Parents

 

It’s often said that teenagers think their parents know nothing, and suddenly, when those teens reach their 20s, their parents become intelligent again.

That was not my experience.

I wasn’t the kind of kid who got into trouble. Most of my school friends didn’t live near me, so I didn’t get to hang out with them. Those who did live near me had jobs. I couldn’t get a job, even after I got my driver’s license because people didn’t believe I was old enough. In those days there was no photo on the driver’s license. When I was 16, most people thought I was about 13, if that.

The people I spent the most time with were the other people who were in the church guitar group with me. We had an adult who ran the group. We met at the church on Tuesday evenings to rehearse. Occasionally, we went somewhere afterwards, or had a Saturday afternoon outing. In those cases, the leader told the parents and gave them a time to expect us home. On school nights, other than Tuesdays, I was home, doing homework or watching TV.

I wasn’t terribly burdened by peer pressure. I didn’t do things simply because someone else did it. Smoking was one of those things.

My father smoked. There were ashtrays in nearly every room of the house. The stench of smoke was usually somewhere, except in the daytime, when my father was at work.

Whenever we went to Philadelphia for the day by train, we would meet up with my dad, who worked in the city, and after dinner, take the train home. Traveling with him meant spending the entire ride in the smoking car, with its persistence of concentrated smoke that not only clung to clothes, but also burned the eyes and made breathing difficult.

I’d had summers filled with getting cigarette ash blown into my eyes and onto my clothes when my father flicked cigarette ashes out the window during drives in a car without air conditioning.

In addition, every morning I awoke to the sound of my father coughing long enough and hard enough to make me expect to hear a thud on the floor from his fall, bereft of breath. That it never came was a daily wonder to me.

My eldest brother was exposed to the same thing for longer than I had been. That he had started smoking himself at 14 or 15 was beyond belief.

His friends smoked. They all thought it was cool or sophisticated or simply grown-up. While my friends and I pretended to smoke when we were given those disgusting chalky mint flavored candy cigarettes at the corner store, I never would have considered ever taking up smoking. And I made that decision when was only seven or eight.

While this was the early ’60s, before the Surgeon General’s warnings on cigarette packets, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that weeds wrapped in paper, lit on fire and the smoke inhaled into your lungs wasn’t going to be good for you. That was an eight-year-old’s conclusion. What was wrong with the adults?

My parents had forbidden my brother to smoke. He was apparently not able to figure out that he would eventually have the same cough as my father. Or that my mother, who didn’t smoke, could smell the smoke on his clothes and his breath. It apparently never occurred to him that if he was going to sneak smoking, he should at least use mint gum or mouthwash to hide the fact. He thought he was getting away with something, even though on at least one occasion he was careless enough to leave a lit cigarette on the windowsill in the bathroom. I found it.

My mother tried bribing him, promising that if he didn’t smoke and waited until he was 16, she would buy him a pipe.

I never understood what was so magical about waiting until age 16, or how a pipe was any better than a cigarette. A more treatable cancer, perhaps?

My father eventually overruled my mother, perhaps recognizing that my brother was simply sneaking cigarettes and lying about it. Why else would he suddenly be interested in walking the dog every night?

When my brother was a few months shy of 16, my father told him he could smoke. It took him until his mid-60s to finally succeed in quitting.

When my peers tried to pressure me into smoking, I said, “No thanks,” and made no secret of how stupid I thought anyone who smoked was.

At the cusp of my teen years, I had two friends I chose to let go. Each, at different times demonstrated that they thought shoplifting was cool. I was not about to be a party to that. Even though I wasn’t participating in the theft, I didn’t want to be caught with either of them and be tarred with the same brush. In each case, the girl wouldn’t listen to me, so I walked away, and that was the last time I had anything to do with them.

I wasn’t some goody-two-shoes. My non-smoking brother and a friend had decided several years earlier to try stealing something out of the local grocery store, just to see if they could get away with it. They, of course, were caught.

In those days, the store manager called your parents rather than the police. I well remembered what my father had done to my brother once they got home, and assumed it would go worse for me if I ever tried it, having not learned from my brother’s mistakes. Besides, both girls’ behavior was so far from my moral compass that I didn’t think they were worth remaining friends with.

