Post #72 – Memoir and Fiction, Writing Alchemy – Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler
Online Access is Our Mother's Day Gift to You.
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Matilda: “Actually, this was all Kendra’s idea. She has such strong memories of Mother’s Day. So let me have her tell you in her own words.”
Thanks, Matilda. I’ll tell you about our special offer and how you can get all 21 online video lessons in a minute. First let me share some special memories…and tell you what I think this means to us as writers and memoirists.
I love reading and listening to stories. Maybe that’s because I grew up listening to my mother’s adventures of her childhood in a small town in south central Illinois. To me–having grown up in suburban Fairfield County, Connecticut–my mother’s youth seemed alien and unbounded. I envied her freedom. She was, in my mind, a female Tom Sawyer. Here’s how one of her stories began:
The Story Begins…
Kendra, did I ever tell you about the time Sis Linton and I found blood in the alley out behind Doc’s store? He was the pharmacist in town; he was also the local bootlegger during Prohibition.
I told Sis, “After supper, meet me in the alley behind Doc’s store.”
My eight-year-old mother, barefoot and bare legged (c. 1926). I’m always struck by how much I looked like her at the same age. Her light brown hair with its page cut was thick, like mine. I have my mother’s mouth and chin. Even my hands are her hands. Photos help to make an important connection to the past, but it’s the legacy of stories that bring people and events to life...and keep them alive for future generations.
“What for? What’s going on?”
“Didn’t you hear about the shooting?” I asked. “Last night. In the alley. Papa said that there was a fight over some liquor and money. A man died.”
Sis’ eyes grew wide. I could tell she was nervous, but at the same time she was curious. And I really wanted her to join me in the alley later…because I had a plan. “I’ll bet if we go look we can find the blood.”
“I don’t know, Rosemary,” Sis said. “What if someone comes back? Besides, I may have to help Pop out at the theater.”
“Come out before the show starts. Around seven. We’ll find the blood, and you can be back in plenty of time…”
Remembering Mother’s Day
Thinking about my mother’s stories and recalling all the fun we had together makes it easier to face each Mother’s Day without her.
When we were young, Mother’s Day meant cooking breakfast-in-bed for Moo. My sister usually made the coffee. Since no one checked to see how many scoops of coffee she used and because we children didn’t drink coffee, it’s hard to know the strength or potability of her brew. I only know that Moo never complained or criticized. She drank it.
My little brother, on toast duty, would sit cross-legged on the kitchen counter so he could reach the toaster. He didn’t do a bad job. On most occasions, I don’t think he burned more than three or four slices of bread before he got two that were presentable. Eatable? Well that’s another matter. I’m sure they were cold by the time we got them buttered and on the plate. Moo never said a word. She ate the toast.
Before I graduated to pancakes, I was in charge of frying eggs and bacon. Temperature was always the tricky part for me. That and keeping the yolks intact. A few charred strips of bacon and a broken yolk or two later, and we’d be ready to decorate Moo’s tray with homemade cards and a small vase of lilacs. Her favorite.
Proudly we carried the tray back to the bedroom. Moo made a big deal of sniffing the lilacs and admiring our cards. She ate, never complained about our cooking or let on that she dreaded getting up and facing the mess we’d made of her kitchen. She made us feel proud of our accomplishment. It was a homemade Hallmark moment that stays with me still.
More recently, however, Mother’s Day has become a bittersweet memory. While I cling to the memories of the Mother’s Day breakfasts past, it’s inevitable that my mind eventually goes to another Mother’s Day…one that crowds out the sweeter remembrances of childhood.
For although we didn’t know it at the time, Sunday, May 13 (Mother’s Day 2001) was the last time we would all be together as a family.
Moo hadn’t been well. So my sister had come in from Texas to spend a couple weeks helping out around the house. My brother, living in California by then, was in Washington, DC, on business. He rented a car and drove up to Connecticut to surprise Moo for Mother’s Day. And I was living nearby and kind of keeping an eye on things.
Moo was delighted to have us all home. We spent the day talking, laughing and sharing memories. We cut a huge bouquet of lilacs–still her favorite–and placed the vase on her dresser. And we cooked dinner. Funny, I can’t remember what we had, but I’m certain it tasted better than the breakfasts we had made years before. She ate sitting up in bed while the three of us and Daddy sat around the room with plates balanced on our laps.
We talked until she fell asleep. In the morning, my brother left to go back to DC, and Moo went into the hospital for what we thought would be a simple procedure and a week of monitoring. Eight days later she was in a coma and died on June 1st.
