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...But you look so normal?

Not too long ago I was at a friend's framing shop. I had stopped in to say hello and catch up, but seeing as she was busy, I told her I would come back another time. Needless to say, she asked me to stay, saying she'd only be a minute finishing up with a client that had come in from New York City to have some custom work done.

We all got chatting, and my friend mentioned that I was an author, and had been successful with recent book signings at a few local Barnes & Nobles. The look on the client's face was nothing short of incredulous. It wasn't because she had read my work and couldn't believe I had scored book signings at such a big chain, nor was it because I was a small pubbed author...it was because she couldn't believe I was an author at all. And her reason?

"But you look SO normal!

She simply couldn't wrap her head around the idea that someone with talent could walk around without being pierced, tattooed, or sporting mutli-colored neon hair.

"That's certainly not what we see walking around the city?" she said staring at me like I was some sort of anomoly. I half expected her to turn me round and ask me to open my mouth so she could examine my teeth.

I politely told her that while those things may very well be the "costume de rigueur" of people who consider themselves creative, true creativity lies in how one dresses the mind, not the body. And while fashion choices may be an outward show of a creative mind, it certainly ISN'T a pre-requisite for one.

Now I'm no stranger to the stranger types...I hold an MFA from the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, and have my fair share of friends who choose to dress as such, but that doesn't automatically make them more creative or talented than anyone else. Sadly, in my opinion, it almost makes them cliché, a stereotype of just the thing they are trying to rage against.

For Romance Writer's the stereotype is even sadder. When most people think of us, it's usually the image of a lonely woman sitting in a bathrobe and fuzzy slippers, conjuring lovers and adventure in her imagination. In other words, one step away from being the neighborhood cat lady. If that description just made you go "eeewww", then you get it. Thankfully, for most of us that image is far from accurate, and the same goes for the people who read our work.

On one of the Amazon forums, a woman once described what we write as 'white noise', what she reads to dumb down her mind after a busy day. While I don't mind the idea of our genre being escapist, I do mind the stereotype that it's somehow less than, and to say that it's something one reads to "dumb down a mind' is insulting to those of us who work so hard at our craft.

Stereotypes are hurtful and wrong... especially when they bleed into your personal space.

Marianne Morea

True Life Romance

I have recently met a new friend who had the most romantic story to tell me about how she and her husband eventually found new love together. It made me realize that sometimes real life can be as good as a novel. 

My friend, Cindy, first met Dave in grade school. "He was Zorro for Halloween and my girlfriend and I were trying to figure out who was in the costume. This was back when kids wore their costumes to school and had parties for Halloween. "We had pretty well guessed who everybody was, except for Zorro. Then  we finally figured out it was the new boy, Dave, and I told my girlfriend that I thought he was the cutest thing." 

That was in fourth grade and by fifth grade Dave must have thought Cindy was pretty cute, too, because he asked her out on a date. "He was the first boy to ever ask me out," Cindy said.

"You went out on a date in fifth grade?" I asked.

Cindy laughed. "No. The teacher found out and told our parents who put the kabosh on it."

Even though her mother didn't let the date happen, she must have thought it was special because she wrote in her journal, "Asked out on her first date by Dave."  Cindy didn't know that until much later when she got her mother's journal after her mother died.

Cindy never dated Dave in high school, but  he dated her best  friend they were part of a large group of young people who bonded and formed a social circle that stayed close through the years and the miles that eventually separated them. Cindy married someone else and lived in the Chicago area where she taught school and raised her family. Dave was in Springfield,  Illinois. They reconnected later and the couples became good friends and socialized  for a number of years. There was no romantic stuff going on but later Dave said that he thought her first husband thought he had feelings for her. She asked him how her husband could suspect something when nothing was happening, and Dave said, "A man knows when another man has the hots for his wife."

Cindy laughed again in the telling of the story. "I never knew. Dave was respectful enough of my marriage never to make his feelings known."

Eventually both Dave and Cindy became victims of divorce. "I say victims because neither of us wanted it, but our partners decided the marriages were over."

Years later they got in contact again. Dave had moved to Texas and had been divorced for about 11 years. Cindy had been divorced for six. "Our first conversation was about how happy we were as bachelor and bachelorette and we did not want to get involved again. We both had been burned pretty badly."

