Last Tuesday was my son’s 35th birthday. When I write that, I imagine what comes to people’s minds after doing the quick calculus to conjure an image of a mother to a 35-year old: a heavy set woman with gray hair, loose skin, and sagging jowels. Land’s End shoes and long flowing sweaters to cover mal-proportioned thighs.
I am 54, but that is not me. I am of Irish descent, a natural redhead. Redheads, luckily, are the last to go gray. I am a lifelong exerciser and credit my relatively slim frame to that: people still describe me as slender. In my head, I am never in my 20s still. The 20s are a time before wisdom. Who wants to be stuck there? But in my 30s, yes. Maybe even my 40s, though by then I could see the changes waning estrogen was starting to have on my body. Changes whose speed seems to have compounded exponentially since I turned 50. Which ties into my writing focus this week: character development. To grow older as a woman – when you are losing the one thing that gives women the little power they have, beauty in youth – is to realize the power that rests in developing character. Your own character. Discovering what you really believe in, the unmovable truths, the unshakable maxims, the boundaries-that-shall-not-be-crossed that bring a new, different kind of power than beauty and youth.
I read this article on character development and wondered about a writer developing me as a character. What would I want them to write? How would I like to see myself nuanced and layered in order to be an interesting, noble character, one that leapt off the page and drew the reader in? A character that helped make a story unforgettable? This is how one should approach aging. Consider ourselves as characters to be developed, and then live the life we want to see springing from a page.
Build characters by describing them. In detail. When you seek the attributes that describe your subjects, think of the senses: What do your subjects look like, sound like, smell like, feel like — and, if you kiss them, what do they taste like? Mint? Garlic?
– 14 Tips for Building Character
As I finish writing through my lists of memories, I turn to character development, a fiction technique that can be used in non-fiction to write a well-crafted memoir. For characters in memoir are real people: you can’t just make them do or think whatever you want. But there are ways in which writers can tease things out of them that help hook the reader. One technique is to share details little by little, gradually revealing your character, building interest. I’ve started to do this with some of my life’s people:
I’d been deemed marriage-ready a year before at age 16, sitting in the pastor’s wife’s living room. A room defined by green sculpted carpet and swivel rocking chairs, their blue velvet suffocating under clear plastic, gold lacquered bric-a-brac everywhere. Years later, I tried everything within my limited means to make my trailers look elegant. That woman, tackier than the back of a Post-it® note, did everything within her means to make her houses the exact opposite.
I sat in one of the chairs reading and heard her assess me to her mother.
“I think she’s ready to be a mom, don’t you?” She glanced toward me from the kitchen and smiled.
and
He was 26, as handsome as I was beautiful. Jeff had just arrived from Washington state via Alaska via Utah in a silver Mazda with torn seats and rusted holes in the floor boards. The first man I dated. The first man I kissed. The first man I married. The first man I divorced. Dressed in blue jeans and a collared shirt with sleeves rolled to the elbows exposing ink on hairy arms, he got out of the car, unfolding to six foot two. His hair was the color of sand in shadows, his eyes blue like a puddle in an artic glacier. His temper red like iron molting in a smelter but I couldn’t see that hue yet.
I walked out to the driveway, down the curved sidewalk lined with peonies and petunias, Perins Peak standing as a sentinel over the cul-de-sac, those cheap little flowers its foot soldiers. His pupils dilated and he smiled. I looked down and said “Hello.”
Tasting.
Things That Nourished My Writing: March 1-15.
FILM
Parallel Mothers. My first film post-pandemic.
FOOD
Deep Sea Sugar & Salt (lots of spring birthdays needing cakes at our house).
LITERARY
Enrique’s Journey by Sonia Nazario
The Rescue Will Begin In Its Own Time by Franz Kafka
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
MUSIC
The Songs That Get Us Through It
PODCASTS
I have exciting news to share: You can now read Silver Copper Lead in the new Substack app for iPhone.
With the app, you’ll have a dedicated Inbox for my Substack and any others you subscribe to. New posts will never get lost in your email filters, or stuck in spam. Longer posts will never cut-off by your email app. Comments and rich media will all work seamlessly. Overall, it’s a big upgrade to the reading experience.
The Substack app is currently available for iOS. If you don’t have an Apple device, you can join the Android waitlist here.