family

Winter Morning Memories

9 Comments

shed in snowThis is a picture of a sight I saw most late winter mornings at the Homestead when I was growing up: the sun rising through the woods out back behind the red shed, casting a pink glow over everything.

We lived on what was called a “rural route” and so the school bus had to come and get us an hour before school actually started, in order to get all the kids necessary and get us all to school in time. So I was usually sitting at the kitchen table at around 6:30am, looking out the windows – which overlooked this back yard – and eating the breakfast Ma insisted I have to “get a good start on the day” before the bus came just before 7:00am.

My mother used to even sing the song of the old-time commercial posted below, to get us to eat our Cream of Wheat with a side of buttered toast and some milk or orange juice. It was from an old radio commercial she heard as a girl in the 1930’s, and it stuck with her; she could always make us smile and eat up when she danced around the kitchen singing it. When the mood strikes, she’ll still sing it for me now, with a twinkle in her eyes, and usually with both of us dissolving into giggles before she’s done. My kids think it’s hysterical. 🙂

It was a peaceful and happy time. I learned some of my love of colors, textures, and the gorgeous trappings of nature as well by watching the changes in the vista I saw each morning in the back yard. Everything was snug, safe, and warm inside the house, the beautiful world outside was just waking up, and it was time to start a new day.

I still enjoy sunrises, though the view around me is sadly far more suburban than country anymore. The sky looks the same, though, wherever I am. ❤

How about you – are you a sunrise kind of person?

Seasonal Images From My Home To Yours

5 Comments
image

The tree and decorated mantel in my living room. My chair is the one closest to the shelves; my husband’s is nearest to the camera

Now that my grades are in for the five weeks (even though I just got in another eight inch stack to grade over the holidays) I have a little time to breathe and enjoy the sights and sounds of the season. I thought I’d share a few images from around my house, since I’m a home body and I love to decorate for whatever occasion I can. 🙂

image

A little glass of eggnog with nutmeg gets things going.

imageThis “mistletoe crystal” was a gift from a friend last year. I think it looks really pretty hanging from the chandelier in our dining room.

imageFor me, Christmas-time wouldn’t be complete without some old-fashioned, “clove” oranges. The tradition of using cloves stems back further than medieval times, but the use of clove-studded oranges for scent and sight became very popular in the Victorian era. I made these last weekend (it doesn’t take long) and used the old iridescent fruit bowl my parents bought for me at an old antique/second-hand shop a couple of decades ago, perched on the silver case my sister-in-law bought for my husband and me when we got married 24+ years ago.

image

A close-up of the some of the lights and decorations on the mantel. I think this looks a little like a Christmas card design, don’t you?

image

And a shot of our sweet English shepherd, Cassie, snoozing under the Christmas tree. So cozy!

I hope you’re getting some opportunities, whether you celebrate Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanza, or nothing at all, to enjoy the different pace of the season.

Negativity

8 Comments

Power-over-our-surroundingsI’m having a hard time with this one lately.

I haven’t quite figured out how to manage the space inside my head and heart when it comes to remembering this when certain toxic people – people I can’t completely separate from, since they’re connected to me through family – begin to spread negativity and try to draw me into the suffocating well of it.

I end up feeling panicky, and my heart-races as it usually does when I am faced with injustice or unfairness. The need to right the wrong and try to smooth things over rises up, because I am a peacemaker and a “fixer” by nature.

Except there is no accomplishing that with these two people. So, although I can ask (and have asked) them to stop contacting me, I haven’t resolved anything. The lingering negativity hangs over my head like a bloated, bilious cloud, affecting my every day activities and feelings.

Does anyone have a go-to poster, message, saying, or mantra that helps when times like this arise? Please post in the comments if you do…or any advice for handling negative people from whom you are unable to detach yourself completely! I’m sure I’ll shake it off soon, but some help in getting there would be most welcome. 🙂

The Reason I Write

Leave a comment

inspire

This is what I repeat to myself with all of my fiction.

I don’t have any kind of agenda to “enlighten” anyone about anything (heaven forbid…no, I’m trying to entertain, provoke some thought, and perhaps provide some sense of connection or, on occasion, comfort).

My fiction is not for everyone (and I don’t expect it to be). But I do hope it will find those who need it, who want it, who might enjoy it, or who will gain something from it.

With Moose Tracks on the Road to Heaven, I’m hoping to cross a bridge that couldn’t be crossed when I was writing medieval romances, because of the tight niche of that historical genre; let’s just say medieval readers are not a thronging horde (though I continue to appreciate every one of mine). 🙂

I hope to reach a broader audience with this more mainstream tale about real, poignant, humorous, and sometimes bittersweet life – my story about confronting loss and living through it, and about coming out stronger and with more understanding and peace on the other side of it.

Since it’s dressed up with some pretty funny material from real life, from having grown up as one of seven sisters living in a little house in the foothills of the Adirondacks in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, I hope it will provide some chuckles and entertain as well.

But it will only reach those ‘with eyes to see and ears to hear’, and I know that, like I’ve known with all my other books.

