Perspective

The word for today is PERSPECTIVE. Actually, it has been the word for over a week and a half now. I have been carrying the word in my head, letting my thoughts ruminate, writing different phrases for this blog in my head, but not putting anything down or out into cyberspace. From the PERSPECTIVE of anyone who may follow this blog, it would have been reasonable to assume that I had abandoned it. I HAVE NOT.

When I looked PERSPECTIVE up in the dictionary, the first definition concerned depicting spatial relationships on a flat surface; it is a term that concerns art or drawing, a representation on paper or on a canvas of how someone sees a scene. In Webster's New International Dictionary Second Edition there is a wonderful diagram that depicts ground planes and picture planes and base lines and horizons. But the PERSPECTIVE that I'm interested in is "the capacity to view things in their true relations or relative importance," or "the ability to see all relevant data in a meaningful relationship." (Random House Webster's College Dictionary)

Maybe I have been putting off writing about this because it all seems too complicated. It is just as complicated to explain a mental perspective as it is to depict perspective on a flat canvas. I am trying to get the curves of my thoughts into the flat forum of written expression.

All I know is that I see what I see and I hear what I hear and I believe what I believe. What shapes my perspective? What is the ground upon which I stand, the place from which I form my view?

Not surprisingly, these questions came up in the context of a family visit two weekends ago.

I felt that I had honored my father in my last blog post, so I asked him to read it. After reading what I had written about him, he said "Amy, that's all nice, but I feel like I'm reading about a fictional character. That fellow you wrote about, that's not me."

I have been working on memoir pieces for the last several years, so this piece of feedback was more than a bit disconcerting.

"What do you mean Dad?"

"I never felt apart. I didn't feel different when I went down to Charlottesville. I felt anxious, but not because I was different; I felt anxious because I was doing something new. I thought we're all just people, I'm a person meeting other people."

"Ok," I said. I took a deep breath. I was as open as I could be to his PERSPECTIVE. "Maybe I was projecting," I continued. "Maybe that's how I would've felt. Maybe you're just a lot more well-adjusted than I am. Thanks for the clarification."

My Dad walked back from my sister's den to the dining table.

Later the same evening my parents started talking about how my father had never dated
anyone other than my mother. My parents have been married for more than 54 years. The fact that my mother had many boyfriends before she met my father, and that my father was not as popular with the opposite sex, has become part of the family lore.

"But Dad," I said, "didn't you date someone at law school. Didn't you date a non-Jewish woman. Isn't that why your parents wouldn't go to your graduation?"

"Where did you hear that?" my sister asked. My mother repeated the question. My father, after a long silence, said he never dated anyone during law school. I felt crazy. I felt like pieces of information that I had taken as facts, facts upon which I created a story, a story upon which I based my PERSPECTIVE, all of it dissolved and I did not know where I was or what I was looking at. I could not trust my PERSPECTIVE.

"I know I heard it somewhere," I responded. "Someone told me this, maybe Nana told me." Nana, my grandmother is dead.

"Maybe Nana made it up," my sister offered. "Maybe Nana made that up because it sounded better than saying her son didn't invite his own parents to his law wchool graduation because he was ashamed of them.?"

What, I thought to myself. Who made up what and why and how was I ever supposed to figure it all out?

"Well, there was someone I met once," my father acknowledged, throwing out a small fact, so there was something real that my grandmother or I might have based a story upon. I didn't ask for any more information.

When I got my bearings, as I left the family gathering and drove home to my own apartment, I realized that everyone has his or her own PERSPECTIVE. As a memoir reader and writer, I am learning this. Ultimately, no matter how much research I do, how many other people I consult, the only story I will be telling is my own. That so much of my understanding about life may be based on my own distortions of other people's stories is disturbing. The only thing that is comforting, is that most likely my approach is not that different from everybody else's. Let me know if I am wrong. I am truly interested in your PERSPECTIVE.