No matter how devastating or upsetting or bewildering…trust the process.
Everything happens for a reason.
mary reed mccall
Moose Tracks on the Road To Heaven Sneak Peek #1
So, in the weeks leading up to the release at long last of my five-years-in-the-writing novel Moose Tracks on the Road to Heaven (which is scheduled for pre-order in mid-December, with publication February 3, 2015!) I’m going to be posting the cover (coming soon!) along with a few snippets and sneak peeks from the book itself.
This first sneak peek comes from the Prologue and centers on the main character, Elena, during one of her childhood brushes with Death (not as ominous as it sounds, since the novel is a humorous, quirky, poignant story about family, friendship, love, loss, and coming to terms with what it means to live when someone you love dies).
This bit of scene was inspired by an actual event at an actual place from my childhood – The Enchanted Forest in Old Forge, NY (now it’s advertised as “The Enchanted Forest Water Safari” – where the fun never stops!) Back then it was only a “fairytale” based theme park with lots of little tableaus, live entertainment by way of animal shows and acrobats, and a few rides.
One of the rides I loved when I was four or five was a “pony” ride like this one, where you could sit on a real, live pony and ride around in a circle seven or eight times. I’ll let the sneak peek fill in the rest:
From Moose Tracks on the Road to Heaven, by M. Reed McCall
“Let’s go back to the subject of Death.
Elena’s two youthful run-ins with the Reaper hadn’t caused any permanent emotional scars (though there were a couple of physical ones); instead, she’d carried with her a bone-deep awareness of life’s impermanence, along with a tendency at moments of deep fear or distress to murmur a phrase that broke her father’s heart and earned teasing from certain of her sisters each time she uttered it: “Am I going to die, Pa?”
The first brush with Eternity happened the summer after she’d turned four, at the bustling Adirondack theme park called Fairytale Adventure. She’d been bucked off the live pony-ride – an attraction where children rode tethered ponies round and round a circle for a pre-set length of time. Unbeknownst to anyone, Elena’s pony had been in the harness for too long. A sore had developed near the edge of his saddle. An insect might have landed on the raw place, or perhaps Elena had accidentally touched it. She couldn’t remember.
Whatever it was, that instant had been followed by a jumble of sights, sounds, and not very nice feelings as she’d sailed through the air and landed with a crunching thud a dozen feet away. She’d later learned that her skull had narrowly missed a rock when she’d finally reconnected with earth. She didn’t know any of that at the time, though. She only knew that her shoulder ached something fierce, her collarbone having snapped upon impact.
However, if all else was muddled, the memory of looking up and seeing the worry in Pa’s handsome face had stuck with her, vivid as blood upon snow. He’d scooped her up and carried her tucked against his chest all the way to the park entrance, where they would find their van and go on to the hospital.
As he moved her swiftly through the crowd, that desperate question had slipped out in a whisper. Pa had met her gaze, his striking blue eyes filled with such love for her, and he’d answered in a calm and reassuring voice that no, she wasn’t going to die. And so Elena had nodded in grave acceptance, blinking away any lingering tears. He was her Pa – the best Pa in the whole world – and he always told her the truth.”
There you have it: Sneak Peek #1. Stay tuned for more snippets in the coming weeks, posted ONLY on this blog, for you, my wonderful followers. 🙂
Colors
View from my side yard November 2014
“Why do two colors, put one next to the other, sing? Can one really explain this? no. Just as one can never learn how to paint.”
― Pablo Picasso
“Mere color, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways. ”
― Oscar Wilde
“Color directly influences the soul. Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another purposively, to cause vibrations in the soul.”
― Wassily Kandinksi
I am in love with colors and have been since I could remember. If I had the skill to paint, I would (I tried…but as Picasso said, one can never really “learn” how. It wasn’t something I could do.) And yet, “colors” come in all forms, which is why I’ve included quotes by a painter, a writer, and another painter who likens the work to music.
My joy comes from “painting with words”.
What do colors – in nature, your home, your clothing, your world – mean to you?
Can You Remember?
And if the person you seem to be now has drifted too far away from the “real” you…perhaps it’s time for a little reclamation. 🙂
Halloween, 1970’s Style
At the Homestead, circa 1975
So, I was going through some old photos recently and stumbled upon this photo – one of the few I have of the epic Halloween parties we used to have when I was in elementary school.
Everyone is sitting around the big kitchen table at the Homestead, chowing down on the homemade pizza, cupcakes and popcorn, along with bowls of chips and corn curls, all while dressed in their costumes.
One of the cool things about this picture to me is that none of the people sitting around the table are me or members of my family: They’re all friends from school or up the road.
See, this was the only occasion all year when I and my two closest-in-age sisters (who were the only ones young enough to have this kind of party, still, since we were the youngest three of the seven girls) could invite several friends each to the house for a “big blow-out” party. Oh, we had friends over all the time, and there was always enough food for another three or four plates, but this was one time when we could have up to 14-15 guests AT ONCE. It was an event planned by us and anticipated by our friends all year.
Most of our friends lived in the small city nearby, where our schools were. We were in the country, and that made a huge difference for a Halloween celebration, much of which could still take place outside, in beautiful mid-October weather.
We’d set up a “Haunted House” in the one-room camp that Pa had built years before out in the woods behind the garage, and some of my older sisters would “man” it. Big, black tarps were strung throughout to make “rooms” and in each room was a different “spooky” tableau…some with moving characters who would jump and frighten those touring it.
