my mom’s story will be passed down on tape and my dad’s story will be passed down on paper to my nine nieces and my one nephew and then down to their children. Our roots, their roots, are all part of the story, the autobiography of each of our lives.
Two suggestions: start telling yourself your story. It’s worth listening to. It’s worth putting down on paper or into a computer or onto tape. Secondly, ask other people to tell you their story - starting with the people in your own family. It’s magic. It’s sacred. Watch their faces as they talk. Notice how they come to life. Listen, really listen to them. Ask questions. Be ready for surprises. And then, it’s been my experience, most people after they are really listened to, wiping a tear or a smile off their face, usually say, “I’m doing all the talking. Now you talk. Tell me about yourself. Tell me your story.”
© Father Andy Costello, CSSR,
U.S. Catholic, Oct. 1992