Moo never left us a written chronicle of her life. Through her stories, however, she gave us a vivid account of her life. She passed along her life lessons, a little wisdom and plenty of inspiration. Hers was a life well lived, and the stories are the legacy I cherish.
Back to Moo’s Story…
About an hour before I was to meet up with Sis, Moo told me, I slipped behind the candy counter in Papa’s store and filled a small brown paper sack with cinnamon red hots.
At seven sharp I went out through the backdoor and into the narrow alley. Although it was summer and still light, the buildings on both sides of the alley blocked much of the sun and cast long shadows. It was dark and just a little spooky. I liked to play in the alley, but I preferred not to be alone.
I was glad to see Sis standing just outside Papa’s backdoor. She stood perfectly still with her arms folded tightly across her chest. I watched as she gave the ground around her a few furtive glances.
“Hi Sis. See any blood yet?”
“Nope. And I don’t think there is any. What time is it? I promised Pop I’d be back by–”
“Well you’re probably not looking in the right spot.” I cut her off before she could make her excuse and ruin the fun I had planned. “I’m going to look over there closer to Doc’s,” I told her.
Doc’s store was across the alley and just a few doors east of Papa’s jewelry store and confectionary. As I walked toward Doc’s, I had my back to Sis, who hadn’t moved to follow me.
I reached into my pocket where I had secreted my stash of red hots. I slipped my hand into the sack, careful not to rustle the paper, and grabbed as many red hots as I could hold and quickly put them in my mouth. I sucked hard on the tiny candies, trying to melt them in my mouth as fast as possible. The cinnamon made my mouth water, and my cheeks swelled out as I kept from swallowing the sticky sweet saliva.
When I couldn’t hold any more in my mouth, I looked around to make sure Sis wasn’t watching. And I spit. A great glob of sticky red liquid landed in the dirt. Pleased with my work, I repeated the process. Twice more I filled my mouth with red hots and spat out the sticky red saliva on the ground outside Doc’s store.
The scene was set. I called to Sis: “Look, Sis. Come quick. I found it. I think it’s blood.” I squatted down and pointed to a particularly large patch of my red hot spit.
Slowly Sis walked over and joined me. She even kneeled in the dirt by my side and followed the trajectory of my arm as I pointed out the spot. Sis looked closely. Carefully. At the congealed mess. Her face was so close to the ground, I felt sure that at any minute she’d smell the cinnamon sugar and call my bluff. I wasn’t prepared for what came next.
Still on her hands and knees, Sis started to scream. It was a blood curdling scream. It bellowed forth as loud as her lungs would allow. At the same time she stood up, turned in the direction of her father’s movie theater, and ran. She screamed all the way down the alley. I’m not sure she even stopped long enough to draw breath.
A few days later when I saw Sis, we didn’t talk about the blood in the alley. In fact, we never talked about it. And I never told anyone what I’d done…until now. Kendra, you are the only one I’ve ever told.
I felt privileged that Moo had confided in me (although I figured she’d probably tell my sister and brother at some point too). And I couldn’t wait to get some red hots so I could try to make a blood splatter as convincing as hers had been. But when I did and spat a great glob of sticky red liquid in our driveway, I couldn’t understand how Sis had been fooled. It looked like red spit to me.
I guess you just had to have been there. A gullible little girl. More naive times. And the devilishly playful spark in my mother’s personality that I had seen and loved throughout our years together.
Your Story Is Your Legacy…We’ll Give You the Video Lessons to Get You Started
It just must be in our DNA. Storytelling, that is. Yes, we worry about writing our best. We hope we can tell a story that our family, friends, even strangers (should we decide to publish) will enjoy reading. We hope, too, that they’ll even learn from or be inspired by our words.
But for all the worry, Matilda and I have noticed that when our students turn off their internal filters and mental editors and focus on the elements of their stories, the results are quite dramatic. And good. Their dreams of writing memoir become reality, and another legacy is preserved.
We created The [Essential] Women’s Memoir Writing Workshop: 21 Steps from Planning to Publication to give aspiring authors (like you) a roadmap to gently guide through the process of developing a theme and message, researching story material and writing. We even include chapters on marketing and publishing. The [Essential] Women’s Memoir Writing Workshop contains almost eight hours of video instruction that breaks down all the essential elements that go into writing memoir…and creating an enduring legacy.
In honor of Mother’s Day, Matilda and I are giving you FREE, unlimited online access to all 21 videos. And that access is yours for as long as you want. We’ll email you the link and password so you can get started right away. But you have to act now because this offer disappears at midnight on Tuesday.
Click here to learn how you can get FREE, Unlimited Online Access to The [Essential] Women’s Memoir Writing Workshop. Create a legacy for your children and all the generations that follow.
