A True Story from Today

Some of the hardest parts of my book for me to write are the parts narrated by my grandmother's character in first-person. I feel like I have had to journey through her life as a single mother in the 1930s and literally put myself in her shoes in order to write her life effectively. In doing so, I have relived a lot of what I went through myself as a single parent when my four kids were small (in the same way actors will draw on their own experiences to bring a character to life--I think acting and writing are very similar in that way). It's not always been the easiest task for me, though it has changed my life to go on this journey.

I have had the marvelous experience of talking to a cousin in Massachusetts today, a granddaughter of my grandmother's sister Rose, and so many things have fallen into place as a result of the conversation both by phone and email, and many questions answered. I am about to work on the scene where my grandmother (and Rose and the boys in the family) lose their mother in the great influenza pandemic of 1918. Rose, the eldest, was still just a teenager, her brothers were very small children, and my grandmother was only about ten. It is very hard to put myself in my grandmother's character and try to imagine what it would have been like to lose my mother at that age. Deaths from this strain of influenza were usually horrific, in a word, and cities were virtually shut down, with people staying indoors, and wearing white gauze masks when they did venture out, in an atmosphere of literal terror that was probably a lot like the time of the Black Plague. In fact, the pandemic created such trauma due to the massive deaths in such a short period of time that survivors often would refuse to speak of it afterwards.

I drove to my writing group tonight, feeling that I wasn't up to the task of creating this part of the book, that I would live through this experience in my imagination and I could not handle it. I know it sounds like drama queen time, but I realized if I skipped this part of the book out of not having the courage to go into it, I would miss the opportunity to draw a very important part of what shaped my grandmother's life, and her siblings as well. So, as I have done a thousand times, I asked my grandmother Mary for a sign that I could summon what it will take to write this part of her life, and that I could finish this difficult book, which I have thought of leaving aside a thousand times. I even spoke out loud to my grandmother and said I felt like giving up, that I couldn't do it. Literally before I drew my next breath, the following song came on the radio.



So I guess I'd better listen to my grandma!