Teller of Tales This tale is a history, a fable, a prayer of those gone before me, now gathered with care. The diaries and pictures and letters enclosed deciphered my kin and what they supposed. Those who are living—their stories intact, Those gone before us—who knows what was fact? I met not the … [Read more...]
Zane Gray and Nancy Drew
Audio: click arrow to play ~ I wondered if Mom moved a lot on purpose, holding out for the day I wouldn’t find my way home. Moving all the time made me anxious, especially with not having a good sense of direction. I got around on my own, and as soon as I figured out how to get back and forth to … [Read more...]
Labor Pains
Lordy, I swear it was easier giving birth to my children than birthing a book. To share my pain: Last September (2013) a whisper inside told me to record an audio of some passages from a family memoir I wrote ten years ago. After one editor, an illustrator, a book cover/website designer, a voice … [Read more...]
Holy Cards, Hell, and High Water
(listen to audio) Summer 1949 • Sonora ~ Sonora was a backwater with no Catholic school, so every summer five young Franciscan nuns in black habits and white wimples were imported to bring the schoolchildren a proper Catholic education. Father Gilmartin, high in his pulpit, was deeply … [Read more...]
Beginnings and Endings
click arrow to listen to audio version: December 1952, Sonora, California The first time our mother left was in April of 1950, before I was two. Claudia was seven years older than I was, so that made her eight; Betty was ten, Carleen was fifteen, and Larry sixteen. Carleen snapped at us. “For … [Read more...]
Perms
(Listen to Audio) Carleen always gave us a Toni the day before school pictures; she was making us beautiful. She shampooed us, yanked our snarls, swore at us to quit sniveling, then sat us in a row at the yellow Formica kitchen table. With old bath towels draped over our shoulders, Betty, Claudia, … [Read more...]
Nothin’ But Trouble
August 1948 • Sonora I was welcomed into the family two years after Mom’s first breakdown, but not by her. She didn’t want another child; she wanted out. As far as she was concerned, I was a fifth burden tacking on eighteen years to her prison sentence. Another eighteen years of not wanting to be a … [Read more...]
If It’s Not One Thing… It’s Your Mother
Audio: click arrow to play ~ We think our life is someone else’s fault. As victims of circumstance, blown by fate and buffeted by winds, we need somebody to pin it on. Our father often takes the heat, but usually it’s our mother. We also blame the schools, the government, and the past. If it … [Read more...]
Positively Haight Street, 1968
Audio: (click arrow to listen) 1968 was the year Eldridge Cleaver published Soul on Ice. He and his wife Kathleen, who had the most immense head of hair I'd ever laid eyes on, banked at my teller window. It was the year of the Yippies, Black Panthers, and the SDS, the year Martin Luther King was … [Read more...]
Book Launch @ Readers’
Passages from Behind These Doors: A Family Memoir ~ I posted on Facebook that my book launch Thursday night was a "Life Event." It absolutely was. I felt held, seen, heard, and loved. It was joyous and my heart was filled to the brim. It could very well be the high point of all this (and you know … [Read more...]
Unleashing the Flying Monkeys
Writing a memoir is one thing, having others read it is another; it's akin to being a nude model for the first time in front of an art class. But standing naked in front of strangers (or worse yet, in front of family, friends, and everyone in town) has nothing to do with me or what I look like, it’s … [Read more...]
About “Behind These Doors” Published Excerpts
My writing began with “Queen Bee,” a short piece I wrote some years ago that cracked me open like an overripe pomegranate, spilling emotions I’d kept inside since I was a kid. When I shared it with my siblings, it gave us a connection we hadn’t had. That led to a reunion, created out of my interest … [Read more...]