Writing this life? I never thought it would be so hard. I’ve never wanted to write fiction, just life; but lately, I’ve found myself writing my life as if I were writing fiction. I don’t mean I’m lying about it or falsifying it; but I’m having to make up whole scenes that I have no memory of.
Like my visit to the American consulate in Sydney in 1973, to apply for a visa to visit my three young daughters in Boulder Colorado. Their father had abducted them the year before and taken them to live there, where he had a position at Colorado University. We had been negotiating by letter and through our lawyers over access; he was demanding divorce before he would allow access. When I was interviewed by a consulate official, he told me that I would not be granted a tourist visa unless I was still married to the man. Their rationale was that if I went on a tourist visa, I could stay illegally and they would have to deport me; whereas if I were married, I would be my husband’s responsibility, legally and financially.
I have no memories of the actual conversation or the visit to the consulate. When I had my memoir edited this year, amongst the many changes my editor advised was that I needed to write the actual story of this visit, which had overtones of Kafka’s The Castle. K, the anti-hero, wanted to live legally in the village and the bureaucracy that ruled from the Castle wouldn’t allow him to. Kafka died before he could finish the book, but suggested it would end with K dying in the village, and receiving a letter on his death bed, saying that, although his legal claim to live in the village wasn’t valid, certain ‘auxiliary circumstances’ were taken into account and he was permitted to live and work there. Too late.
Writing my life, one day at a time.
My daily fear was that I would die before I could see my daughters again. I never clearly formed this thought, but always there was a rock in my chest, and I now think of that rock as death. In truth, I died when I lost my daughters, but I went on living. When I finally got to see them, nineteen months after we’d parted, I felt like a ghost of my self. I could never get back those nearly-two-years of their lives. When we lost each other, they were seven, five, and two and a half. When we saw each other again, they were nearly nine, seven and a half, and nearly four. From then on, for the rest of their childhoods, I was only ever their holiday mother, short-dated, and there was never a guarantee that I would see them again, as their father had custody, control, money and power, and I had very little.
Trying to write the story of the end of the marriage and their abduction and the aftermath is the hardest thing I’ve done, after learning to go on living without them and waiting for them to grow up so that we could have choice in how and when we connected with each other. I’ve been writing this story for twenty-odd years, and I feel that this will be the last year of the writing journey. I’ve had it edited, and the editor, whom I trust, pulled it apart, got me to discard large chunks of it and add a lot more. I’ve no idea, after this last rewrite, whether it works now. I thought of sending it to another editor for assessment, but I don’t want to do another rewrite, and I’ve learned that editors and agents are very subjective in their responses to writing. And that the publishing industry is driven by profit. So even if a book is really well written and tells a story that needs to be heard, they won’t publish it unless they’re sure it will make money for them. So I’ve submitted it to the small publisher who published my first memoir, This Place You Know.
That visit to the consulate was erased from my memory, but I had to write it, to make it up. I know it happened, but I had to imagine it. I have no idea of how consulates worked back in the 70s compared to how they do now, so I googled and tried to find out some facts. In the end, I still had to make it up. So I sent it to my nephew who is a lawyer and immigration agent, and asked him if it was credible. He said it was.
Now to get it published.  Another hard journey, but a different kind of hardness.