Cindy and Dave stayed in touch as friends and were planning a get together for the old gang. The reunion was set for some time in June, but about mid-April Dave told her he didn't want to wait until June to see her. He had come up to Illinois to help plan the reunion, and he told her he didn't want to wait until June to see her again. "He stayed the weekend and my daughter had planned a big dinner so friends and family could meet him." Cindy said. "I woke up the next morning to find him on my computer.  I asked him what he was doing and he said he was making plane reservations to come back again."

He did go back two weeks later. They were sitting at the breakfast bar in her house and he said,  "What do you think? Would you be willing to give it a go again?"

"Yeah I think I would."

Dave went in to call his mother and asked, "Mom am I old enough now to date her?"

The couple got married July 7, 2001 on a lovely garden on the lake in Austin.  On their second anniversary Dave gave Cindy a card with the inscription, "Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be."

The quote is from Robert Browning and it meant so much to Cindy that she framed the card along with the class picture from fourth grade and gave it to Dave for their fourth anniversary.

I love stories of new-found love. That's what my novel, Play it Again, Sam is about, and it was inspired by a true story that another friend shared with me.

What about you? Do you know a story about a new-found love? I'd love to hear about it.

Does Sexism Sell?

ABC and NBC are spending a lot of $$$ to market sexism to a new generation. An insidious media campaign is helping the networks along by working to convincing women that they're not smart enough to know the difference between real life and make believe. Wouldn't the little ladies be a lot happier if they just returned to their "place?"


NBC is at least being honest and "in your face" about its intentions. There's nothing subtle about the sexist message behind their new Fall TV show - "The Playboy Club." The "About the Show" section of NBC's Playboy page puts the message right out there. It says:

It's the early '60s, and the legendary Playboy Club in Chicago is the door to all your fantasies... and the key is the most sought-after status symbol of its time. Step inside the seductive world of the Bunny, the epitome of beauty and service, and rub shoulders with the decade's biggest mobsters, politicos and entertainers (like Tina Turner and Sammy Davis, Jr.)

The Playboy Club will feature Eddie Cibrian starring as Nick, the dapper hero presiding over a world of grown women who saunter around in tiny little plunging neckline bunny suits, complete with fuzzy tails and matching bunny ears. Hugh Hefner's voice-over says that Nick's world was an amazing place where "everything was perfect, where life was magic, where ... fantasies became realities for everyone who walked through the door." Hef's tagline doesn't add "except for the women selling their dignity to make a dollar" - but that would've been a little too honest now, wouldn't it?


ABC is trying to convey its sexist message a little more subtly - but it still comes across loud and clear. The network's promo page says that in the 60's air travel was "the height of luxury" and the pilots are "rock stars" while the stewardesses are "the most desirable women in the world." The page doesn't say that the women are paid to show off their cleavage and legs to the mostly male travelers. The promos show shots of women bending down to assist passengers and lots - and lots - (Did I say lots?) of leg shots. So the video footage shows what the network doesn't say about Pan Am's slant.


I got the message and have discussed it - too often - to my darling hubby. But I was very, very interested to run across an article today as I researched this post. It proves that I wasn't the only one who noticed that both TV shows play to male fantasies at the expense of female dignity. I ran across an interesting article from the May 22nd edition of the Los Angeles Times written by reporter Melissa Maerz. She sounds like a smart lady making a living in a business that doesn't require her to serve or service her male colleagues (unless she's into that kind of thing). Ms. Maerz's piece states as follows:

Luring more male viewers is particularly important to ABC, whose audience is 65% female. True, some women will enjoy both networks' lipstick-feminist take on career girls busting their carefully manicured fists through the glass ceiling. (One "Playboy Club" bunny tells her friends that she's making more money than her father.) But both of these dramas also indulge a popular male fantasy -- at a time when many men are anxious about job stability and women are getting higher college degrees, "Pan Am" and "The Playboy Club" recall a less threatening era, when an ambitious woman's prime goal was to serve the guys who rule the boardroom. The "Pan Am" tagline boasts, "They do it all and they do it at 30,000 feet."

