On Sarah Polley & Sitting For An Afternoon

My son went to my father’s yesterday, I dropped him off just after lunch, so he could spend the night. We had tickets for a Neutral Milk Hotel show at the Kool Haus last night (show = awesome; venue = not awesome) and my dad will drop our little guy off at daycare where I’ll pick him up after work. And I had plans for that time–I was going to write, read, rest, nap, and just unwind in a way I haven’t had a chance to do in forever. But by the time I got home, driving in some pretty icky weather, I was, well, let’s just say the only motivation I had was to drop my coat, boots and keys in the kitchen and head for the couch. Where I stayed for ALMOST FOUR STRAIGHT HOURS.

In that time, I did some work, I’m teaching the distance ed session of Publicity for Book Publishers at Ryerson this term, so it’s nice to be able to do it from home, although I do miss the classroom environment. But I also watched Sarah Polley’s amazing documentary, Stories We Tell. In a nutshell, Sarah Polley discovered, after the death of her mother, that her dad was not her biological father, and that led her to looking at how families tell stories, which culminated in her gathering hers to tell theirs.

Coming from an artistic Toronto family where her father was an actor (before finding steady work upon the birth of her two siblings), her mother an actress/casting director, and her family all involved in the business in some way or another, the context of Sarah Polley’s life seems rich with drama, literature, and words in general. It’s a personal documentary, something that’s a hybrid of many different voices–Michael Polley, the father who raised her, her biological father, her brothers and sisters, her “new” family once she uncovers her DNA–and the result is a symphony of tales that come together not so much to explore the truth but to examine the impact of loss. In as much as this documentary is about Polley finding a biological father, it’s also about the loss of her mother–and that’s what resonated so deeply with me. The dichotomy of loss/discovery plays out almost in every scene–all stemming from one simple question Polley asks at the beginning: “Can you tell the story how you remember it?” And everyone seems to remember different bits, snippets here, thoughts there–and the entire film is narrated by a wonderful piece of writing by her father, Michael Polley. How do you tell a story when the central character, Polley’s mother, has no voice–through the thoughts and memories of those closest to her. But, even then, it’ll never be the whole story, and I think that’s the point–that every honest, aching moment of truth isn’t a possibility.

So, I sat for an afternoon on Sunday before we went to see Neutral Milk Hotel, and just contemplated my own stories about my own missing mother. Realizing that while there’s no question regarding the origin of my DNA, there’s many unanswered questions when it comes to my mother. What were her disappointments? I know she must have had them. How did she manage with two kids being so small, and she being so young herself? Where would her life have taken her if it wasn’t taken from her? And I’m not a filmmaker, and for once I’d rather not even imagine. I don’t want to write my mother’s voice into a story and I don’t want to have to explain to my boy about how mommy’s mommy died–but I did, and I do, because, like all of the stories that came together, and evolved Sarah Polley into the fascinating person she has become, all of these stories have made me the person I am too. It’s just a shame that we see ourselves reflected so deeply in our children, at this moment, in the middle of that documentary, I simply wanted to see my own mother’s face smiling back at me. She had a spectacular smile.