By
Drema Hall Berkheimer
Writing
Memoir is high on my list of Top Ten Ways to Torture Yourself. But if you are
compelled, as I was, to tell your story, don’t say I didn’t warn you. My memoir,
RUNNING ON RED DOG ROAD and Other Perilsof an Appalachian Childhood, was recently published by Zondervan.
It
was a story I needed to tell.
Born
and raised in Appalachia in the forties, I was the child of a coal miner killed
in the mines, a Rosie the Riveter mother, and devout Pentecostal grandparents.
Writing
about these people and this time and place was the hardest thing I’ve ever
done. It took me six years to complete the book, and for several of those years
I wrote nothing at all, blindsided by memories that struck me dumb. Although I
come from stoic stock and never cried, I could not write a page without a
meltdown.
It
was embarrassing. But I could not stop.
I was
emotionally spiritually physically wrung out and hung up to dry.
Then,
as often happens, fate intervened. A friend, struggling to complete her second
novel, asked if I’d join her for morning writing sessions—the misery loves
company thing. We’d log on at 7:00 AM and write for two hours. It was spring,
and we were to finish by the end of the year. I rolled my eyes at her over the
phone, but I agreed. Every morning I’d head to my office, settle in, and begin
to write. It was awkward at first, and painful too. When there were tears, and
there often were, I wrote through them. I kept at it—morning after morning
became week after week then month after month. By the end of the year my friend
finished her novel and, despite my eye-rolling, I finished my memoir.
I
grew up in a remarkable multi-generational family in East Beckley, West
Virginia, with gypsies, hobos, moonshiners, faith healers, and other quirky kith
and kin dropping in to play character roles in my life story. It was an idyllic
life, with some sad chapters, sure, but many more happy ones. Why then, if it
was so wonderful, did this writing leave me drained? It was an enigma—until I realized
that all the kin I wrote about are dead, except for me. Writing as child
narrator, I got to know them on a whole new level—a strangely deeper and more
mature one. I had not cried at their funerals, but I cried over them now. I’d
had to resurrect them, live with them, and bury them again in order to tell
their stories.
And
yes, it was the hardest thing I’d
ever done.
It
was also the best.
__________________________________________________________________
Drema Hall Berkheimer was
born in a coal camp in Penman, West Virginia, the child of a coal miner who was
killed in the mines, a Rosie the Riveter mother, and devout grandparents. Her
tales of growing up in the company of gypsies, moonshiners, snake handlers,
hobos, and faith healers, are published in numerous online and print journals.
Excerpts from her memoir, RUNNING ON RED DOG ROAD and Other Perils of an AppalachianChildhood, won first place Nonfiction and First Honorable Mention
Nonfiction in the 2010 West Virginia Writers competition. She is a member of
West Virginia Writers, Salon Quatre, and The Writer’s Garret. Berkheimer will
be on the panel with Homer Hickam at his Writer’s Workshop in Beckley WV in
October. She lives in downtown Dallas with her husband and a neurotic cat. The
cat takes after her. Her husband is mostly normal. Drema Hall Berkheimer’s books are Running on Red Dog
Road And Other Perils of AnAppalachian Childhood. You can connect with Drema at dremagirl@aol.com, dremahallberkheimer.com
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