INTRODUCTION The author of a memoir must strike a delicate balance. Drama is necessary, but melodrama tips the scales. The sweetness of nostalgia occasionally turns saccharine. Readers want honesty, not exhibitionism, and writers struggle to revisit tender memories without being sentimental. But when that balance is struck, the resulting work is as rich-or richer-than a finely wrought piece of fiction. Catherine Gildiner''s Too Close to the Falls is an example of such a memoir, a fresh chronicle of the author''s own awakenings-of the mind, spirit, and body. Catherine grew up in Lewiston, a small town in upstate New York, not far from Niagara Falls (the "Falls" referred to in the title). The Niagara River, she points out, is visible from both Canada and America.
To the casual onlooker, the river appears calm, but the acute observer senses the dangerous eddies and currents beneath its surface. Young Catherine was clearly the latter, and even at the tender age of four, had an uncanny knack for asking the unanswerable question-or the question that no one wanted to answer. In a series of vignettes, the reader is introduced to the residents of Lewiston who field precocious Catherine''s inquiries. On the front-line are her parents, Mr. and Mrs. McClure, who were blessed with Catherine''s birth late in their marriage. Mrs. McClure was a fascinating departure from the typical 1950s housewife.
She used the stove only to warm mittens, dodged drop-in visitors by "hitting the floor," had an insatiable appetite for history, and was meticulous in her fashion sense. Mr. McClure-kind and hardworking-owned the local pharmacy. While the McClures fostered Catherine''s inquisitive nature, her excessive energy drove them to solicit a local physician''s advice. His prescription: put her to work. And so began Catherine''s childhood career-accompanying Roy, an employee of the pharmacy, on his deliveries. In the opening chapter, a snowstorm prevents Roy from getting Catherine, only six years old, home safely after a party. He takes her to Niagara Falls for the night.
They dine on "Sassy-fried" chicken; Catherine drinks Shirley Temples and eats Maraschino cherries. She didn''t imagine that a world even existed where everyone looked like Roy. When Roy brings Catherine home the next morning, a policeman and a tearful Mrs. McClure greet him. Catherine''s gleeful recounting of the night''s adventure only inflame the situation. What''s the big deal, Catherine wants to know, and why is everyone being so rude to Roy? Roy left an indelible impression on Catherine, and it is in his presence that she begins to suspect that reality is relative, and that life deals everyone a different hand. But Catherine also recognizes that one immutable fact is that everyone needs medicine, even Marilyn Monroe. When the film star is in town filming a movie, Catherine and Roy deliver a prescription to her hotel room.
Catherine is shocked that the actress parades around in her slip, stands too close to Roy, and has a bad dye job. She thinks Marilyn looks trashy. Roy, obviously, thinks otherwise. Again, Catherine has a hunch that things just aren''t what they seem. As Catherine comes of age, asking difficult questions no longer suffices-she wants answers. The double standards embedded in the town''s social order, and in Catholicism, enrage her. Her genuinely heartfelt efforts to figure out life within the boundaries of "acceptable" behavior either go unnoticed, such as her attempt to canonize Warty, or are altogether used against her. Engaging in spirited debates within Mother Agnes''s classroom earns her the nickname "doubting Thomas.
" While Catherine has a ferociously questioning attitude during her teenage years, the author manages to maintain throughout her memoir a gentle yet vigorous tone as her perception of the world begins to crystallize. In the powerful and ironic scene for which this memoir was titled, Catherine discovers a painful truth about Father Rod, the first man to respect Catherine as a woman, to embrace rather than squash her vigorous questions. Does this revelation represent the ultimate betrayal, or just another example of the duplicity and moral ambiguity ever present in life? One only assumes that that is the very question that drove Catherine Gildiner to craft such a probing and eloquent retelling of her childhood in Lewiston, a small town in upstate New York, not too far from Niagara Falls. ABOUT CATHERINE GILDINER Catherine Gildiner has been in private practice in clinical psychology for nearly twenty years. She writes a monthly advice column for Chatelaine , a popular Canadian magazine, and contributes regularly to countless other Canadian newspapers and magazines. She lives in Toronto with her husband and three sons. A CONVERSATION WITH CATHERINE GILDINER Are you a fan of the memoir genre? Whose work do you enjoy reading? As a child in the 1950s, I devoured all the bright orange books in the library that were biographies of famous women. I read and reread Louisa May Alcott, the author of Little Women , and Clara Barton, the founder of the Red Cross.