Where my parents and I were at odds during my teen years was my not being allowed to do things they let my brothers do, for no better reason than that my father had failed to give me a Y chromosome. The double standard rankled.

What I didn’t know when I was a teen was that women in the U.S. at the time didn't have a lot of rights. They weren’t even allowed to own their own credit cards. Married women had to have their husbands co-sign for credit cards, and banks could refuse to issue a credit card to an unmarried woman up until 1974, the year after I graduated from high school.

While I was still in college, I was sent an application for my first credit card, which was, I believe, from Macy’s. I applied simply because I could. Once I received that, I had my entre into the world of the credit cards I actually wanted.

I was always good with finances. I didn’t spend simply because I had plastic. I only bought what I needed and could pay for.

My parents tried to instill fiscal responsibility in the three of us kids. They succeeded with two of us. The other, not so much.

My parents didn’t buy us just anything we wanted. If one of my friends got something I dreamed of having, I might ask for one. We generally only got gifts for birthdays and Christmas. It was rare, indeed, if I got some inexpensive toy if there was money left after the grocery shopping was done. First of all, such toys were often cheaply made, and wouldn’t last. Secondly, we had no reason to expect a gift if it wasn’t a birthday or Christmas. There were poor children whose parents could only afford such toys, and they should really be left for them.

If I pointed out that one of my friends had something I wanted, my mother would flippantly suggest I go live with that child’s family. My other option was to save up for what I wanted.

In our family, once we started school, we were given an allowance. At that age (6) I received 25 cents a week. My brothers were older, so they received more.

Allowance was originally meant to be a payment for doing specific chores. My mother never ended up liking the way I did any assigned chore. I made too much of a mess washing dishes, didn’t dry the silverware sufficiently, and did a dreadful job making the bed. She didn’t trust me to dust her breakable knick-knacks, and I always ended up setting the table backwards (cutlery on the wrong sides)because I was left-handed.

My incompetence in chores I wasn’t interested in doing wore her down. Eventually, none of us did chores, but we still received our allowance. My parents wanted to teach us how to handle money.

I remember the excitement every four weeks when I could exchange my four quarters for a dollar bill.

We each had a Band-Aid tin to keep allowance in, in the top drawer of the buffet in the dining room. Each was slightly different, so everyone knew their own. My parents had zero tolerance for thieves, so no one had to worry about anyone touching an allowance box that wasn’t theirs. 

For those who think I'm giving too much away, my parents are both dead, the house sold, the furniture elsewhere. I don't even have a buffet in my dining room, so you won't find money there if you come to rob me.

We each had piggy banks in our rooms, and I don’t know why our allowance wasn’t kept in those. Mine was a silver plated pig given to me for my Christening. I kept money that other people gave me in that, but never my allowance.

If we wanted something our parents weren’t going to buy us, we could save up for it.

I’ll never forget my first allowance purchase. I was six. There was a doll in Woolworth’s that I wanted. I asked my mother if I could buy it with my own money, and she said yes. It was $1.97. By my reckoning, I needed $2, and I’d get 3 cents change.

I had to save for two months.

Each time I was in Woolworth’s, I’d check to see if the doll was still there. Fortunately, it wasn’t a popular doll, a no-name in the age of Barbie.

Finally, I received my eighth quarter, and begged my dad to take me to get the doll. (My mother didn’t drive at the time). It was Friday night. I’m sure he was tired from working all day, but he drove me to Woolworth’s.

When I got there and claimed the doll, I took it to the cashier. I was excited. I had the self-control to save for something I wanted, and this was my first big purchase.

I put my money on the counter while the cashier rang up the sale. I was all set for my three cents – maybe some penny candy? – when my world fell apart.

“Two dollars and six cents,” the cashier said.

What? The sticker said $1.97! Why was she charging me more? Was it because I was a kid? My dad was right there.

I turned to him, tears starting in my eyes,

“I don’t have enough money. She charged me extra,” I said.

He chuckled. No one had mentioned sales tax.

