Margaret Marcus is a repeat client with Modern Memoirs. Her first memoir, entitled Windows Aglow and Other Stories from My Mother's Life, was published in 2019, and her second memoir, entitled Suddenly Upside Down: Recollections from Pandemic Years 2020 and 2021, came out in 2022. The first project took five months to complete, and the second, just four months. In this two-part blog series, we ask Marcus to reflect on what the publication process was like for her, and what it has meant to share her books with others. In Part 1, below, we discuss Windows Aglow.
1. This book is written about your mother in the third person, with quotes and excerpts by your mother throughout. What sources were available to you in reconstructing the story of her life?
Margaret Marcus: I was very lucky to have some of my mother’s journals, the remarkable scrapbooks she kept during university days, letters written by or about her during important times in her life, and wonderful photographs. For years all of this was stored away in my brother’s house and then in mine, and it wasn’t until I determined to write a memoir about her that I investigated these materials. I was thirty when my mother died, and now I was in my seventies.
2. You noted that your mother “carefully preserved memories” in these materials. How did you go about preserving her memories further, in your own way?
Margaret Marcus: My challenge was to design a story of my mother that included what I learned from these materials, most of it relating to her life before I was part of it, but that also included my own memories of her. Over a good number of years, I had written sketches about her, not in any kind of order, and how would I now structure a memoir to incorporate all of this in a meaningful way? In the end, I created sections, each one having its own chapters. The end result is hardly a chronological record, but more of a collage.
“I imagine farmhouse windows aglow that winter night…” with “lamps lit and life simple, all warm and secure.”
3. In cases in which your mother supplied no commentary with these materials, what did you do to flesh out the details of the events in her life?
Margaret Marcus: I did a good bit of detective work. I had been aware of the rough contours of my mother’s life, but how did what I discovered among her disparate materials fit together? What did I learn about her that was new to me? I asked myself lots of questions, and while it’s satisfying to know that I found answers for a good number of them, still others remain. They, too, appear on the pages of my book.
4. How did writing this book help to shape your understanding of your mother? Have you heard feedback from family members who knew her (or didn’t know her) as to their understanding of your mother after reading these stories?
Margaret Marcus: Writing Windows Aglow was a wonderful experience. Without a doubt, it broadened my understanding of and admiration for my mother. My children and friends who had never known her were thoughtful and generous readers, but above all else, it was my brother, cousins, and family friends who did know and love her for whom the book was most meaningful. After all these years our bonds tightened because of it.
5. Why did you select Windows Aglow as the title?
Margaret Marcus: Towards the end of my first chapter, I describe a scene on the farm in Vermont where my mother spent her childhood. I found myself writing “I imagine farmhouse windows aglow that winter night…” with “lamps lit and life simple, all warm and secure.” Aha, windows aglow! That would be my title!
Liz Sonnenberg is staff genealogist for Modern Memoirs, Inc.