The Theme Was Inspiration (Or Why I Cannot Remember Prom)

Forgetting is normal, but exactly how we forget—the molecular, cellular, and brain circuit mechanisms underlying the process—remains mysterious.

Vanitas Still Life (ca.1665–1670)by Jan van Kessel

Dear friends,

This newsletter contains an essay about the prom, forgetting, and really bad dancing. It also contains an invitation to a reading (one I’m equal parts excited and scared about). And, especially for those of you who are missing the Creativity Challenge, it contains information about some truly wonderful upcoming classes at our adjacent writing program, Elephant Rock, where the Writing in the Dark workshop lives (and starts up again mid-June; registering now!). And by next week, I hope to have some news for you about a free community space at Elephant Rock for continuing your work with the Creativity Challenge prompts. That work was so rich, and so deep, it feels wholly necessary to have an after party! More on that soon. Meanwhile, the prom.

The Theme Was Inspiration

“Wait, who’s coming over?” my husband asked on a clear June evening several years ago.

“Remember that friend of mine named John? From junior high, when I lived with my dad in Spring Lake Park?” I said. “The smart one who ended up at Carleton?”

“The coffee shop guy?”

“He sold that place—lives in Japan now. Anyway, remember how I told you he was so sweet to me during those years? Even after I moved back to my mom’s—to the student housing place in St. Paul—John’s dad would drive all the way over to pick me up and then haul us around. He never complained.”

“You guys were dating?”

“No,” I said. “I mean, I always thought John had a crush on me. But later, I heard he always thought I was the one with the crush. Anyway, he’s here.”

John sat at our dining table eating leftover spanakopita, drinking wine, and telling stories about Japan. He shared pictures of his many unique pets—mostly rescue cats—and challenged us to pose with our teenagers for a purposefully awkward family photo.

Then, late in the evening, John wondered out loud if I remembered which band had played at our prom.

“Prom?” I said.

“Junior year. Remember?”

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In the brain, the stress hormone cortisol binds to receptors in the hippocampus and amygdala, important regions for learning and memory. Chronically elevated cortisol levels impair recall. This is not an accident. How important to wellbeing is forgetting?

When I met John at Westwood Junior High, I was the new girl, just moved in with my dad. At the end of the next year, I moved back to Mom’s. Moving was a theme. I’d attended ten schools before Westwood, and would attend five more before graduation, the same year my younger sister and I entered foster care. The escalating family crises that swallowed those years are partly why John and I finally lost touch.

Partly, too, why I have no memory of going to prom with him.

Neither of us drank a drop that night. We didn’t smoke, either.

I was simply high on cortisol.

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Memory is our way of preserving our sense of self, our narrative identity. This is called autobiographical memory. When it is faulty, our sense of self will be unstable.

The thing I remember is the dress.

My mother—she had once, when I was very small, sewn all of my clothes herself—brought me to Joann Fabrics. We chose a pattern and yards of white satin and lace. It was 1985. We were conjuring something between Little House on the Prairie, Madonna, and a wedding gown.

This extravagance was out of reach. Still, Mom wrote the check. But she did not sew the dress.

The tailor shop was a dusty backroom on Raymond Avenue in St. Paul, between the corner grocery and the tax preparer’s office. I went alone, wadded bills from my job at Arby’s stuffed into my pocket. The seamstress was brisk and careful. She closed the scuffed door behind me and instructed me to take off my jeans and my t-shirt and stand in front of the three-way mirror. I shivered in my bra and underwear as she measured my narrow hips, my waist, my breasts. Her fingertips grazed my skin, pinching the tape measure, recording the numbers on a yellow pad.

I held myself still and stared at the naked girl.

I watched as she was measured and fitted.

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As soon as a new memory forms, a dopamine-based forgetting mechanism begins to erase it, unless some importance is attached. Important memories are protected from erasure by a process called consolidation. But all memories are susceptible to forgetting. Are all of our selves, then, slightly unstable?

“Not sure how much I’ll remember, but I’ll try!” John told me. I’d reached out to let him know I was writing this essay. Maybe with his lower cortisol levels, he’d hold a treasure trove of lost detail.

“Actually, I’m a little confused,” he said. “Was it your school’s prom, or mine?”

“Yours, definitely.”

“Jeez, I’m going to have to sweep the cobwebs out.”

John messaged his sister and some friends. The dance was at the downtown Minneapolis Holiday Inn with Spiff Cool and the Jets. The theme was Inspiration. John’s sister drummed up a photo in which I grimace at the camera, my ankles tightly crossed in my Madonna tights, my faux wedding garb hanging on me like a costume.

“Sorry I couldn’t come up with more,” John messaged again. “I’m usually better at remembering special events.” Then, after a pause: “Are you a good dancer?”

“Terrible,” I said.

“I remember that! I wasn’t sure if I should bring it up.”

