CONTACT

     Soon after I found my way to my mother's grave, I had a dream. She was teaching me to dance. I was a very old man and she was still young and lovely. Still just a girl. She was playing Tommy Dorsey records, and Glen Miller and I asked her if she had anything by the Beattles. She laughed and said to me, "You missed the best music. The Swing music was the music of my time, and there's never been such good music again."

     In my dream she was trying to teach me to Jitterbug, and I was taking my awkward steps, while I stared at her. I just kept staring at her. I told her that she had missed all the wonderful  things in my life-- my marriage to Colleen, the births of our children. She let me finish, and then she took my hand and told me that she hadn't missed any of those things. She had been there beside me.

     It had taken me almost fifty years to find where my mother was buried. That was the spring of 1999, when I was writing the last chapters of Of Time and Memory. By then I was old enough to have been her father.

     The journey of this book, which ends in the Lutheran Cemetery in Hatfield, Pennsylvania, began with a photograph that my father sent me at Christmas in 1997. It was an old black and white picture of a bride and groom in the back seat of their honeymoon car, a picture which evoked a time just after World War II and carried with it a high sense of promise in the faces of the young husband and his beautiful bride who wore a garland of flowers in her hair.

     Except to tell me when I was a small boy that my mother's name was Peggy and that she was in heaven, my father never spoke of her. I didn't know that she was just nineteen years old when she died, or that she lived only sixteen days after she gave birth to me and my twin brother in August of 1950.

     But now my father had sent me this photograph, and after all the years of silence, we began to talk about Peggy. Or I should say, I began to ask my father questions. And when I discovered that he no longer remembered his own love story- where he had first seen Peggy, where they were when he asked her to marry him or what had caused her death-- I committed myself to recovering that love story for him. Here was my intention: I would go back to my mother's home town and find everyone still alive who had known her and my father during the eleven months they had together before her death and I would write their love story and present it to my father as a gift to him in the last years of his life. Here was an old man who, in order to survive the terrible pain of his broken love story, had made himself forget how greatly he had been loved as a boy. But I would give all of that back to him now.

     Because my mother's death was the saddest thing people in Hatfield could remember, no one had forgotten her. There were the bridesmaids and ushers from their wedding, the school teachers, shop keepers and neighbors, all of them eager to share their memories with me. Some of these people had wondered for half a century what had killed this young girl and what had become of her husband and their twin babies.

     It was, for me, a labor of love and the writing of this book -- five hundred mornings from 4am until 10-- was the first effortless writing I had ever done in my life. I awoke each morning to the sound of my mother's voice in the darkened room, a voice that is sewn through the sentences of this book.

     What I have learned from all of this is nothing less than the mystery of love. Almost fifty years ago my mother died when she was nineteen years old-- just when she was beginning to believe in the possibilities of love. She gave birth to me and my twin brother, and sixteen days later she was dead. I knew her for only sixteen days. But this is the exquisite nature of love's mystery-- that day they buried my mother I already loved her enough for her death to cut a gash across my heart which never healed, and which led finally to this book which is a collection of mysteries and dreams. For most of my life I was searching for something that I could never name. Then when I began to hear Peggy's voice and to write this book, I realized that I had been searching for her. But the moment the book arrived from the publisher and I saw my father's photograph on the back cover, I knew that I had also been searching all my life for a way to thank him. To thank him for not giving up his life. To thank him for going on in the world. For living for me and my brother.

REVIEWS

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

"This memoir of his discovery process braids earnest, if effusive, ruminations with novelistic passages in which Snyder steps into his mother's consciousness to narrate her story. Some readers may find this fictional approach less an act of devotion than a strange appropriation of her life, since she is not present to forgive errors of fact or omission. But Snyder's painstaking evocation of his emotional odyssey in search of a young woman with extraordinary courage will resonate with most readers."

KIRKUS REVIEWS

"Of Time and Memory is not so much a biography as a "story.'' One has to suspend disbelief when the narrative re-creates scenes that the author could only have invented, but then imagination must play a role in telling any love story. At his best, Snyder offers poignant glimpses into everyday family situations, reminding us of the love present in our own lives. A bittersweet story."

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW / NANCY GAVILANES

"Of Time and Memory reads like a mystery story and it is that suspense, coupled with Snyder's honest prose, that is most engaging." - read more

BIOGRAPHY MAGAZINE

"A compelling memoir...wise and compassionate."  MEMOIR . . . WISE AND COMPASSIONATE."

SMALLDEMONS.COM

"A heartbreaking, overwhelmingly beautiful book, Of Time and Memory is a story of remembering--and reclaiming--the fragile mystery of a beloved life."

LIBRARY JOURNAL

“This memoir, which reads like an intriguing love story, details one man's attempt to find out about the woman who died 16 days after giving birth to him and his twin brother in August 1950. As a five-year-old, Snyder saw his parents' wedding photograph as it fell from his father's wallet and wanted to know who the woman was. Here he exerts exhaustive efforts to examine medical records, visit old family friends, and locate medical personnel who were present at the birth to find out why his mother died. Apparently, the family's devout faith was a factor in the mother's decision to carry the twins full term, without regard for her own health. Snyder's father was so devastated by her death that he could not relive memories of her with his sons; it is amazing to read how the philosophy of not telling the children too many details damaged the entire family. Readers have to admire Snyder's determination as he unfolds his parents' courtship and brief marriage: he uncovers all the medical details and even gets his ailing father to unveil the wedding album. This sensitive, spellbinding memoir will be appreciated by a wide audience; recommended for public libraries."

RADIO INTERVIEW

OF TIME AND MEMORY

My Parents' Love Story

TV APPEARANCES

Revisiting the Past To Share a Mother's Untold Story

Don Snyder never got to know his mother. She died just sixteen days after he and his twin brother were born in 1950. The truth about her death remained a secret for decades. Today on Talk of Iowa, host Charity Nebbe talks with Don about discovering his mother’s secret and what he hopes to accomplish by telling her story.

Audio is the property of Iowa Public Radio - visit their website at www.iowapublicradio.org

Iowa Public Radio

DISCUSSIONS

Don J. Snyder on the Diane Rehm Show to talk about "Of Time and Memory" on September 14, 1999

Don Snyder discusses his new book, "Of Time And Memory" (Knopf). It's the story of how and why he set out to learn about the mother he never knew, who died just days afer he and his twin brother were born.

Audio is the property of the Diane Rehm Show and WAMU 88.5 | NPR - visit their website at www.thedianerehmshow.org

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