Memories

I forgot to post on my day this month--the 20th. I even told Joan Reeves that I forgot and would make it up, and then I forgot again. While this is disappointing, it's not at all unusual. Like my waistline, my hair color, and my wish (sarcasm) to cook every day of my life, my memory is just shot. 

But my memories themselves aren't. While I may repeat them too often, that is a small price to pay for having them. They are what made me who I am, and I'm glad for that. I'm also lucky that I have more good memories than bad ones. The gnarly things are still there and will jump out and cause pain from time to time, but mostly they stay locked away. The scar tissue over the wounds remains intact and something serves to remind me that Yes, I Can. 

Even if your hearing is compromised, you can still hear things from your past. We live over two miles from the school, but if we're outside on Friday nights in the fall, we can still hear the sound of the marching band on the football field. Every time I hear it, I can go back to the bleachers as both a student and a player's mom, bellowing the school song and the national anthem with all my might.

I remember Mom shouting NancyJoeTomDan! before she got to my name, the one she was trying to stop midflight in the first place. I reached a point where I didn't answer unless she called me by my right name. I doubt that that went particularly well, but I don't remember that. 😇

I remember the day Hilary Sares called me from Kensington and bought my first book, Always Annie, and so many days and moments from the year that followed. Although I take nothing away from indie-publishing, self-publishing, or any other kind of non-trad publishing, I will say there is nothing quite like getting The Call from an editor. 

In direct disagreement with what I said above about gnarly things, I do remember the days when losses were life-changing. I believe the Kennedys' and MLK's assassinations changed the person I was. So did my grandfather's death when I was 13. My parents' loss of a three-year-old child long before I was born imprinted sadness in a place I couldn't reach and still can't. What would Christine have been like? Would she have liked me? Would my parents have been happier if she'd lived? 

I remember finishing a book--in 83 days!--and knowing it was different. For years, I called it the book of my heart knowing it was more than that because, honestly, they all are that. It was a book that got me two agents, that I honestly thought would sell the first time it hit a publisher's desk. 

It took ten years. 

But One More Summer is still special to me in ways I can't even put into words. It has created more memories than any other book I've written. It gave me a writing bar that I too often don't reach, but ... oh, I remember. The writing at three in the morning before I left for work at four. Waking in the night realizing that no, Grace wouldn't say that. The array of rejections that led to its eventual publication. 

There is an old Elvis Presley song written by Mac Davis and Billy Strange with lyrics that refer to memories being pressed between the pages of your mind. I think that's where mine are, and I love that the word pages is part of that reference. The pages of my books and of hundreds of others have created memories I cherish. More than having just read about them, I remember Jo March in the attic, Anne Shirley in the orchard at Green Gables, Betsy on Putney Farm in Vermont with the kittens in the hayloft, Trixie Belden's mysteries with the Bob Whites of the Glen. 

Sometimes, it doesn't matter what I forget. I am so very blessed by what I remember. 

There are many memories included in the A New Season series. I loved writing about Syd, Riley, and Dinah and the men they come to love. They're older, formed by the lives they've lived, and eager for the ones ahead. I hope you like them, too.