If that happens to be many people, that will be wonderful, but it’s not the reason I write.

Bestseller lists are great, and I’d love to be on some with this book, once it’s published on February 3rd – but only because that will mean the tale encased in those covers “spoke” to enough people and was meaningful, entertaining, and memorable enough to get me there.

For me, it’s about the meaning in a story…the sharing, reaching out to connect with other people, their challenges, tragedies, hopes, and dreams in a way that resonates and has meaning to them.

That’s the reason I write.

The Juggling Act

3 Comments

superwoman4This is how many of us feel on a regular basis (or maybe it’s just me, but I’m going to phrase it like that because it makes me feel better to pull you all into my circus, LOL).

173093__new-year-new-year-holiday-girl-smile-mood-gifts-juggling_pThrow in some of this (because the holiday preparations are in full swing, with decorating, shopping, baking, cooking, and most important of all, spending time with each other, which is the foundation of good memories):

????????And this (because my five weeks grades are due Tuesday)…

 

Final Front Moose Tracks on the Road to HeavenAnd this (because final issues for the book always crop up and require attention, from setting up accounts to creating TOC lists, to creating cover letters and mailing out review copies and trying to build some promotional efforts)…

And I have brewing a perfect storm of craziness that quickly escalates stress to red-line levels. Like on a daily basis. Tempers can flare and cause reactions that definitely don’t add to the serenity of life. 🙂

perfect-mumsAs a mom (even though my girls are teens they still have a gazillion activities, sports, and social issues to navigate), it’s easy to start to feel like this:

What to do?

live-in-the-momentI don’t have any silver bullet, I’m afraid. All I can offer is an idea that occasionally helps me to slow down so I can process what’s happening. It helps me to deflate some of the intensity of stress when it begins to overwhelm: Just live in the moment.

Attitude affects everything, whether its the day-to-day grind or the challenges of facing illness and pain (when my father was undergoing chemo and treatment during his final illness, he reiterated that to me many times, and one of the moments he was most proud was when his doctor’s office staff pooled to together and gave him a little pin that said “Great attitude award”, because he had one of the best they’d ever worked with).

While we can manage some things (like schedules or what we add to them by saying “yes” to too many things), there is much we can’t control. Much that just has to get done and needs that have to be met.

They will be. It will all work out. Just consider what this poster says. It helps. It really does. 🙂

11568-Be-Free-Live-In-The-Moment

 

Anyone else have tips for getting through stressful times?

 

A Bittersweet Gift: The Dickens’ Village

6 Comments
image

A photo of my mother-in-law and her late husband is perched right above the village she created

image

The village all lit up

Last year I inherited my mother-in-law’s rather extensive “Dickens’ Village”. She built it over several decades, and some pieces need repair (like the gorgeous church, which isn’t pictured here because the steeple is broken). But it’s a beautiful collection, and my girls, when they were little, always used to love to go to grandma’s to look at it all lit up during the holidays.

It’s a little bittersweet now, to have it in our home. Her home was sold about a year ago because she suffers from Alzheimer’s. She lived with us for a summer and spent time with each of my husband’s siblings, but as she got worse, we had no choice for her own safety and well being but to move her to a constant care facility about 30 minutes from us. As of now, her disease has progressed to the point that although she usually recognizes that she knows us, when we visit, she doesn’t always know why or how, or who we are.

The village is one of the tangible reminders of what once was in our little family and can never be again.

So we will keep the village safe and put it out with love each year, in memory of all the happy times we spent together. Someday, I will pass it down to my girls, and they can keep the memories – and the remembered love – of their Grandma McCall alive and well.

Vintage Christmas

2 Comments

Vintage-Christmas-card-christmas-33061199-500-363It’s true that I enjoy vintage Halloween and Thanksgiving  pictures…but I adore vintage Christmas images. Here are a couple for you to enjoy  as a start (you know there will be more in coming days, LOL!)…

Vintage-Christmas-christmas-32887773-1200-881This one is a favorite for the atmosphere it evokes. It’s peaceful and warm, all at the same time. It reminds me of the Night Before Christmas book my father used to read to us…and it also kind of reminds me of this scene from Anne of Avonlea (another favorite film made from a book, this version featuring the irrepressible Megan Follows as Anne Shirley. You can see her performing now on the CW’s series REIGN, where she plays Queen Catherine de’ Medici, pictured here on the left, just behind Adelaide Kane, who plays Mary Queen of Scots, and Toby Regbo, who plays King Francis). 1212-final-580x385

I always loved this second entry into the “Anne” trilogy, because she became a teacher in this film and experienced the freedoms of life on her own for the first time. I had my own VHS copy of the trilogy, and when I was a first year teacher (newly-armed with my undergraduate degrees in English and Russian, and a mere 22 years old), living away from home and not in college for the first time in my life, I would watch this video again and again, snuggled into my little studio apartment above the diner in Hancock, NY, where I had my first teaching position. Cozy and wonderful – the perfect situation at a perfect time in my life.