So two networks in the same season are trying to lead women to march backwards to a time when they did a good job if they kept their men happy. How to do that without having all the currently uppity women getting all pissed off and militant? Well, one way would be to attack something the women really enjoyed. The best defense really is a good offense now, isn't it?

Now, what is it that those smart, ambitious broads particularly enjoy? Oh, yeah, they like to read. And what kind of book sells best to women? Romance novels. Now that's the ticket. We'll get 'em all stirred up and we'll try to do it in a way that makes 'em do what they do too much of anyway - we'll make 'em think. What they'll be thinking is that if they don't stop reading all that crap about love and passion they might lose the man they've got at home. We'll have experts that are women tell the little ladies that they should put down those books and ereaders and spend more time catering to their man.

And out come the recent pair of articles that have gotten so much press lately. The first piece by Kimberly Sayer-Giles appeared on ksl.com eight (8) days after Ms. Maerz's LA Times article. In it, author Shaunti Feldhahn claims that women can become "dangerously unbalanced" by romance novels "entrancing but distorted message." The psychologist cited in the piece, Dr. Jill Slattery, says that when women reading romance experience the same "natural high" as men viewing pornography. When the "high" wears off, women crave another release and buy another romance novel. The shrink says she's seeing "more and more women who are clinically addicted to romance books."

The Sayer-Giles article quotes a "pornography addiction counselor" as saying that reading romance or viewing porn may cause women to have affairs. The so-called experts claim that romance novels lead women to expect too much intimacy from a real relationship and become unhappy because they can't get as much satisfaction from their partner as they do from reading a romance. The experts say women need to focus on their real relationships, STOP READING ROMANCE, and spend more time with their partners. The piece doesn't mention watching TV with your partner as a suggestion but I ask you, if you're spending time with your hubby, aren't the odds pretty good that watching TV is one of those activities you'd engage in with your "real" partner?

The other piece appeared on July 7th in the UK's Daily Mail. Written by an unnamed reporter, it cites a magazine article by "relationships expert" Susan Quilliam in the Journal of Family Planning And Reproductive Health Care. The Daily Mail article was titled: "The Mills & Boon Effect: Why A Romantic Read Can Harm Love Lives." Quilliam says that although romances "may account for almost half the novels bought" the books' "idealized" notions of love and sex give readers "false expectations."

Quilliam says that romance may be a great foundation for a novel, but it's "not a sufficiently strong foundation for running a life together." (Quilliam also complains that not enough condoms are used in romances.) She says that readers start to believe the stories which causes them so much trouble that they seek counseling. Then the counselors tell women to STOP READING ROMANCE "and pick up reality."

Now, once women stop doing all that pesky reading, surely they'll stop pushing for career success and will see that real success is catering to men - like on The Playboy Club and Pan Am.

The belief that women can't separate reality from a romance novel is beyond insulting. But even if I believed such a load of divine ca-ca, I'll be a toadfrog's toenail before I ever, ever allow ANYONE to tell me what I can and can't read. Like many other women, I have worked to build a successful career - actually two because practice law and I write some of those "dangerously addictive" romance novels. I truly and deeply hope that our society has progressed far, far past the place where women can be convinced that "their place" is serving men.

Today's women are strong enough partners in a relationship to protest their men watching The Playboy Club or Pan Am. Maybe women should insist on a little TV equality too. CBS hasn't imbibed the sexism Kool Aid-- yet. If CBS wants to garner a ratings number that will pound its competitors into the dust, it should respond to the anti-woman bias of the other networks by putting on a sexist show of its own. The Chippendale Club, anyone? All the wait staff will be men wearing tiger-striped kilts with tiger tails and cute little pointy ears.

NBC and ABC shouldn't forget that "dangerously addicted" women can be mighty dangerous adversaries.

And anytime a man in your house watches The Playboy Club or Pan Am, exercise your Female Fierceness by buying another romance novel.



Mary Anne Graham
Quacking Alone Romances
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("Playboy Club" pictures are property & copyright of NBC, "Pan-Am" pictures are property & copyright of ABC, all other pictures copyrighted by their respective owners)

The Truth is Stranger Than Fiction

The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense. - Tom Clancy

More than once I've been told by an editor that no one would believe something I'd written had happened. The funniest thing about that comment is that, without exception, it's been on a situation I pulled from my life.