He could have made me leave without the doll, but he’d made the trip. I’m sure he didn’t want to make it again the following week for six cents. After all, no one had explained sales tax to me. He reached into his pocket and pulled out some spare change. He handed the extra six cents to the cashier and I went home happy, even if feeling as if an injustice had been done.

“They charged me extra,” I said once we were in the car.

On the way home he explained about taxes. I still didn’t think it was fair, but I had my doll.

My next project was saving up $10 to open a savings account. I had to save for nearly a year to do that, but I was determined, and when I opened my first bank account, every cent was mine.

When I wanted to do a semester abroad in college, my parents couldn’t afford to send me. They told me I’d have to pay for it myself if I wanted to go, so I got a job in the dining hall, and squirrelled away the money I made for two years.

My mother surprised me by giving me the money she normally would have paid the university for my dorm fees, since I wouldn’t be in the dorms that term. She still had to pay the tuition because of the way the program was set up. But the dorm money helped tremendously, and they’d taught me to work and save for what was important to me.

Even though most of the students I went abroad with had parents who could afford to send them and give them a summer in Paris as well, I knew mine couldn’t. I never thought it was unfair that I had to save my own money. My brothers had never been given trips to Europe, and I had no reason to expect it. All I ever asked for was permission.

I had friends whose parents bought them brand new cars when they graduated from high school. My own parents never owned a brand new car themselves, and wouldn’t have been able to give me a used one – nor did I need a car in college. When I graduated, my gift was a set of suitcases so I could get my clothes back and forth to college. Those friends had gone to public school, so perhaps what they saved on Catholic high school tuition allowed them to be able to afford cars.

Still, those friends didn’t get to experience the accomplishment of doing things on their own.

My mother and I had the usual mother/daughter skirmishes of teen life, but I also tried to improve her life.

As a young teen, I tried to convince my mother to wear miniskirts and more makeup so she’d be trendy. I was unaware until years later how ridiculous she would have looked had she taken my advice. But I was trying to modernize her and make her look pretty so people wouldn’t think she was old. She explained why she wouldn’t do that, but I thought she was just being stubborn.

I suppose I’m lucky that I was able to mainly get on with my parents and not lose respect for them. I didn’t say the things about my parents that I heard some of my peers say.

Of course, having always expected my parents to be the wiser heads, at least in most things, it was a shock when, at the end of her life, my mother was unable to make choices that, a few years earlier, would have been obvious to her. The ravages of some diseases are far more disrespectful to parents than some teens can be.

About Books: What Inspires Me?

 

 

Some time ago a friend asked me to write a blog about where I get my inspiration for my novels.  This set into motion my mid-month series of blogs on writing. I’m not sure whether or not I got the assignment right.

Many of those, while they discuss where my inspiration came from for individual novels or series, are more of a summary of the story.

I’ve now covered every series and individual novel not in a series that I’ve written so far.

So, what’s left? Until I finish another novel, not much, really. But I don’t think I really addressed where my inspiration comes from.

I’m not sure I understand how my mind works any more than anyone else does.

Frequently, the image of my mother shaking her head and saying, “I wish I knew what was going on in your head,” comes to mind. She clearly didn’t understand me. In fact, my summary of my relationship with my mother has always been, “She wanted a daughter, and got me instead.”

My thoughts that lead to stories come from all sorts of places. In the case of the Nicholas Keating stories, they started as a single short story that grew into seven. Those seven short stories morphed into two novels, and the other three grew out of a desire to continue to play with those characters a bit longer.

The inspiration for the first of those short stories was simply walking down the main street of my town on a December afternoon after we’d had what is now an early snow. The snow was the dirty shade snow gets several days after a storm. 

The day was overcast, and as I walked along, letting my mind wander, I slipped on some black ice. I didn’t fall; it was just one of those near things. But it reminded me of a pair of high-heeled boots I had in the ‘80s. They were perhaps the most ridiculous things I ever bought.

By the time I returned home, I had the beginnings of the story. A simple thing.

The Dark Faery series had its inception with Stephanie Meyers’ Twilight series. I thought some of the changes she made to the vampire trope were just wrong. But they allowed me to make some interpretations of my own.

