Several years ago, Jane MacDuff inherited a stack of her own letters, all addressed to her mother.
"My mother saved every letter I wrote," MacDuff said. "And I wrote her once a week."
As she looked them over, MacDuff knew she wanted to do something with the letters, but wasn’t quite sure how to use them. Around that same time, about five years ago, she found out about a Writing Your Personal History Group at the Vienna Community Center. But it wasn’t until MacDuff went to her first class that she realized the class was designed for senior citizens.
"I was the kid for a while," MacDuff said.
Even so, MacDuff kept going to the class and she now has four notebooks full of her written memoirs. Surprisingly, she has rarely used her mother’s letters.
"They give us a topic and we think back," MacDuff said. "Topics can be things like, describe your yard when you were little."
THE WRITING GROUP has been meeting every week for 12 years. For each meeting, one of the members will introduce a topic, on which the entire group will write a one- to two-page vignette. Then group members will read their writing in front of the entire group. Although group members might offer encouragement to other writers, there is not much critical scrutiny.
"For people looking for something on a more technical level of writing, there are other places you can go," said Cheryl Harlan, who organizes senior programs at the community center. "But for people who like the idea of group reading and memory stimulation, this is good."
According to Harlan, group members become comfortable sharing personal aspects of their lives. She called the class a "confessional" where members reveal personal secrets that even close family members don’t know.
"We share our joys and concerns," said group member Jim Merfa. "We don’t say, ‘Oh, you could have written this instead.’"
On Thursday, May 2 at 10 a.m. the writing group will host its annual symposium at the community center. At the symposium, which is being organized by Harlan, author Robert Middlemiss will serve as the keynote speaker. Members of the group will read some of their memoirs, and anyone who attends the symposium will be asked to take part in a writing exercise to explore forgotten memories. The fee for the symposium is $2 , payable at the door. But attendees must register in advance by sending their name, address and phone number to the Vienna Community Center, 120 Cherry Street, S.E., Vienna, 22180. The course title, Personal History Symposium, must be included in the registration. For more details call 703-255-7801.
"SOME PEOPLE, when I approach them to be in the class, they say, ‘I don’t want my grandkids to know what I’ve done with my life,’" Harlan said.
For Merfa, one of his main reasons for attending the class is so, one day, he will have a booklet he can pass out to his children and grandchildren. Merfa has been coming to the class for a year and a half and, in that time, he has accumulated around 50 pages of writing.
MacDuff hopes her granddaughters, who are just a few years old, will one day appreciate her memoirs.
"Someday they may be interested in the little details, like what kinds of things their grandmother would play with when she was a little girl," MacDuff said.
She remembers the story of her family’s migration to the United States, as told by an aunt. It was the 1870s when her family came over from Germany. MacDuff’s grandmother was only two years old at the time, and she was going to be left in Germany. But at the last minute, the family changed its mind. Someone rushed the baby to the train station and, as the train was leaving, passed MacDuff’s grandmother through the window. She wrote about this story for the class, but MacDuff would like to know more about her family’s journey to America.
"I wonder why they came over, what were the boat conditions," MacDuff said.
She hopes her memoirs may help answer those kinds of questions for future generations. Harlan said the classes also help jog the members’ memories.
"Someone told a story about how before margarine existed they had oleomargarine tubes," Harlan said. "They told a story about the margarine popping out. People said, ‘Oh, yeah, I remember that.’ These are the kinds of things that, for future generations, are priceless."