In "The Christmas Curse" I have a woman who has terrible things happen to her at Christmas with great regularity, one of which happened when she was just starting to mature: she got a training bra in her Christmas stocking, and opened it in front of her father and brothers.

Yeah... that really happened. I was mortified.

I was told that no one would believe an older woman (by "older" I mean mid-twenties) was still a virgin. I happen to know THREE women who are now in their late forties, who are not nuns, are not gay and are still virgins.

Most recently there was a significant number of frustrating misfortunes in my life -- to the point where I just sat around and waited for them to happen. And as they happened I said to myself, "If I wrote this in a story, no one would believe it."

Sometimes the adage "write what you know" may not be the best advice, because clearly what *I* know and experience isn't always believeable.

What are some things that you've experienced that no one would believe if they read it in a book?

Visit Marianne at her website or blog.

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Another Story . . .

I almost forgot that today was my day to post! Duh me!!!!!! Since I am so unprepared, I decided to post another short story from Creative Writers. This one is a five word challenge the words being: opprobrious, uxorious, poodle-fakers, persiflage and sartorial. Hope you enjoy it.

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I died today. At least, that’s what the paper says back home on Earth. It looks infinitesimal from where I’m at now, barely a speck. How I got here is another story.

I remember being dressed with sartorial elegance in the dinning room of my house, all my opprobrious guests impressed. Six couples, three uxorious men, two who were lost (or perhaps they didn’t care?) definite poodle-fakers, were persiflage to me. I mean . . . I was and always had been, way above them.

I had brought them together to ‘rub it’ in their faces. Envy, lust, greed filled their eyes whenever they dined in my Father’s mansion. They didn’t care about me so much as the fact they were here. I let them think they got away with it.

Cathy and Rob were the poodle fakers, a pair of them! How did I get so lucky? No luck in involved here. They were my bloody cousins!

Rob and Dee, Suzanne and Dustin were from another branch of the family, my mother’s, the ones who didn’t care. They hardened their hearts and those of their children against me but it was out of my control. It made my periodic dinners a personal victory. They may not like me but they’ll never be rid of me. That’s one of the advantages of being family.

George and Nancy, Todd and Victoria, and Jack and Julia made my blood boil the most. Watching the three men wait on their whiny wives was intolerable. I swear! Lord only knows what would have happened had I not been taken.

That’s another thing that sort of worked out in my favor too, disappearing like that. People say they’ve been abducted by aliens all the time. I brushed them off as crazy. Nothing like eating your words!

Who would have thought? Not me and yet here I am, sitting in the navigation room of a starcruiser. I prefer to call it that instead of spaceship. Believe me . . . if you ever see one you’ll understand where I’m coming from.

Anyway . . . it was convenient to find out I had been wrong and life on other planets did exist. The dessert, the cheesecake with cherries - something I did not partake of – was laced with arsenic. I had grown tired of having relatives who were worthless in their demeanor and morals. Time to bring it to an end. I sat back in my chair, ready to bask in watching them die when a bright light blinded me. When I could see, I was not in my dinning room but onboard the starcruiser.

I’ve yet to meet the aliens though. Everyone I see looks just like me. Their names are a bit odd but that’s it. All the time I watched sci-fi films with unspeakable aliens and they were like everything else involved with Earth . . . a lie.

I was abducted before everyone ate the cheesecake too, which is why the paper I read on the computer said I was dead, that I’d vanished before their very eyes. Damn Rob and Dee live in my father’s mansion. They think they’re someone now but they’ll always be persiflage.

And as for me . . . I sort of like it here. Its quiet routine is very sufficient. The only things I don’t like are the bars across my room at night. You would have thought the aliens would have a force field instead of these blasted bars. You would have . . .

“Light outs, Jeremy,” Dexter, a prison guard, sneered between the bars I hated. “Put the pen and notebook down. You can finish writing tomorrow.”