While she didn’t inspire me to write a vampire novel, a discussion of her novels with a teenage friend did. I hadn’t considered writing a vampire novel until my friend suggested it. She thought I could do a good job. Personally, I needed a different hook from any I’d seen.

The idea of vampire fairies just kind of flew into my mind. It was one of those things you throw out to see if it sticks to the wall.

And it stuck for 5 novels.

The Schism novels (still unpublished) grew out of my reading two books: The Front Runner, a novel, and And the Band Played On, a work of non-fiction documenting the early years of the AIDS epidemic.

When I was in college, my core group of friends happened to be a group of gay men. They saw me as an ally – or perhaps just a beard, I don’t know and didn’t worry about labels – and wanted me to understand their culture, so they directed me to the novel.

I read it and was furious with the ending. Once again, for absolutely no reason, the author killed off the gay guy, for no better reason than that he was gay. I decided I could write a better gay novel, and there would be no killing off the gay guy.

Then I read And the Band Played On. That book affected me personally, since I knew people who died of AIDS.

The non-fiction piece was the ultimate push for me to write Schism, which begins during the early years of the AIDS epidemic (back when it was still called gay cancer), but – spoilers – the person in the stories who ends up with AIDS isn’t gay. It’s part of my twisted thought processes that I don’t make things easy.

The Unicorn novels started out as a single story about a day in the life of my childhood, which is why The Snow Unicorn, while the blueprint for the subsequent novels, doesn’t exactly follow the idea of the other novels being about a weather event that frightens the main character.

I Think I Will Have to Eat You Now started out as a joke. I wanted to play with children’s novels, but I didn’t especially want to be a children’s book author. I just wanted to see if I could do it.

As it turns out, there’s a formula for writing children’s books. I didn’t know that, and consequently, I didn’t follow the formula. I only knew children’s books needed pictures. I couldn’t afford an artist, since my books aren’t “really” published; they’re only on Amazon, so I drew my own.

Of all of the things I could imagine doing, drawing is the one for which I have the least talent. I was barely able to complete assignments in art class. There was certainly no talent involved.

Well, once, in 5^th grade, I had an art project that was good enough that my teacher actually hung mine up. That was a lucky fluke, and the only time an art project of mine was ever hung up. I was in high school before I could color in the lines – more or less. And my family made no secret of laughing at my attempts at artwork – as they laughed at most of my ideas of what I wanted to be when I grew up.

My 9/11 story, Love of my Life, came naturally from the idea of what it would be like if you were supposed to be in the towers on 9/11.

I heard stories of people who called out sick that day, were running late, or who had just stepped out for coffee right before the planes hit the towers.

There is also a sub-theme of being the favorite child, as well as what if you have a child you simply don’t like. For as short a novella this story is, it tackles a variety of subjects. In a way, it’s as ADD as I am.

Probably my least favorite novel is Fiona Finn. Ostensibly a story about the challenges of being different, it hits close to home.

I spent elementary school being bullied by different people at times, and often simply being excluded. I took that memory and expanded it to include people with challenges.

The fin is a metaphor for any reason others have to not accept you, so anyone can feel included by what Fiona goes through.

I think just reliving the indifference of the adults in my life made me want to get away from the novel. However, I felt it was an important message to put out there.

Wolfbane highlights my weird bent. I had read the Thomas Covenant novels and hated them because I thought the main character was both a drama queen and stupid. He waited until the last possible second to save the day. It didn’t heighten the excitement; instead, his lack made the reader do an eye roll, sigh and say, “Oh, come on!”

So I wrote one in which my character also enters an alternate universe, but who uses whatever he has at hand to accomplish his mission -- without becoming McGyver. While he doesn’t have magical powers, he actually thinks about things. He just doesn't take the alternate universe seriously.

The Search came from my love of things medieval, and is kind of a combination of the renaissance fair and Dungeons and Dragons. And none of these things.

It’s also pulls from the British Royal Family. There was some media hype about Charles being single into his 30s, mainly because at that time the royals still clung to the idea that the heir had to marry a virgin, even though the common man had long since abandoned that notion or caring whether or not the monarchy did. Later, Prince Edward apparently had some words with his father about being single.

