A lifelong nature lover, Ashley Memory counts herself fortunate to live near the Uwharrie National Forest in Asheboro, NC, along with woodpeckers, squirrels, and the odd skunk. She has written for Wired, O. Henry, The Sun, and Solstice Literary Magazine.
Ashley’s essay “One in Ten Thousand Bees” appears in the Summer 2021 issue of Carve. Pre-order the issue here.
Many writers quote the axiom “write like your parents are dead.” That can be excellent advice depending on the situation, but this essay seems to take a different tack, something like, “write with a principled sense of what we owe other people.” It’s not didactic at all, but there’s a sturdy morality throughout that I find captivating. The essay is pastoral in both senses of the word (and the epigraphs from a nineteenth-century beekeeper and minister contribute to this mood). How do you think moral responsibility can contribute to an essay’s emotional breadth?
Thank you, for such kind words. Yes, I have heard that axiom myself, and I don’t believe I could ever write about my parents as if they were dead. Even if they were! They have made such an indelible impression on my life. In writing memoir, I often think of the words of Dorothy Allison, who wrote: “I tell my students that you have the absolute right to write about the people you know and love. You do. But the kicker is that you have the responsibility to make the characters large enough that you will not have sinned against them.”
I agree that our work as writers carries a special responsibility to be fair to the other “characters” in our stories. This also means accepting our share of the blame for the bad things because this is where growth happens. On the other hand, I feel for writers who come from abusive or unhealthy families; it’s probably impossible to find balance. For those writers—and I’m thinking of Jeannette Walls and Glass Castle—to sugarcoat their experiences would indeed compromise the emotional depth of their stories.
At the end of the day, however, the story belongs to the memoirist. Above all, we must honor our own perception of the events, and this is part and parcel of our debt to the reader. Because we also owe our reader the extra gift of perspective. What have we learned from the events of our lives and what lesson can we share?
Much of the essay deals with you and your mother’s 54-years-long relationship, sharing stings and balms on both sides. For example, as a little girl, you find that your mother has written “Ashley is selfish” in your baby book. But you also share your regret for how, when your mother earned her MBA, you failed to celebrate her accomplishment. There’s a sweetness in that balance between grace and justice. It’s almost old-fashioned—somewhat similar to the modesty that we can see in Jane Austen’s work. Jane Austen was a genius, obviously, but she was also very interested in a sense of proportion, and the practice of restraint and prudence. How does this characterization of your work strike you? And what are some of the challenges and/or benefits when it comes to writing nonfiction with a great deal of love?
I am very honored that someone would think of my work in the same breath as Jane Austen, so maybe we should just stop there! Jane was a true genius, a remarkable human, and yes, she showed restraint and prudence but she could also be ironic, funny, and say so much in so few words. I often think of Mrs. Bennett, another mother, probably one of Austen’s most famous characters. She was imperfect, for sure, but she was so very real.
I can’t say that I started out thinking of grace and justice; I began this project with the intent to show that both mother and daughter are also real, and hopefully, relatable to the reader. I could write endlessly about my mother, but that wouldn’t do her justice, would it? From Austen we also learn that writers must pick the things that say the most and leave the reader space to wonder, and perhaps think of their own mothers.
Trying to capture the essence of a living, breathing person on the static page is just one of the challenges. That’s why, even in nonfiction, we think of the people in our work as “characters.” The writer needs to deconstruct and put them back together again in a way that makes sense to a reader who will never meet them in the flesh. There is also the fear that your subject will disagree with your distillation and portrayal. But in the end, can there be any greater testament of love than to create a written record of your life together? This is the primary benefit, and it makes all the work worthwhile.
The honeybees that you and your husband care for are described with such care and precision. You talk about their wings, their eyes, their habits, and their nectar preferences, but they’re still quite mysterious. You call them by many names. Sometimes, they are “machines,” and sometimes they are practically human: “little rascals,” “thieves,” “attendants,” and “foes.” Occasionally, they are “creatures.” What makes a honeybee such an emotional shape-shifter from a writer’s perspective? And how does this flexibility of perception connect to the very human story of change, maturation, and love between you, your mother, your husband, and your home?