I used to leap off my bed at night pretending that I was Clara jumping off the horse-drawn ambulance to care for the wounded. As a teenager I devoured The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Soul on Ice . As an adult I still like memoirs, particularly childhood volumes. For example, I loved Simone de Beauvoir''s Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter and Prime of Life . I also liked Jill Kerr Conway''s The Road from Corrain about her childhood in Australia. I preferred it to her second volume, True North . In the last few years I would say my favorites are The Liars'' Club and Cherry by Mary Karr. What was the most difficult part of telling your story? Was the editing process difficult? Do you feel like the vignettes included here represent the "turning points" in your life? The most difficult part of telling my story was dropping the childhood veneer of toughness that has always served me so well.
In my first draft I only told the funny stories about Roy and our adventures. It was hard for me to voice my attachment to him and the loss I felt when he was gone. Sentiment has always been hard for me to express. Another difficult part was Father Rodwick. Anger and a quick tongue are my fortes, but that part of my story forced me to expose my vulnerability, which took a few drafts. It was a good thing to have to do because it helped me to grow and to realize feelings I didn''t even know I had until I saw them on the page. The editing process was not difficult. Early on the editor suggested that I jettison my last chapter where I tell what happened to everyone as an adult.
He suggested that although it was interesting, it broke the childhood voice. I recognized right away that he was right and we just pressed "delete." The editor made very few other changes. In fact, it took me less than an hour to deal with his suggestions. I feel that the events included in the book were defining in terms of way stations on the route to adulthood. But there are still some more turning points in my life that I haven''t explored in the book. It is difficult to decide when childhood ends. The death of my parents, leaving the United States, and marrying a man from Europe are all turning points that occurred after the conclusion of Too Close to the Falls .
Gee, as I''m saying this I''m wondering if I should write a sequel! In your book, you alluded to the fact that both of your parents died relatively young, and possibly from illnesses related to industry in surrounding Lewiston. Was there ever a point where that was the focus of your memoir? Did you undergo a shift in emphasis while writing your book? I decided to write a childhood memoir and end it at the age of thirteen, when my family moved to Buffalo and my father sold the store. It would have been too difficult at that point to introduce new characters. My parents'' illness occurred after that move and was not a part of the carefree mood of what I felt was my childhood. This, of course, changed abruptly when my parents were ill and eventually passed away. My life in the 1950s in Lewiston was light years away from my life in public school in Buffalo. Just as the ''50s were politically innocent and carefree in the Eisenhower years, so was my life. The 1960s and ''70s were full of political tumult, as was my life.
In fact, the events in my life mirrored the political arena as we all watched Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., die. Those of us who had never questioned the U.S. government to make the right choice lost our innocence as the Vietnam War unfolded and the Nixon tapes came to light. How long did it take for you to finish Too Close to the Falls? Did you keep a journal growing up? If so, was it helpful in crafting this work? It took me seven months. I never kept a journal as a child other than the useless kind that had a key and wide lines called "my ponytail diary." I threw it out when I lost the key.
(It was blue plastic and matched "my ponytail jewelry box" and "my ponytail tote record carrier.") Actually I never planned to write a memoir until a friend told me I had a weird childhood and should write about it. I wrote one chapter and sent it in. To my shock I received an advance check in the mail with a post-it note on it that said, "finish it"-so, I did. Do you think that it is necessary for memoirs to incorporate certain elements of fiction? Is it "fair" to fictionalize memories? Where do you draw the line? A memoir is different from a history or biography. Memory is made up of many unconscious elements and each psyche filters or distorts reality differently, or maybe I sh.