While my story has nothing to do with the British Royal Family – or, in fact, with this world, per se, it does involve a young heir who thinks all he needs to do is be the heir and be popular to get on in life.

He knows nothing of the things he’s supposed to study, and has been the cause of more than one scullery maid being dismissed.

It isn’t until his father threatens to disown him that he is forced to buckle down and re-learn things his younger brother and his twin sister can do with ease.

In the course of his study of weaponry he is injured, and on recovering, decides he needs to go on a search, a wandering alone into the deep forest, to prove himself.

Few ever attempt a search, and fewer still return. No heir to the throne has ever attempted it, and his father, the king, is inclined to refuse permission. But he sees that the search is the first thing that has ever kindled any sort of passion in his son, and finally allows him to go.

Usually my current novel is my favorite.

The Invisible Twin, my current novel, is near and dear. I used a lot of information I have about twins from having a mother who is an identical twin, as well as having known many sets of twins in my life. I also enjoy novels where the main character is trying to work out life, since that’s what most of us do on a daily basis.

But my all-time favorite is the Nicholas Keating series. I’ve read those novels several times, and I enjoy them. It actually amazes me that I wrote them. I always feel like I’m reading someone else’s novel.

Until I write another novel, I won’t have any comments on writing to make, so this is my final "About Books" blog for the time being. It’s back to a once-a-month blog. But if anyone has an idea on something you’d like me to write about, let me know.

Bits and Pieces

 

Originally, This was a December piece. I wrote it to replace a different piece that  I took  down. The one I took down was quite long and got a bit dark and angry, and I decided that wasn’t the appropriate approach for the end of the year when people are supposed to make merry and be cheerful. But this wasn't really quite right for the holiday season, so here it is in January, and I hope my bit about Christmas carols at least brought a few smiles.

Instead, I’ve decided to take a look back at my blogs for the year. I hope no one found them offensive in any way. If you did, I apologize. No offense was intended.

I try to look at my writing from different angles. I suppose some people could get the idea that some of my posts are, “Poor, pitiful me” in essence. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is no intention on my part to make people feel sorry for me or pity me. If you have gotten that impression, re-read the piece. I’m generally poking fun at the silly child I was. I’m always looking for the humor in a situation.

For example, after you’ve been told dozens of times when you ask the question, “Why?” “Because I’m your mother and I said so,” you begin to believe that’s the only answer you’re likely to get to that question. I did. That’s why I stopped asking. There may be no such thing as a stupid question, but if the answer is going to be, “Because I’m your mother and I said so,” there will be questions left unasked.

Instead, I tried, with my little child brain, to fathom the answer when I was told something that didn’t make any sense to me. Often the reason something didn’t make sense was that the adult in the situation was using an idiomatic phrase that I didn’t yet understand.

An example of this is when I was told to look up and down before crossing the street. While logic would tell me to check for cars coming in either direction, which I did, I could see no possible sense in looking up or down (in the literal sense) before crossing a street, even at age three. My mother simply assumed I understood what looking up and down meant (in the non-literal sense). I did not. But she was my mother, and she said so, so I obediently looked at the sky and the ground before setting foot across the road.

I was carrying out the letter of the law, as I saw it. She thought I was being a smart alec. We were both wrong. But it was funny, even if I wasn’t trying to be when I was three.

My truths are that I am an introvert, and I have poor social skills, in that I often don’t pick up on the social cues people are shooting at me. But in the retelling, I see where I went wrong, and try to find the humor in it.

I tend to be sarcastic, but often hold that in check because I’m not always sure the other person gets sarcasm. I myself am never quite sure if someone else is being sarcastic or truly means what they’re saying.

When I talk about being kind of smart, it’s not a brag. The older I get, the more people I meet that are much smarter than I am. It’s just that in school, as a point of reference, we were “tracked” into 4 learning tracks. First track was the students who generally placed high in tests and learned easily. They were considered college-bound. I was in the middle of that track, although in a couple of subjects, like chemistry, I was at the lower end of the track.

Having friends was always a big deal when I was a child, and I didn’t know how to navigate that. I still wonder why some people bother since they seem to simply use me as a space saver until someone else comes along. That’s on them, not me.

