Often when I try to write about my mother the same details surface. In my childhood memories she is always busy either working or participating on different committees; when she is home she is tired and does not like to cook. Now that I am an adult, my mother and I talk on the telephone every few weeks, and I think we have a fairly close relationship. However, when I write she appears as a flat, one-dimensional character instead of the passionate, dynamic woman that I know off of the writing page.

In contrast, my father, who passed away when I was seventeen, appears in my writing as a rich, multi-layered person. Because he is no longer with me and I fear forgetting him, I have spent time trying to get down the details of his life: the spearmint flavored Valemints that he carried in his left shirt pocket; the way his breath smelled like cauliflower when he kissed me right after chopping vegetables; how he always let me pour the powdered Kraft cheese into the pot of macaroni because I liked the magical change from bright yellow powder to cheesy, liquid sauce. But my mother, still alive and present, remains a shadow sleeping late on weekends, reading Harlequins on the couch, or hunching over stacks of student papers.

To give you a sense of what this looks like in my writing, here are a few lines from an essay where I try and explore my relationship with my mother right after my father has died:

My father did the parenting. A high school teacher, he made our dinners, history and spelling quizzed us, appeared after school on time. He made the home in which my mother slept after twelve-hour work, and church, and school committee days. Now, I’m not sure her role has changed. I just don’t see her. Where is she? Where am I?

My mother’s absence seems almost to define my father’s presence when I remember my childhood. How can I make my mother a more complex character, how can I see her as a whole person instead of merely a tired, working mom? Where are the details that surface so easily for me when I think about my father?

A few months ago, I read the latest published collection of stories from National Public Radio’s StoryCorps broadcast, Ties That Bind. At the time of publication some of the StoryCorps participants had passed away. When I read these interviews, I thought of my father and wished that I had had the chance to interview him before his too-soon death at 47 from lung cancer. At the end of the book Dave Isay, the founder of StoryCorps, included favorite StoryCorps Questions along with a page titled “Continue the Conversation” that includes ideas like participating in the National Day of Listening and learning how to interview someone important to you. This made me think about my mother. Perhaps I could use interviewing as a way to see my mother in a new light and find those details that would make her the same strong presence on the page as she is in my life.

Shortly after finishing Ties That Bind, I planned a trip home to Iowa to help my mother sort through her storage rooms in preparation for an upcoming move into a smaller apartment. This, I decided, would be a good time to interview her and she agreed. Because we would be going through her storage rooms, I also could have her explain family artifacts to me as we sorted them into piles headed to Goodwill, her new place, and long-term storage. Now to be fair, my project was a little different from wanting to record an oral history of my family. For a great article that talks about how to do oral history and provides good interview techniques, I suggest reading Sheila’s “Interview with Suzan Huney,” in August 2012. My project was more selfish: I wanted information about my mother not to necessarily tell her story, but to help me tell my own stories with more detail, accuracy, and emotional honesty. I wanted to know my mother so that I could better know myself.

The trip back to Iowa was a busy one. As we sorted through boxes, what I loved was finding the trail of history. I uncovered a large framed picture of my sister and me from 1983 in itchy, matching pink dresses that my grandparents brought home from Mexico, and then my mom pulled out those exact dresses from the bottom of a Rubber Maid tote. I found pictures of me and my fifth grade friends in the garage doing a “Swap Meet,” where we traded toys, and then I found the typed contract that my mother made me sign, agreeing to do things like wash dishes and make my bed, in exchange for her organizing and hosting the “Swap Meet.” These artifacts helped to recreate my life, and the life of my family, before I went to college, before I left Iowa, yet our sorting and packing did not tell me much about my mother specifically. That would come the last day of my trip as my mother drove me ninety minutes south to the airport and I finally got the chance to ask her questions about her life.

As we headed down Interstate 29, I started the “Easy Voice Recorder” app on my Nexus 7 tablet, opened up my copy of Ties That Bind, and used the thirteen “Favorite Story Corps Questions” at the end of the book to start the conversation with my mom. I asked her what the happiest and saddest moments in her life were; who the most important person, the most influential person, and the kindest person to her were; what she was proudest of, how her life had been different from what she imagined, and how she would like to be remembered. While I used my book as a starting point, I tried to keep my ears open, ask follow up questions when something interested me, and respect her choice to skip questions. In short, I wanted to be careful not to stick too closely to my “script.”

