On writing fiction
One of the greatest moments I have experienced as the daughter of my mother was when I graduated high school. The last four years had been difficult. My father died during my sophomore year leaving my mother a widow with two children. Eighteen months later my brother and only sibling died of drowning.
On graduation day from high school I possessed the
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I am the keeper of memories and bloodlines in both my families of origin and immediate relations.
By the time I was sixteen both my father and my younger brother, who was my only sibling, had died. Life had severed my family of four during the span of two years into one of me, and my mother.
It was painful, the losses.
I will never know
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Historically women and mothers have been and encouraged their daughters to live guarded lives. By guarded lives I mean not allowing love to determine the best husband, showing care with whom we associated, not allowing ourselves to find ourselves alone with men to whom we were not betrothed or married.
My mother exhibited similar actions with me. And I confess to doing the same with out daughters. These actions, though
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One of the most exciting things about being a daughter is that I received the charge to carry forth the lineage of both my mother and my father. Not only have they achieved immortality in that they live on in my memory, but I, in being a woman held the capability of giving birth. And with this I have delivered three children, all girls, into this world.
Much is said about men and carrying on the name of a family. A name is but a name. We can change
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My mother was straight and to the point.
I did not always like her brash tone. Nor did I like her unwavering directness.
Then again, my mother grew up during The Great Depression. Born in 1920, she was but nine years old when the Crash of ’29 (1929) occurred.
I remember her describing how they all went to bed, she and her five other siblings, my grandmother had not yet given birth to her youngest child, went to bed and upon waking the next morning discovered, along with reading in the local newspaper, thousands of people who had to that point, held much money, were now poor same as my mother and her family.
Some of these people lived in small town in southeastern North Carolina where my mother grew up.
This proved, I gathered over the many years I heard my mother tell this story, an eye-opening moment for her.
Not only did she grow up poor, my mother saw
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Despite the difficulties I had with my mother I admired much about her. That I admired so much about a woman who could be abusive speaks to the craziness of our relationship and my own struggles.
Yet and still my mother was a hard worker.
Whatever she set her mind to achieve, she remained committed until she had ascertained the goal.
As for not gaining the goal, I cannot remember anything that she set out to do and she later admitted not having accomplished.
This is weird to think about, because there are things in my life that I set out to gain, but for whatever reason have not attained, forfeited them.
Somewhere during the first five years of my marriage I
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Everyone wants to know that they matter, that no one else can fill their role and that they are appreciated.
I wish to have told my mother how much I, her daughter, appreciated her.
But doing that would have entailed, if I were honest, also telling her how much she hurt me.
More importantly, letting her know how special she was in my life, emphasizing the unique role she played in my development, would have included telling her how much I needed her to be kind to me, that I looked up to her and when she lashed out I felt horrible, worse than that actually.
I wanted
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