“I hated dancing so much then,” I said. “I was very sad.”

“No, you were loving it!”

“Oh, John,” I said. “I wasn’t loving it. I was just good at pretending.”

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Forgetting is active, not passive. Throughout biology, there are active pathways for constructing and active pathways for degrading. Why should forgetting be any different?

John didn’t know the weight of my life, how shame can wear lace tights, how foster care would soon drown out Spiff Cool and the Jets. I was a girl pretending to be a girl.

I don’t remember dancing badly at prom. Or dancing at prom. Or prom.

What I do remember, it turns out, is more than one thing. More than a dress. I remember a check written on the shoals of a dry account. I remember the hands of an unknown seamstress carefully outlining a body in which I did not quite live. And I remember the enduring kindness of a few good friends like John, who somehow took me as I was, even though it would be decades before I would begin to do the same.

This essay appeared originally in the Star Tribune 10,000 Takes section. It draws memory science from “Dopamine Is Required for Learning and Forgetting in Drosophila,” by Jacob A. Berry, Isaac Cervantes-Sandoval, Eric P. Nicholas, and Ronald L. Davis, Neuron, 2012.

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Thank you for reading my strange essay about my strange prom experience. I am grateful for you.

I also want you to know that on Sunday, May 8 at noon Central I will be reading from my essay “The Cost” forthcoming next week in the Ilanot Review. It’s an essay that I am incredibly excited about and, to be honest, afraid about, as it details what it has cost me to write about childhood sexual abuse and the adults who knew about it. I worked so hard on this essay, and my editor at Ilanot, Marcela Sulak, called it beautiful and said, “Thank you for this enormous gift, Jeannine. We will honor this piece and do our best by it.” I have felt so very cared for by this journal and cannot wait to see the other work in this spring issue—and to hear those writers read on Sunday. Here is a link if you would like to come to this free launch event.

Upcoming Elephant Rock Courses

Finally, we have a whole array of incredible classes coming up at Elephant Rock, and I just want to make sure you know about them!

braiding paradox

how to weave complex truths

with Arya Samuelson

Saturdays, May 13th and 20th 12-3 PM Central, Virtual

tuition: $179

why braiding paradox?

We are always weaving between memory and presence, fact and fiction, sensation and logic, thought and dream. Our stories are woven, too – an amalgamation of paradox, contradictions, and possibilities. Our stories are never one thing, and neither are we.

In this two-part class, we will explore the craft of braided essays as a way to render potent narratives that defy the single story and embrace the complexity of truth.

In the first class, we’ll study braided essays by authors who model the weaving of divergent narratives into a story that is far more than the sum of its parts. You’ll leave with an assignment to play with throughout the week.

In the second class, we’ll share excerpts from our braided essays aloud, drawing ideas and on the spot insights from Arya and other participants. You can expect to walk away inspired by the power of braided narratives, the beginnings of a new essay, and concrete tools and abundant inspiration for how to continue the weaving beyond our class.

More info here.

adversity is the engine

laying down the narrative bones for a memoir, personal essay or novel

with Lisa Jones

tuesdays, May 23rd - June 27th, 6:00-8:30pm Central, Virtual

Tuition: $549

why adversity is the engine?

We read for entertainment, of course, but we also read to gain a roadmap of how to navigate our own adversity. We read to find that someone else has experienced something like our own suffering and made it out the other side. This is the kind of writing we’ll produce in the the generative space of ADVERSITY IS THE ENGINE. The journey of our character (fictional or nonfictional) will be one that moves through some form of adversity and into something like redemption, or at least usefulness. And, of course, we, the writers, will take that journey right along our with our characters.

More info here.

finding the frame

with Liz Chang

Meets 12-3pm Central via Zoom for three Saturdays May 27 - June 10, 2023

tuition: $429

why finding the frame?

Can an essay become a flash piece instead ? Can braid become a collage instead? Can a found-language piece evolve into a braid? Do we determine the form of our work or can our work find its own format, if only we choose to listen and follow what it’s telling us? In visual art, artists often work in multiple media and are guided to select their form, with consideration of the work itself. A painter might dabble in short film, or a calligrapher pick up a block of clay and throw onto a wheel. This is valuable! Because while skillfulness inside of your chosen form or genre matters, we can learn so much by pushing work (existing or new) into other frames. Finding the Frame will introduce writers to new short forms (found-language work, braids, prose poems/micro prose, villanelle or pantoum) and lots of play! While your subject will be your own to explore, this class will encourage you to try out the same or similar themes in different packages to see what will sing. You will be given broad prompts, and we will discuss examples of writers moving between forms and formats.

And several more upcoming classes here.

[Photo: Me last Friday on a rare, rare night out.]

Friends, thank you again for everything. I’ll be in touch tomorrow with our weekly prompt and, as spring unfolds, I would love to write with you one way or the other.

Love,

Jeannine