Sighing, I do as asked. You see, I really didn’t get abducted by aliens from another planet like I’d like to believe, but by the police. It didn’t matter how elegantly dressed, how above I was. When it came to murder, I went away with the best . . . Charles Manson is down the hall.

©Copyright June 2010

M. L Huey

Cats, Cats, Everywhere

I came into my office to write this blog article and one of my cats, Little John, who has definitely outgrown his name, was sprawled on my desk in front of my monitor. This has become one of his favorite places of late, and he sprawls with his tummy open to the breeze from the overhead fan. Sometimes he reaches out and puts his paws on the keyboard, or his tail slowly swishes back and forth across it, and I get to try to type in between passes. 

Would he consider moving his tail?

No.

John is just one of three cats we own. Oops, I mean that live here. Usually, they like to be outside during the day where they might catch a gopher or mole for a snack and then find a nice place in the shade for a nap, but the recent heatwave in Texas has driven them inside. I'm never sure where I am going to find one of them sprawled, and they definitely like a hard surface that is much cooler than the carpeting. Although I have never seen a cat curl up on a rug like a dog, anyway.

Misty, known as Mama Cat, and her son, Orca like to hang out on the ledge of the half-wall between the living room and the entryway. The way the cats are posed there with their paws hanging down reminds me of those ornaments that are made to perch on the edge of a fireplace mantle. We have three of those half-walls in our living room, and I never know on which one I will find Orca sprawled.

Mama only joins him occasionally. More often she prefers the counter in our bathroom. That has been her favorite place now for almost two weeks, and she really finds it interesting to watch all the things these humans do by the sinks.

She helps me wash my face and brush my teeth. She helps my husband count his pills and fill pill holders. And she loves it when I get out hair clips and combs. She's convinced that they are there just for her to play with and knock on the floor.

When the heat wave breaks, and I hope it does soon, the cats will start spending more time outdoors, but until then, we never know where we might find one of them snoozing away.

I want to be a cat.

An Ode to Daddy Dearest

Fathers are a lot like movie stars.

They cast the biggest, the broadest, the most all-encompassing shadow in the house. They inspire, motivate, de-motivate and terrorize. And all too often, they do it all without ever trying. The memory that sticks in my mind from my own family features my hubby and Zack, our eldest (now 20 and a college sophomore I keep threatening to shrink back to infancy).

Zack, as a combat crawler at the age when he should have been toddling, had a couple of challenges. First, his Mom worried constantly that he might be hungry. (She still does). Today he can just give me the look, say he loves me, and leave the table. As a creepy crawler, he didn’t have that option. So he was a big butterball of a baby and toddling presented size challenges. Second, his own mental make-up, even at that little age, meant he didn’t want to do anything until he could succeed. He did his combat crawling while his peers held onto furniture and took lurching little steps.

Then one day Zack’s dad was in the kitchen and Zack and Mom were in the den. Dad started whistling and Zack jumped to his feet and ran into the kitchen, chasing the man making the merry noise. Yeah, his Father inspired his first steps without even trying.

Both Zack and his little brother Sam (who's about to start High School for the love of all ducks in the universe) grew up basking in their Father’s presence and working to avoid his ire. They learned the Daddy Rules (no hitting, spitting, kicking or biting and especially no lying) at a young age. As they grew, some of the rules were easier to follow than others. But they always do their best to make Dad proud, and they always, always basked. They’d gather round on the floor while Dad sat at the computer playing some game and the kids would spend hours just watching Dad play and cheering him on. It resulted in our having a LAN network in our house. At their elementary schools both of our boys taught the teachers computer tricks.

Daddy Dearest casts a big shadow in romance novels too. In Brotherly Love the Jamison Father is bringing home a young widow to wed when the train crashes. Daddy and his bride die, and the bride’s young daughter goes to live with Daddy’s sons who would have been her brothers. So the whole book is essentially Daddy’s legacy teaching each of his sons different lessons. In A Faerie Fated Forever, sins of the long-ago Father inspired the curse, and the failure of Nial’s Da to avoid entanglements long enough to find his Faerie Fated Forever casts a tragic pall over his household that inspires his vow to avoid his father’s fate. Heather’s Papa in Faerie is a present force, the wise man who sees the beauty in his daughter and who knows Nial will too – eventually. In A Golden Forever, the sins of Colt’s father cost him his son, and the devotion of Viv’s whisks her away from Colt, forcing him to face the past that is also his future. In E-mail Enticement Alix’s vow to his father prompts the rebellion that weds him to the Belle Bitch. That introduces him to his wife’s young half-sister who is the living embodiment of the promise to his Father he will keep.

