Rudoff facilitates The Memoir Club
A box of tissue sits in the center of a conference room table in a small room at the Senior Center. It’s been a staple at the gatherings of The Memoir Club, led by Marcia Rudoff, author of “We Have Stories: A Handbook for Writing Your Memoirs.”
This week, there was more laughter than tears as eight women each took turns reading an excerpt from something she’d written in the two weeks since the group met last.
Elinor Ringland read of events from June 26, 1957 – recalling details as if they happened last week. Sherry Jancola wrote about events that did happen last week: a family stroll at Murden Cove. She even brought in a moon shell she found, adding a bit of show and tell to the casual, supportive gathering.
The Memoir Club grew out of a class Rudoff taught on memoir writing a dozen years ago.
The “ever-evolving group” encourages and supports each other’s efforts to mine the past for stories. Drawing on her master’s degree in creative writing, and years as a teacher and then a counselor, Rudoff provides a steady rudder for a journey that can take writers i nto open waters.
Those waters, like life, can get a little rough. Rudoff recommends total honesty when dealing with the more difficult aspects of a person’s life story.
“Don’t sugarcoat it,” she said before Wednesday’s meeting.
“You’re doing your children a disservice if it’s all perfect. Knowing that you faced problems and overcame them will give them strength to do the same,” she wrote in her book.
“That’s why the Kleenex is there,” she said.
It was hard times that got Rudoff writing a memoir in the first place. When her older sister had a stroke, Rudoff realized that many of the family stories were locked away in her sister’s brain.
She started exploring memoir writing and decided to teach a class so others could learn as well.
The first classes were done “off the top of my head,” she said. But gradually she assembled lessons and eventually spiral-bound them into a packet. In the new book, published by the Senior Community Center, she’s interwoven stories from class participants.
“It includes snapshots of life in the 20th century,” she said.
More than most generations, Rudoff said, the “greatest generation” has seen a large number of dramatic events and developments: the Great Depression, World War II, a trip to the moon, and a mind-boggling array of technologically based changes.
For that reason, the book can be enjoyed on two levels, she said.
“You can read it if you’d like to write your life story, or just to see what life was really like back then. These stories need to be recorded. That was the mission – to get the greatest generation to share their stories.”
Wednesdays class included women in that generation, and others. Ages spanned from mid 50s to 87 years old. Rudoff has taught people in their 90s to recapture some moments that “are gone and vanished.”
And while many have shared in a common history, the details of their lives, and their perspectives and memories of them, vary widely.
“When a class starts, they all look alike, Rudoff said. “Wrinkles, gray hair. Then they start talking, and oh! they are different!”
She’s had people from other countries, too and though their cultures are different, there’s a “universality” to the stories and a bonding takes place in sharing both the writing process – and such personal stories – with others in the group. For that reason, Rudoff opens the group for new members only four times a year (roughly around seasonal changes).
“A group starts to feel safe,” she said. “If a stranger walks into the room, it changes that.”
Memoir Club meets from 2-4 p.m. alternate Wednesdays at the BI Senior Community Center, 370 Brien Dr.
For more information, call the center at 842-1616.
