With designer scarves tossed neatly over their suit jackets and not a silver-streaked hair out of place, the ladies sip tea between bites of mini carrot cakes. Chatter fills the living room in San Francisco's posh Presidio Heights. But this isn't an afternoon social; the 22 women are here today to analyze Balzac's Cousin Bette. For the past quarter-century, they've been reading classics and contemporary fiction and then dissecting them under the guidance of literary guest speakers. As group member J.J. Wilson, a literature professor at Sonoma State University, puts it, "These are not ladies-who-lunch."
Nor are they your typical reading group. About half have made the leap to writing, and they gather monthly to read each other's first-person works. Now, the women have published a book, The Subject of Our Lives: Thirteen San Francisco Women Tell Their Stories (Fithian Press, 1999).
The writing circle spun off from the more formal reading group in 1987 after Mary Jane Moffat, '54, MA '68, led a discussion of her memoir, City of Roses.
The talk inspired Jean-Louise "Beenie" Thacher, '44, to propose a continuing workshop in her Nob Hill home for those interested in preserving their own memories. Moffat, a former creative writing instructor at Stanford, serves as mentor and coach for the women, most of whom are now in their 70s.
"The blank page used to terrify me, but there comes a time in your life when you want to reflect a little," says Olive "Babs" Waugh, '48, who helped launch the circle.
The 34 vignettes in The Subject of Our Lives look back on such experiences as quitting medical school, losing one's parents and winning an argument with a husband who's a lawyer. In one story, Waugh writes about the delights of sex after age 70: "Dick's hand may brush my left nipple and I'll suddenly come alive to his caresses, amazed that such pleasures are still within reach. Our children and grandchildren would be surprised and probably embarrassed by our sex life, unathletic as it is, even that we have one at all at our advanced ages. We think they suspect. We'll leave it at that."
Three tales by Joann Reinhardt, '50, focus on illnesses she's experienced. Recalling her 45th Stanford reunion, where she discovered she'd picked up an intestinal bug on a recent trip to Asia, Reinhardt writes: "Evidently the word had spread quickly during cocktails that I had a roaring case of giardia. It turned out during the evening that just about everyone at the party also seemed to have had giardia . . . or their sister or even their dog had just gotten over it. 'You know, you can't have a drop of alcohol,' they said, cheerfully, sipping their chardonnay."
Psychotherapist Jean Gansa, '52, says recording family history helps her work through emotions. In a story about her father's death, she concludes: "Just writing this helps me feel more peaceful."
Thacher writes to capture memories -- both good and bad -- of her time spent living overseas. "Being the wife of the American ambassador has its ups and downs," she observes in her frank account of a high-profile houseguest in Saudi Arabia. "The vice-president of the United States, Spiro T. Agnew, had just completed an absolutely exhausting four-day visit. If I had been able to admire or respect him, perhaps I wouldn't have been so exhausted."
"Often, the process of writing a memoir helps you clarify past events," Moffat says. For those who want to try it, she offers the following advice: "Be as honest as you can. Make connections between things that have happened in your life and the larger implications. That's the difference between a journal and a memoir."
The act of writing is more important than the stories themselves, women in her group agree. "It's not so much what we write, but the fact that we write," says Waugh. "And people look at us and think, 'If they can do it, we can too.'"
Tracy Jan, '98, MA '99, a former Stanford intern, is a Fulbright scholar in Taiwan this year.
