This semester, I have been following the blog of author and University of Regina professor Kathleen Wall at Blueduets.blogspot.com. Her comments tend to be very philosophical and grounded in real life. She really looks at the world thoroughly, sees it, experiences it, contemplates it. In reading her posts, I get a real sense of being inside her head and riding the waves of her consciousness. It’s a deep, yet unpretentious, blog, which I like.
In her most recent post, Dr. Wall talks about going to visit an aunt with her father on Christmas Eve when she was a child. She says that her own memories of it do not agree with the memories of her sister. She describes her childhood memories like this:
“So this silent, capable man who is driving us: what is he thinking? Is he feeling guilty for not visiting at other times of the year? Does he see this as a simple duty he must discharge? What role does my mother's impatience play in this pilgrimage? What is his tie to Aunt Nell, given that he lost his mother when he was in his early teens?”
I find this interesting because recently I have begun thinking of my parents in this way as well, as repositories of stories that are ultimately unknowable to me. They are like novels that I can try to decode, but often, in my classes, I feel like I could write several completely different and contradictory essays about the same text, so can I ever really know my parents, or anyone else? Or can I only know them according to the analytic approach I choose to apply to them? Are people who they are, or who I decide they are? Am I me, or am I a multitude of varieties of myself, as decided by everyone who meets me?
I also think about this a lot when I’m with my kids. I wonder what they make of me, and what they’ll make of me when they grow up. I wonder what memories they’re making and how they’re going to re-interpret those memories later in life. I wonder how they’re interpreting my behaviour, what they might one day wonder about or realize about me. I wonder if I will be a bit of an enigma to them, like Dr. Wall’s father seems to be to her, according to her quotation.
Overall, Dr. Wall’s blog gives a real sense of personal engagement with the world, both physically and meditatively. There’s something about it that feels soothing to me. Reading it, I feel like I’m sitting next to her with a cup of coffee and a cat in my lap, too, contemplating the changing colour of the sky.