In my real life romance, as in my stories, the path of true love has been strewn with obstacles largely of my own making. Don’t most of us create the very problems we must overcome? But the rocks keep the route interesting and force us off the beaten path onto side trails where the view is as inspiring as it is terrifying. Hopefully, the reason he’s still with me (problems and all) is that he knows I love him to pieces. While he may not be completely perfect, he’s completely perfect for me, and for our children.

One of the many reasons I love my husband is his devotion to our children. He’s had to practice tough love because both our boys have their issues. The eldest is an Aspie (Asperger’s Syndrome) and John has had to work with him to set expectations, rewards and punishments and he had to follow through, always and consistently. Aspies are, after all, (brilliant) rule based rut people. John’s had to be tough when Mom wasn’t. John’s had to be tough when the school system Mom corralled couldn’t be. Today the tough love John practiced has helped Zack mature into a young man with morals and values and standards, ready to begin making his own choices. Sam is still a work in progress, but John’s influence has begun to guide him to set his own goals and work to achieve them. Sam is also growing towards being a young man - if I allow him to get there; I've threatened him with the shrink ray too - shows signs of growing into a reflection of the values and standards instilled by his father.

So, Fathers are like movie stars because the essence of who they are infuses, compels, and motivates those around them, particularly, those little beings lucky enough to share Dad’s gene pool. Unlike actors on a silver screen, fathers are real life heroes who will live on long after the house lights in the theater dim. The best of fathers, like my husband John, manage to be the foundation of the past and the guardian of the future.

Daddy will live on through his little dearests. One day the dearests will be whistling familiar tunes in kitchens of their own, summoning a new generation to carry on the family traditions.

Happy Father’s Day to my sweetheart. If you'd like to leave a comment, I'd love to hear your thoughts about your father or the father of your children!!!

(Postscript from the Daddy, shameless marketer: two of the books mentioned in the post above are available in a three-book bundle. Happy reading!)

A taste of what if...

My blog is a bit late this month, and I apologize... I am still coming down off my high from this years Book Expo America. For those of you who aren't familiar with this book loving extravaganza, it's a four day gathering of all kinds of book industry professionals at New York City's famed Jacob Javits Center.

Everyone from authors, publishers and agents to book buyers, bloggers, reviews and every manner of distributor shows up for this annual event. Overwhelming to say the least.

In addition to this wealth of information and marketing, authors were given the opportunity to sign promotional copies of their books, and I was lucky to be counted among them. Unknowns rubbed elbows (almost literally) with the famous, as signing tables were set up in very close proximity due to spacing constraints. I myself was right next to Erica Jong, infamous for her 1970s title, "The Joy of Sex".

Climbing up on my chair, I glanced down the 30 foot aisle to the chain cordoning off the entrance to my row, holding my breath that I would be the one to personify the old saying, "you can't even give it away." BUT...much to my delight, I had a line out the door! People were actually waiting ahead of time for me to start signing.

Now, I know the books were free...I get it. But the only things these people had to spark their interest were the book's cover and its blurb, and believe me, there were many other books to choose from and lines to wait on, so I gotta believe they saw something good or why would they waste their time, right?

So, 75 signed copies of Hunter's Blood landed in the hands of reviewers, bloggers, libraries and book buyers in less than 20 minutes. It was a serious taste of what if, of the possibilities waiting out there for each and every one of us...and while it lasted, it felt great!

Miracle or just a free book feeding frenzy? To be honest, I don't really care. I could have been left alone with my pen, dragging all those books home with me. And maybe, just maybe, something good will come of it.

One can only pray.

Margie Wright

The twenty-fourth has rolled around. I am going to submit another story from a picture challenge I posted not long ago on Creative Writer’s. I’m not very good at getting the photo’s to show on my blogs. I’m not sure which code I am to use but the picture was of a bunch of purple crocuses standing tall and proudly blooming in the midst of snow. This is the story that goes with them . . .

