Overly Thinky Narration

One of the things that I spent a lot of time thinking about while I was writing my dissertation is the way that historical event becomes narrative, and the way that the past is shaped into something coherent and meaningful.  This process involves, necessarily, and element of fictionalization; in order to make something conform to any sort of narrative structure, some sort of alteration takes place, and the alteration distorts reality.*

Even when we have things like photographic evidence, it’s only evidence of one brief moment, and can’t possibly represent reality.

Today Margaret was telling me about her playdate yesterday, and she said “Margaret hugged M—and M—gave Margaret a flower and Mommy took a picture.”

Here’s the picture:

Two seconds before, when I began fumbling with my phone, they had been standing there beautifully, looking at the camera and smiling.  But I caught them as they broke apart, and it suddenly looks like Margaret is tackling M—and she isn’t.  For once.

Anyway, they were very cute.

We did get a picture of flower exchange.  I mean, I didn’t.  I pulled out my camera and they did things like tackle each other and pour mulch on their heads.  Humph.

And pictures were taken of me with my kids, which happens so rarely, so here they are.

This is my life.  It’s a little overfull of tackles at times, but it’s nice.

*Trust me.  And I’m aware that in this sort of discussion, clinging to any sense of objective “reality” is probably naïve, but I don’t care.  I do, however, apparently care enough to look up the keys required to get my umlauts in the right place, so that’s something.