This Burns My Heart

I am having the hardest time imaginable getting started this morning (now afternoon), this Monday before Thanksgiving break, this snowy day in the frigid cold, cold that has arrived way too early in the season with temperatures hovering in the low 20s!

I have things to do, but all I really want is to drink tea and stay warm. Even crossing the street to my office (I know I have it easy compared to some people) paralyzes me with numb hands and cheeks, my eyes constantly watering from the wind-driven snow.

Can’t wait to have time off!!

Yesterday I attended and participated in Chicago Book Expo—a fancy name for a pop-up book venue. It was VERY well attended and had top-rate speakers (take it from me; I was one of them!). I’ve already blogged about Aleksandar Hemon. So today I will mention Samuel Park.

His book, This Burns My Heart, he said was based upon life experiences of his mother. In particular a story she often told about getting her hair and nails done the day before her wedding. Park described his mother as a beauty—and she must’ve been because without doing anything special she attracted the attention of a stranger who approached her coming out of the hair salon and asked her for a date. You can tell she was an adventuresome lady because she actually thought about it, but in the end declined saying she was to be married the next day.

And so the two parted. But ever since that fateful day the story and idea that her life could have gone another way stayed with her, through what proved to be a difficult marriage. In her times of doubt, there always arose in her mind the road not taken. What if she’d gone on that date?

So Samuel Park wrote his story. Samuel Park published his story. He went on a book tour to the West Coast, near where he’d gone to school and at one of his bookstore appearances a Korean girl approached and told him—funny—our stories are much the same. My mother tells a similar tale of turning down a wealthy, attractive man hours before her wedding.

 Odd, thought Park. But then the same thing happened at another bookstore event. A Korean came up and said, my mother tells almost this exact same story.

I can almost imagine Samuel Park’s horror. What’s going on?! I’d be afraid of being accused of plagiarism or stealing someone else’s idea. But eventually he came to see that many women like his mother had a narrative they told themselves when times got tough. That out there waiting for them was another life. Possibly a better one. But, nevertheless, they had had a choice and even if the life they chose wasn’t perfect, they’d made their bed and slept in it and probably made it up afterwards.

It’s nice to think that our one life is actually made up of many bends and turns, not a straight line. And that perhaps running parallel to what is now is another course, the road not taken, the relationship left unexplored, the plane ticket not redeemed, the meal left uneaten. Myriads of possibilities. The mirror with facets for all perspectives.

As a person who writes memoir and blogs about memoir, I found all of this fascinating. The book he wrote once upon a time about his mother’s life experiences, about her once-upon-a-time, was nothing but a fairy tale. It is like a hall of mirrors. Non-fiction fiction.

I look forward to reading this book. It doesn’t matter what’s up or down, real or real-ish, memoir, memory, or memoirous.