MARGIE WRIGHT

I never realized how fragile life was until I got the phone call my husband was dead. Forty-five years old, young considering and yet he was gone. I was visiting my brother when it happened, a heart attack. He was in a high stress job, management, still I expected another thirty or more years, not the brief eighteen we had. I was left to raise my two teenage sons alone. That day was the epiphany of my life. I learned I didn’t have ‘forever’.

I walked through life in a fogged whirl afterwards; the funeral was a blur, the insurance check, the friends and family who offered condolences. I nodded and said thank you but I didn’t really grasp the concept of what I was saying . . . or doing.

That fog covered me for five years. During that time my boys grew-up, one graduating with honors, the second causing nothing but trouble. Money was getting short, too. I had invested the insurance money, which did good the first three years but in the second half of the fourth, the market crashed. I lost everything. Here I was, fifty years of age, hadn’t worked in twenty years and yet I was forced to look for a job. Who would hire me?

As the weeks went by and I went on interview after interview without results, I decided to go back to school. I enrolled in college, electing to become a Medical Assistant. It was a long and tedious two years but I graduated with honors the same year my first son graduated college with a degree in engineering.

My second son was still troublesome. He couldn’t hold a job for long, dropped out of college, and to make matters worse, I found out he had been stealing from me. Every piece of jewelry given to me by my mother and my husband was gone, even our wedding rings. I was devastated he could do such a thing.

“We’re not supposed to be poor,” he screamed when I confronted him.

“But we are,” I shouted back, “and you took the only means of helping us get out of debt and get back on our feet. I have student loans to pay, food to put on the table, a house to maintain. How could you?”

“Because I hate you! The wrong parent died.”

His words were knife in my heart. “Get out,” I told him, “and never come back.”

I called his brother and asked him to be with me while he gathered his clothes and left. Then I changed the locks and sat down on the couch and had a good cry.

Nothing was working out. Everything had gone downhill since my husband’s death. No mattered what I did, the investments, going back to school, getting a degree, it all ran into dead ends. I couldn’t find a job. I didn’t want to think it was my age but the thought nagged in the back of my mind.

“The economy is bad,” I heard day after day, interview after interview. “You’re well qualified but you have no experience. I’m sorry.”

How can I get experience if no one was willing to give me a chance, I wanted to scream. Instead I nodded and left. Each day I struggled to make ends meet. Each hurtle I faced only embittered me all the more. It wasn’t fair that I should have to work so hard in the latter years of my life. This was when things should be easy, not difficult. Why me, I silently asked God.

Why not you, echoed back. I closed my mind to it simply because the truth hurt.

I ended up taking a job cleaning offices. I couldn’t wait to find a job in my profession. I needed money now. Pride be damned. It was hard work, but I did it as I did anything: to the best of my ability. Besides all those years being a housewife had taught me how to clean real well, not that my employers cared. They just wanted the job done . . . and fast.

That, I later found out, was the key. I didn’t get enough offices cleaned so when I was suppose to get a raise and insurance after six months on the job I was let go. It was early spring, April when I walked outside with my last check. What was I going to do now, I wondered.

Angered welled as I walked home. I elected to walk in order to save gas. Prices on everything were going up . . . everything except my income.

It was cold, the sky overcast with clouds threatening rain. When they finally let loose it was snow . . . lots of it. Great! I didn’t wear my boots and these were my only shoes. What else could go wrong?

Gathering my coat closer to me, I lowered my head as a sharp wind began to blow. The park I passed daily was as empty as I felt. Overburdened by grief, I sat on a bench and covered my face with my hands. I can’t do this anymore, God. Please take me home.

As I sat there having a pity party, there was a squeal of tires, a scream, and then a thud. Looking up I saw a car fishtailing as it sped away. Six, five, O, L, three, nine. The numbers and letters of the license plate stuck in my head. But what did the car hit?