We’d have games, like “Guess the object” where the players had their eyes blindfolded and had to guess what was in the bowls…peeled warm grapes for eyeballs, a turned out jello-mold for brains, warmed pasta with sauce for “guts” – you get the idea) 🙂 Of course we’d also play “kick-the-can” and other running-around-in-the-yard-and-woods kind of games. Loads of fun.
It was a great opportunity to be creative, in this simpler time before technology and our addiction to it made everything more accessible and therefore less mysterious and exciting.
Me in the costume my mother made me to be a “Scheherazade”-type princess
One of my sisters as an “Executioner”, complete with a “bloody” axe with which she cut off my head, LOL
I never realized how much work it must have been for Ma, though, preparing all that food. And of course, we almost always had homemade costumes, not just because they were “cooler” than anything we could find in the store, but also, I learned later, because they were more economical. My parents were frugal in all the right ways, so that I never experienced a sense of “want” other than the healthy kind. 🙂
It was an innocent time filled with great memories, when Halloween was centered on fun instead of “evil” connotations, and living in the country made for some rousing good times.
Anyone else have any memories of old time Halloweens to share? Please do in the comments!
Don’t Give Up
The final flower in my garden, persisting through fallen leaves and frosty mornings…
“The flower that follows the sun does so even on cloudy days.”
~Robert Leighton
An Oasis of Tradition (and some Cathartic Pumpkin Carving!)
Courtesy of escapeadulthood.com
So this isn’t a generic pumpkin-carving post. It’s about how carving pumpkins, in additional to being entertaining and leading to some pretty cool jack-o-lanterns, can be cathartic too.
Ma, enjoying the process of carving out her pumpkin’s eye, LOL
Consider this picture of my dear, very sweet, normally-without-a-violent-bone-in-her-body mother about twenty years ago, when we were carving pumpkins out in the back yard. She’s having a good time carving her pumpkin’s face…and maybe getting out a little aggression too, LOL. My father is clearly enjoying the moment, too.
Me and Pa another year, with finished pumpkins on the front steps
Year after year, we’d all have a good time, and it’s an example of the kind of fun I’ve tried to create with my own kids as the years have passed.
Traditions are important. They provide a little bit of something to count on, year to year, when the landscape and the world keeps changing around us (as it inevitably does). We have these moments to recreate and fall back on, to re-center ourselves, bring us back to our roots, and reclaim a little of all the different times in our lives that we participated in them.
Of course traditions come in all forms, whether for other holidays, birthdays, or just things like apple-picking or preparing favorite recipes. Sometimes they are the bridge between people who have drifted apart, giving them a reason to reconnect.
Me around 25 years ago, sitting on the top of the “school bus shelter” Pa built at the bottom of the driveway, kept company by a giant pumpkin and the little orange cat my parents took in
I love traditions, and I’ll probably be writing more about them – at least the ones I’ve cherished – in the future. But for now, since we’re at the end of October, I’ll stick with this one. Although time marches on, our traditions only have to disappear or change if we want them to.
What are some of your favorite autumn traditions, whether for Halloween or not?
The Comfort (and Power) of Books…
Contemplating, reading, imagining, and living various lives through the pages of books as verbalized by some notable authors…accompanied by lovely illustrations by the incomparable Norman Rockwell. What could be better on a cool autumn evening? I think I’ll light a few candles, brew a hot cup of tea, and do some reading myself…
Boy Reading of Adventure by Norman Rockwell
It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it. ~Oscar Wilde
Boy Reading from 1920 GE ad by Norman Rockwell
Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. ~Mark Twain
Most Beloved American Writer by Normal Rockwell
In books lies the soul of the whole Past Time: the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream. ~Thomas Carlyle
Books are one of the great loves of my life, first introduced to me at the knee of my mother and father, as they read to me day after day, and then serving as a faithful comfort in times of joy, turmoil, happiness and distress. They whisk me to other times and places and allow me to live vicariously through the characters and places they inhabit. It’s the only form of time-travel accessible on a regular basis (for all our interest in the activity as espoused by shows like Dr. Who and Outlander) How about you? Do books hold a special place in your life? Any favorite titles?
Grandpa’s Crows
Crow in the tree at the cemetery
Well, technically for me, they’re “Pa’s” crows, because the man whose crows are the subject of this post is my father…but my kids and the other grandkids (and there are a lot of them…I’m one of seven girls, and we each have between one and four kids of our own) got used to calling them Grandpa’s crows.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it seems to me that crows get a bad name. They’re often associated with death or darkness, they’re maligned for having one of the least pleasant voices of the bird kingdom, and many people consider them pests. But they hold a very special place in my heart, for a variety of reasons, most of them tied to my father, otherwise known to our family as “Pa”. Continue Reading…
The Old Button Tin
My mother’s old button tin (a reused, 1950’s Christmas cookie tin), a box of threads and some old “Bondex” iron-on material from the 1960’s
When I was little, I was always fascinated, watching my mother sew. She could hand sew or sew on the machine.
To me it was magic. I learned in later years, that it was necessity. With seven kids to raise on just my father’s salary (at least until I was a teen and my mother started a second career in the insurance industry and worked her way up to a CPCU license), it was more economical for my mother to craft many of our clothes and other items by hand than it was to buy them ready-made. Continue Reading…
M. Reed McCall, Author 