I call our bees by those names out of affection, yes, and for the purpose of trying to “characterize” them, but this is not fair. They’re practically perfect, the epitome of industry, purpose, and altruism. Even their thievery is for the good of the hive. I quite agree with Langstroth that nowhere is the hand of God more evident than in the humble honeybee. Nothing happens by chance in their world. As it turned out, it was our actions (our premature separation of the colony) that hurt them. They never thrived and multiplied enough to stay warm over the winter, and I regret to say that the colony I write about in this essay ultimately perished. But we have a new family this year, and they’re robust little warriors. They’re much more aggressive, so I feel sure that they’ll let us know if we do them wrong!
In my essay, the perfection of the bees actually underscores the frailty of the human characters, as evidenced by my selfishness, anger at my parents’ divorce, me and J.P. sniping at each other, and ultimately, our actions that caused the demise of the colony. Still, I never fail to be amazed at the arc of human achievement, particularly our ability to grow and change. This is the value of not being perfect, which is also a theme in my longer work-in-progress, the story of my life in the wild and mysterious Uwharrie mountains and my journey with multiple sclerosis.
Your mother is seventy-one years old in the present moment of this essay. As you move back and forth in time, you intermingle real dialogue with conversations remembered and imagined. You say something, and you imagine what your mother has said, or what she will say soon. There’s something lovely about this fluidity, and the way it allows an ongoing conversation with your mother to be real and not real at the same moment. Is this a habit reflected from your day-to-day life, or is it pure literary technique? When do you choose to bring this effect to bear on the page?
The ancient Greek philosopher Parmenides wrote: “It is all one to me where I begin; for I shall come back again there.” I, too, feel as if I’m living in one continuous moment—past, present and future combined. No matter where we are in space and time, my mother is always alive, always calling me “Ashie,” always sobbing tears of blue eyeliner when Elvis died, and always smelling of Enjoli and 10-0-6, and these memories come to bear at any moment while writing.
In terms of literary technique, I don’t plot or plan as heavily as I used to. No matter what I’m writing, whether fiction, nonfiction, or poetry, I tend to have a general idea of where I want to go and just lose myself in the flow. I try, just as Annie Dillard once said, to “spend it all, shoot it, play it, all, right away, every time.” That is not to say that any piece of writing spills out perfectly rendered. Not at all! Any project takes a great deal of shaping. In the case of this essay, the quotes from Langstroth were fundamental in helping me organize all these memories, and to him I owe a particular debt of gratitude.
When you start beekeeping, your husband hands you a nineteenth-century handbook from L. L. Langstroth. I often ask authors about their literary influences, but it can be imaginatively expansive to read outside of our time, as well as outside of our experience. With this in mind, what are some of the older works that you’d recommend for contemporary writers, and how have they influenced your writing?
I’m a hopeless bibliophile, and it helps that I married one. My husband and I love to spend spare time plundering through used book stores. We have so many books that when shopping we make a pact—if he stays out of the “Aviation” aisle, I promise to avoid “Cooking”! I adore the convenience of online sellers, but nothing beats the serendipity of perusing physical shelves and finding a gem you wouldn’t have even known to look for! This is how I found Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brandt (Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1934). While I love craft books, this slim volume is not that at all. It’s more about how to cultivate the habits and attitudes of a writer, and includes a rather avant-garde approach on incubating writing magic.
I read a great deal of contemporary fiction and nonfiction, but when I want erudition, it’s always the classics, to name a few: Jane Austen, Anton Chekhov, Shirley Jackson, and Vladimir Nabokov. I’ll never tire of reading the first page of Nabokov’s short story “Spring in Fialta” because I just love his syntax and diction.
Lastly, no matter what you’re working on, it never hurts to read old-fashioned how-to books on topics other than writing. I recently stumbled onto a lovely adage in an embroidery manual, The Needlework Doctor by Mary Kay Davis (Prentice-Hall, 1982), that should appeal to all writers. In it she tells us not to fear clutter. “Don’t give up when you’re almost home free. Mess comes right before ‘Eureka’!”