Through the whirlwind of snow I saw a crumpled heap by the curb. My heart rose in my chest. It can’t be, I thought. It can’t. Jumping up, I ran over and my fear was confirmed. It was a child, a young girl. A small amount of blood stained the pure snow on the side where her face lay. My medical training told me to be careful. If there are broken bones, which I was positive there were, one wrong move could mean life or death. Still I couldn’t stand by and do nothing.

Someone, a woman, ran up to me, pulling out her cell phone.

“Call 911,” I ordered. “I’m a MA. I’ll see what I can do until they get here.”

She was a young woman, not much older than my sons, yet she called it in. I gently turned the girl over and saw she wasn’t breathing.

“Come here,” I yelled, not caring if I startled or scared the woman. “I need your help.”

She didn’t hesitate. “What do you want me to do?”

“Have you had any CPR training?”

“No.” She looked at me with nervous brown eyes and yet within them I saw determination.

I positioned the child’s head back to open her airway. “Come here. I am going to compress her heart. When I tell you, pinch her nose and then breathe into her mouth.”

“Ok.”

I got into position and began to massage her heart. “One, two, three, four, five,” I counted to myself then, “Breathe!”

I don’t know how long we were at it. It seemed like forever but just as the ambulance turned the corner the girl coughed and then started to breathe on her own. I stayed with her until the paramedics took over.

I gave a statement to the police who arrived behind the medical personnel, telling them what I saw and giving them the numbers that stuck in my head. At the time I thought nothing of it but now I know God must have made me remember them. Justice was a heartbeat away, I thought as I was driven the rest of the way home by an officer.

Sleep evaded me that night. I worried about the child and prayed she was alright. None of my troubles compared to what that poor child was possibly going through. The next morning there was a knock on my front door.

I looked out the peep and saw a man in a long overcoat. He had brown hair and clear blue eyes. I opened the door a crack.

“Yes?” I asked.

He looked like he had been through the wringer. “Are you Margie Wright?”

I nodded.

“You don’t know me but I came here to thank you. You saved my daughter last night with your quick thinking. The woman who called the hit-and-run in said you are a MA.”

“Your daughter?” Oh my! This was the child’s father. I opened the door. “Do come in. I’m sorry if I seemed hesitant, it’s just that I’m leery of strangers.”

“With good cause.” He gave me a weary smile and stepped into the foyer.

“Can I get you a cup of coffee?”

“Please. I’ve been up all night.”

He slipped his coat off and laid it on the back of a chair before following me into the kitchen.

“How do you like your coffee,” I asked taking two cups from the cupboard. “I must admit that I haven’t slept all night either worrying about her. Is she okay?”

“Black is the answer to your first question and yes to the second. Your quick thinking saved her from permanent brain damage. The Dr. you work for is lucky to have such an exceptional employee.”

I blushed. Setting the coffee before him, I sat. “I’m not employed,” I admitted. “My husband died suddenly from a heart attack seven years ago and I needed a job so I went back to college. No one would hire me after I graduated, even though I passed the exam in the top six. I guess 52 is too old.” I couldn’t keep some of the bitterness from creeping into my voice.

I looked down, embarrassed I let it out so I didn’t see his look of surprise. When his fingers curled around mine I looked up.

“I am sorry to hear that, and yet I’m not. Please allow me to introduce myself. I am Mark Summers, Dr Mark Summers, head of Pediatrics at Avery Hospital. I, too, am a widower, my wife dying of cancer exactly seven years ago also. Consider yourself hired Ms. Wright.”

I was stunned to say the least. Last night I sat on the bench in the park asking God to take me out. Instead He opened a door. Seeing that child crumpled in the street made me realize life was too precious to simply throw away.

“Why . . . why thank you Dr. Summers.”

“Mark,” he corrected, “and you’re welcome. It’s the least I can do for the woman who saved Annie’s life.”

We talked for a while longer, then coffee or no, the fatigue finally caught up. Mark felt it too and left, making me promise to come to his office tomorrow morning. As I was about the shut the door behind him, I noticed a bunch of purple crocuses poking up through the snow, blooming despite the adversity of the weather. I planted them there eight years ago and in all the time since, I had failed to see their beauty.

Or perhaps it was when I wanted to live again that I finally saw life.

©Copyright 2011

M.L. Huey