In recounting things like having a partner in line in first grade, the assumption on my part was that being someone’s partner in line made you friends for life. It is so wrongheaded and silly from an adult perspective that it’s at least cute, and at best kind of funny that anyone would equate that with friendship.

Things that are important to children often escape the notice of adults. While I thought not having a partner in line meant that I was behaving badly in the perspective of my teacher, she probably thought, “Why doesn't this child ever pick a partner?” if she thought about it at all. It didn’t matter to her who she stood me next to. She was simply trying to shorten the line. But to me, who you stood next to was important; if I stood beside one of the outcasts – tales of the Good Samaritan not equating in a six-year-old brain to anything to do with me – I became an outcast.

My family life was rather strict, but in terms of how my peers were raised, not so much. We were held to a different standard than people today.

I’ve had some tell me my upbringing was too strict. I didn’t feel that growing up at all. But perhaps the way I was raised contributed to my social awkwardness. It doesn’t bother me. I just shrug and say, “Oh, well!” knowing that I was given standards with which to measure my behavior. And often, my take on things is so far off the mark of what other people do or say that I’ve been told on a few occasions that I should be a stand-up comedian. (I know better. I simply don’t have enough material.)

What I find unjust is when I’m held to a higher standard than my peers. Why is it okay for them to do and say the most hurtful and atrocious things, behave in a way we were all taught was morally bankrupt with impunity when I am held to account for something  that is simply clumsy that I may have said? That is the one thing I find annoying that has persisted throughout my life.

I was and am socially awkward. It doesn’t bother me now. I use it in my writing. It’s why I can think of people who don’t fit in, what they would do or say, and how other people see them. It’s my way of putting lime juice in something no one else would think to use lime juice for.

Often I don’t want to be a bother to people. I assume, if they haven’t asked to get together with me, or friended me on Facebook, or made some other attempt to contact me, they’re not interested. I have, at times, reached out to people to get together for one reason or another. If they accept, it tells me they really want to get together. If they say no, it might be that they simply can’t get away at the time, for whatever reason. I know people have lives. But it also might be that they have no interest in getting together, and that’s their polite way of getting out of the situation. I never know. So, to use a phrase from one of my favorite authors, I let the hare sit, and don’t ask again. It’s not that I think I’m all that. I just don’t want to bother people who don’t want to be bothered. If they want to get together, they can ask. I asked; your turn.

I know I don’t look at the world the way most other people do. I’m the one who used to hang upside down on the monkey bars and wonder what it would be like to walk on the sky and have grass overhead, or walk on the ceiling of the house and have all of the furniture glued to the floor overhead. It does sound like having way too much time on your hands.

Some of my writing seems to come across as my thinking I’m ugly and have no talent. Again, no. I’m not ugly. I’m not pretty, either. I’m just ordinary. I’m always surprised when someone I haven’t seen in a while recognizes me. I assume I blend in with the furniture.

I do have some talent, as well. I am a good singer, and I think I’m a pretty good writer. I could be wrong on that last. It’s hard to know because it’s like pulling teeth go get anyone to give feedback on my writing. Sometimes I get a comment like, “It’s good.” Whatever that means. Sometimes it means, “I have no clue what good or bad writing is.” Other times it means, “I don’t think I have the expertise to critique someone else’s writing.” And probably more often it means, “Oh, no. I’m expected to say something. It’s good. That should satisfy her. At least she won’t ask anymore.”

My blogs are meant to be fun, or sometimes challenge people to think of something a different way. I don’t know who reads them. I don’t get much feedback. And when someone asks a question in the comment section, there’s not really a place on the blogsite to answer questions. I think in the new year I’ll answer any questions at the bottom of the next blog.

The blogs that are short stories are there in case – again, I’ve had no feedback – some people would like to read a story for a change. I use some experiences from real life, and some sheer fantasy. No character is a real person in disguise. It’s experiences that did or could have happened mashed together and baked at 350 for 30 minutes to produce an experience you may or may not ever have had.

I hope you enjoy what I have to say and keep coming back for more. And please, tell me what you think.