Introducing the Badger Family

Well, where are we?   My name is Shannon and my husband, Steve, and I have been married for 21 years.  I was brought up in apartments in Chicago and he was brought up under the runways at O'Hare Airport.   We met at a large singles Bible Study at a large, non-denominational church in the western suburbs, where he was Mr. Hospitality and I was a lowly, recent college grad.  But he took pity on this introverted girl who got stomach pains whenever she walked into a ballroom and talked to me.  We got married 2 1/2 years later and started having babies right away.  (Steve was 31 and figured he had waited long enough to have children and there was nothing else I wanted to do!)  So, Ben was born a month after we moved into our first house and two weeks before our first anniversary.  I had convinced Steve that I really wanted a home birth and, as hard as it was, we were both glad that I had.  

On our honeymoon, Steve and I sat on the balcony of his condo and discussed the direction of our life.  

Shannon: What do you really want to do?
Steve:  I want to spend time with my kids.
Shannon: Okay.  So, what do you want to do while you are spending time with your kids?
Steve:  It doesn't matter.  Whatever will allow me to spend time with my kids.

That turned into a nine-year adventure of praying that God would bring Daddy home while we investigated buying a deer farm, an apartment building, and a camera shop.  We talked about raising llamas and starting a Bed and Breakfast.  We discussed his going back to school to become a veterinarian, or my pursuing a performing career in music and his taking the kids with me on the road, or having a family ministry.  We especially talked about moving to the country in the hope of getting out of debt with a lower cost of living.  But we always understood that Dad being home was the goal, not country living.

With his computer work for various companies, Steve finally ended up at a job that was in a small town/country environment, but there was no housing available with all the building going on and he was commuting so far that some of the children were acting out terribly.  There were only five of them at the time, and we all missed Steve dreadfully.  Well, coincidentally enough, my father (Papa) retired and followed my mother's (Mutti's) inclination to move to Southwestern Wisconsin so she could become a recluse.  They knew of Steve's interest in multi-generational living, and his desire to move us to the country, so Papa and Mutti invited us to dinner one night and said, "How would you like to move up to Wisconsin with us and we will find out what we're going to do when we grow up?"  Steve was 40!

So, we did!  We had two small houses in town while Mutti and Papa located land to build a house for us all.  It was a house like you've never seen, since it was essentially two houses connected by common areas.  My mother insisted that we have our own kitchens, so she wouldn't take advantage of my cooking and she would not have to face our mob for every meal.  

After fifteen years of living together and raising alpacas, which I did all the fiber processing for, my mother decided to retire away from the Badger Bunch, so we gave away the alpacas, and simplified our lives by selling the farm and dividing households. We are still on the best of terms, but Steve's mom, Grandma Grace, is moving in with us. So, we are a homeschooling, home-birthing, home-dadding, multi-generational family.

Preview of "Adopted and Restored"

Almost all of my memories of Charles are in the dark: standing backstage during our Theater Tech class, leaving Marksmanship class after sunset, meeting me at the train station, walking back to the dorm from the campus movie, walking around town discussing what we would do if I were pregnant.

That night, after Paul broke up with me, Charles met me on the train platform coming back to school after Spring Break. How did he know? I never asked, but was there something insidious telling him that now was the opportune moment? That I was at my most vulnerable? It was so dark, as I stepped down from the train, that I could hardly see him. He was just a shape in the blackness surrounded by other shapes drifting around the open train platform, waiting or descending from the humming monster that went from Chicago to the country hinterlands and back again. I had stepped down from the train depressed by the walk to come down the shadowed street, dragging my heavy suitcase, having nothing to look forward to and nothing to look back for. I would never go back home to Chicago again – my father had gotten transferred to Florida. Chicago, my dear city, my home, my lake, the air I breathed, the secret ways through the buildings and under the streets, were cut off for me. Everything was behind me and ahead of me my walk to the college was only darkness, literally and figuratively. And who should be waiting on the train platform in the dark, but Charles. How did he know? How could he know to be there? He was just there, because the train vibrated so loudly I could barely hear him.

“Charles! Are you meeting someone?”

“Yes. You.”

Humpty Dumpty

The good girlfriend

Gets taken to the doctor

By a girlfriend who knows better.

“You are pregnant.

How do you feel about that?”

“I don't know.”

Friend who knows better takes her to the mall.

“Look at the pictures in this book.

Real babies.

Aren't they great?”

A hole I have fallen into

With nothing to keep me company.

No more the good girl.

And what do I do with that?

Who will put me back together again?

Writing a memoir

It is sometimes suggested that you shouldn't write a memoir if nothing has happened to you. A memoir doesn't have to be about your whole life. Leonard Nimoy wrote at least three and Madeleine L'Engle wrote five or six. However, the memoir I am working on right now is about how a single experience affected the rest of my life. 

Memoirs are currently one of the most popular genres of book out. As reality T.V. teaches us, you don't really have to have an interesting life to write a memoir worth reading. Even Eat, Pray, Love is just her thoughts about some experiences that were not run-of-the-mill, but not particular standouts, such as Robert Leon Davis (Running Scared), the man who lived as a fugitive longer than any other, or Princess Diana. Most are not actually written by the person who experienced it, though. You can be a great man or woman, and still not write a great memoir, as Ulysees S. Grant proves. There are the Teddy Roosevelts and Winston Churchills who wrote eminently readable autobiographies. But, most people, even those who write for a living, will often hire someone to write about their experiences. 

I was doing the exercises in a book that either my son had as a college textbook, or my husband got for me from the used bookstore. It is entitled Imaginative Writing. The author has a chapter on memoirs because, to be readable and engaging, a memoir tells a story, with all the visceral description of a murder mystery. It was a relief to read that. It It gave me permission to be as personal in my memoir as I would be in getting inside a character's head.

Have you ever tackled a memoir?