During our conversation, I found out that my mother’s struggles match my own: we both want to be less judgmental, struggle with letting go of control, and want to be more present in the daily moments of life. We appreciate open-hearted kindness and wish that we opened our own hearts wider to others. While finding similar traits with my mother made me realize what I had learned or inherited from her, it had a much more important impact on me: it made me empathetic. During the hour of our interview, my mother forgot I was recording her; she became a whole person to me, reflecting on what she had learned and sharing these ideas as she would with a friend instead of just a daughter.

One of my favorite stories was about her after my dad was diagnosed with lung cancer. He no longer snored at night then and so when she woke up in the middle of the night she would often reach over and put her hand on his chest to make sure he was still breathing. In this memory my mother is a lover on watch, protecting her partner from death, fully present while he sleeps. Through this memory my mother starts to transcend her role as absent working mom. I start to get down the details.

In my recent interview with Tarn Wilson about her new book The Slow Farm, she explained how she did the difficult work of writing scenes from other family members’ perspectives, even if that material would never get used, in order to understand her family members more wholly. I loved this idea, but I now realize that, at least with people that are still living, I can actually have access to their memories. For this first interview with my mother, I asked general questions. In the future, I would like to do another interview with her asking about specific family events to see how our memories line up or deviate from each other. I could ask her about prom night when she surprised me with a red sequined dress from Kmart that I loved; I could ask about her memories during the night, shortly before Easter, when I was twelve and she received the phone call about her father’s death; She could share how she told four-year old me that she was pregnant with my sister, the sister that I had prayed for every night at the dinner table. Like Tarn, even if I decide not to include my mother’s version of these family events in my writing, by asking her for her memories, I can continue my work of seeing her as a whole person.

Weeks after our interview in the car, as I listen again to my mother’s answers, I feel a slight shift in how I understand her. I am struck by her honest self-reflection, her love for my father, and her constant commitment to my sister and me. Next to my memories of her as a working mom, sit other parts of her: a daughter trying to please an unsupportive mother; a sister who still misses the brother she lost in her twenties; and a woman who is proud of the strong, independent children that she helped raise. My mother has done her part, now it is up to me to start capturing her complexity on the page.

If you, like me, find yourself using the same four traits over and over to describe a close friend or family member, then an interview might help you find ways to see that person in a new light. Additionally, an interview can be a good technique to learn more about yourself or remember those that have passed away. Below are some exercises that might help you with learning how to see familiar folks in new ways.

Writing Exercises and Ideas

• Interview someone who appears often in your memories or stories. If that person is no longer living, you might interview a friend or family member that knew that person well. The StoryCorps website is a great, free resource that offers questions for many different types of relationships, general questions, as well as more specific ones in the “question generator” to help you direct and focus your area of research.

Note: Before the interview it is a good idea to think about how you want to record the answers. In addition to taking notes, there are many free, downloadable apps that record voices and are easy to use. As mentioned above, I used the “Easy Voice Recorder” app on my Nexus 7 tablet when I interviewed my mother. Before the interview it is a good idea to test your recording equipment and to think about a comfortable interview location. After the interview, especially if you recorded it, think about making one or more back-up copies. This might mean saving the interview to a flash-drive (or thumb drive), e-mailing it to yourself, or making photocopies of your notes.

• To help you remember a loved one, have someone else interview you about that person. Again, StoryCorps could be a good starting place for this. They have a whole section of questions devoted to remembering a loved one.
• Interview a loved one that has passed away and speculate about how they would answer the questions. This might help you recall details about the loved one that you may have forgotten. Additionally, this exercise could be interesting to do in combination with an interview from another family member remembering that person.
• To help you write about childhood memories from an adult/reflective perspective, interview yourself at an earlier age. What would, for example, fifteen-year old you say was your dream job? How does that compare with what you are doing now?
• Think of questions to ask a “future you.” If you are forty now, think about asking questions to a fifty-year old you. This might be an interesting way to capture what you want to know, but don’t yet. These areas of inquiry could open up new avenues for writing. For example, if I came up with the question “Have I forgiven myself yet for going to college and not supporting my mother in the first years after my father passed away?” for my “future self,” this could lead me to write about how my relationship changed with my mother after my father died, what I regret, and what she might regret. I also could think about how my relationship with my mother has changed as I have become an adult. Additionally, I might reflect more generally on the ideas of guilt and forgiveness, especially in parent/child relationships.

****

Inevitably when we write our own stories, we tell the stories of others. By representing our characters as fully as possible, we not only do a service to our own writing, but can show the respect to our loved ones that they deserve.

As you start interviewing, let us know what you discover about yourself and those that you interview by posting comments below this article. It would be great to share questions that elicited surprising responses, gave you access to new family memories, and helped you see family and friends in fresh ways. In this way we might create our own Writing It Real “question databank” that helps us develop our characters more fully.