There are many more reasons why Christmas-time – the whole month of December, really – holds such a special place in my heart, as it does for so many others. But those will be subjects of other posts. Here is another lovely image for now, and I’ll save some of the other stories and pictures (and another sneak peek from Moose Tracks on the Road to Heaven) for later!Vintage-Christmas-christmas-32837432-1024-768

Everything in Life Is “Writable” About

6 Comments

97bb327cf4cb4afe9ec1242699591388I love this quote by Sylvia Plath.

However, I have to acknowledge that the challenge of this – the self-doubt that can creep in by lifting the curtain and writing about experiences and people based in reality – was part of why Moose Tracks on the Road to Heaven took so long for me to write. It’s loosely autobiographical, and the “bones” of the book are inspired by true experiences, feelings, and in some cases, people.

I learned that it definitely take some guts to fictionalize these real people, events, and experiences, and I faced a number of roadblocks (from myself and a few others), along the way. Sometimes it’s the worry of offending someone. Other times it’s the self-doubt about “getting it right” and capturing the feeling and moment the way I think it deserves.

It took me quite a long time to keep working the characters and situations in my head, to crystalize the important elements – the essence – of those events and people, but to also ensure that they remained fictional, as opposed to what they would be if I was writing a memoir as opposed to a novel.

Although it wasn’t easy, I also think it yielded a deeper sense of truth and emotion in the writing, for me at least. That this novel is based in reality gives it a foundation I know is authentic. I don’t need to question certain aspects of it as much as I would a book I was writing that contained entirely imagined characters and events.

Have any of you ever incorporated real life events into a work of fiction? Was the entire work based upon these things, or just a scene or two?

Have any of you read works that do this (that you know of)? Is there a difference for you in the reading experience, when you know that the author based it on real life experiences?

 

 

We’re Not “Normal”

4 Comments

imageI don’t know why, but this little wall hanging has always tickled my funny bone. One of my older sisters (I have six of them, for those of you who haven’t been around here long enough to have seen other posts on it) purchased it for me up north around 10 years ago, during one of the years when several sisters, our families, and my parents would rent a great camp for a week up on Fourth Lake in the Adirondack chain of lakes.

We continued to show how “normal” we were as adults when we all were home for one of the reunions we used to have periodically, since several of us are spread around the country; Pa and Ma asked us all to participate in a commemorative family photo session, we shocked the photographer when Pa suggested we do one shot where we were all making crazy, funny faces. So there we all were, in dresses, stockings, and heels, with Pa in a suit and tie, sticking out tongues and making crazy expressions (except for the sisters who were laughing so hard they couldn’t do it). It’s one of my favorite pictures, and if I can scan a copy of it (and get permission from my other sisters to post it publicly, LOL) I’ll share it at some point. 🙂

So I guess that’s part of the reason why the little wooden plaque above just seems to capture the quirkiness and fun of life growing up as part of a pile of rambunctious kids. Being all females only added to the “color” of our lives (and having only one bathroom with the whole house on a well that would run dry periodically made things even more interesting. My father tried to institute really short “Marine”-style showers, but that didn’t fly).

tumblr_m08fgrLNES1qbrsgvI can still remember “counting off” when we got into the van (to be sure we weren’t leaving anyone behind). And I remember in the early 1970’s, watching my older sisters (I was second-to-youngest) in the back room, putting “dippety-do” on their hair and putting in big rollers.

The squabbling about who got the bathroom when was kept hushed and to a minimum, thanks to no one wanting to raise Pa’s wrath and have him institute a “schedule”. He did when necessary, but usually he tried to let us work it out, to learn how to work together. That was sometimes accomplished with talking, but other times it happened with a few well-placed pinches, body-blocks, pointed glares or raised eyebrows, LOL.

There was also an epic water fight, once, that happened when a group of us (all teenagers at the time) were supposed to be cleaning the kitchen but got into some kind of verbal conflict that escalated into physical battle with full-blown spraying of the water nozzle and thrown buckets of water. That particular incident is so amusing for me to remember that I memorialized it in the fiction of Moose Tracks on the Road to Heaven. 🙂

I could write a book with all the hundreds of crazy, fun memories of those times to inspire me (oh, wait, I did, LOL).  Maybe I’ll post that scene as the next “sneak peek” from the book.

So how about you – are you from a prim and proper family, or a bit of a rough and tumble one? Any fond memories from family lore? I love hearing them, so please share in the comments!

Cover Reveal: Moose Tracks on the Road to Heaven

6 Comments

FINAL COVER MOOSE TRACKS

As promised in my last post…here it is, the cover art for Moose Tracks on the Road to Heaven! If you click the picture it opens to a bigger size, so you can read the print.

I chose the image and concept, and then Bri, (of Bri Bruce Productions), designed the cover and pulled it all together to a finished product.

The e-book will be up for presale soon; I’ll post again when it’s available. The print book, unfortunately, can’t be listed for presale but will be available for purchase February 3, 2015.

I’ll be posting another “sneak peek” from inside the book in the next few weeks as well.

Thoughts?