Category: childhood

Don’t Tell Me

It’s the Monday after Mother’s Day and I managed to make it through somehow. I woke up this morning with a strong urge to remain comfortably in bed, but here I am swilling coffee and planning on how to make it through this week of work and everything else I have to get done. But yesterday wasn’t nearly as bad as I feared it might have been. I eventually became emotionally immune to Mother’s Day sales and the FTD reminders; my situation certainly didn’t require me to complain about others still celebrating with their mothers–why harsh everyone’s buzz? I can’t imagine anything more narcissistic than insisting everyone else calm down with the Mother’s Day stuff because it was hard for me. Next year I’ll know what to expect and will be one more year removed from the loss; time has a way of dulling the aches and pains and slings and arrows life hurls at us–all things become easier with the passage of time. A friend was in town yesterday and I joined him for a rather late lunch. I had a beer (!!!); a local IPA that was actually quite good–I’ve always only drank trash beer, and never really got into beer as an experience rather than as a method of alcohol delivery. (I also know nothing about wine.) That was a nice break from working, and last night we started watching The Consultant, with Christoph Waitz, on Amazon Prime. I don’t think we’ll continue. It’s well done but it’s very strange; it’s based on a Bentley Little novel, so it’s probably more on the horror end of the spectrum, but it didn’t really engage with us very much? I suspect we’ll be looking for something else to watch this evening after I finish working.

And because I never made a grocery run over the weekend I shall have to do it tonight after I get off work, which is hardly an appealing thought. I also have a ZOOM call tonight–I should be able to get home in time for it, I think–or maybe I don’t; it’s not on my calendar which is unusual, but there’s no meeting at all on my schedule for the month of May, which is very odd. I’ll have to dig through my emails to see, but I’m pretty certain it was tonight. I’m actually rather amazed that I remember that much, without it being on my calendar. I know i had some things I needed to do before that call, too–so that’s going on today’s list of things to do. MUST BE DONE.

But I feel like there’s a lot less on my shoulders this morning, which is also kind of weird. Was Mother’s Day that subconsciously brutal on my psyche that I was able to keep it out of the forefront of my mind while still carrying the load and only being slightly aware? My brain’s ability to protect itself (and me) from things I don’t want to think about or deal with at the moment is pretty uncanny; but I’m not sure if that’s entirely healthy. There’s a lot stored away in the dusty back corners of my mind that I’ve never processed or dealt with–watching It‘s a Sin on HBO MAX back whenever it was that first aired, for example, brought a lot of memories back that I’d not even considered, let alone dealt with and processed, since it all actually happened to me in my life. I said recently to a very young gay man lately (early twenties, so born in either the late 90’s/early aughts) “back then we just all figured we were all going to die before anything would be done about it” and he recoiled slightly from me, saying “But that’s terrible” , to which I shrugged and said, “that was our reality.” I’d never really thought about it much because it was the reality; and yes, it was indeed horrible. But I’ve blocked that all out so much for so long that it does sometimes seem like it was distant history, like it all happened to someone else, or that it was a book I wrote long, long ago and barely remember. The loss of memory from that time is no different, really, from the loss of memory of the times and years after Katrina or how all the pandemic/COVID years kind of jumble in my mind and I can’t remember timelines or when things happened or how they happened. Scrambled brains, I suppose, is the easiest way to say it; trauma and PTSD scramble our brains.

And even as I reread that last sentence, I am, as always, inwardly rolling my eyes at myself, So dramatic, my inner critic is sneering. You’re not the first person to lose a parent. It is funny, when you catch yourself being nasty to yourself and then start unpacking where that negativity and self-loathing came from. Childhood, of course, which is where so many of the scars were inflicted and lessons learned that have almost proven impossible to unlearn as an adult. There are no guidebooks for life; only experience and learning hard lessons. As someone who prefers a bit of structure to life, not knowing how I am supposed to handle things like grief and so forth inevitably results in me being harder on myself than I should be. How long are you supposed to grieve? How long before it stops hurting, before I can think about Mom without getting deeply emotional? Am I supposed to keep this to myself, or am I supposed to share it? Do people get tired of hearing about it and grow bored with me talking about it? I know I get bored with myself–and then wonder, is that self-abuse? Should I be kinder to myself? I never have been, really; so that would be a novelty in the first place. When does it cross the line from normal emotional response to wallowing in it?

I really hate that my parents lost my user manual so many years ago…

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. It’s a Monday, so take it as easy on yourself as you can–we can make it through yet another week of challenges and excitement, can’t we?

Nothing Really Matters

Sunday morning and I am starting to see some light at the end of the tunnel. Not much–and of course it’s probably the head light of a speeding bullet train–but some light, nonetheless. I dove deeply into a manuscript I am editing yesterday, and need to get more of it done today. I also have to make groceries as well as find time to see a friend in from out of town, and it’s also Mother’s Day; everywhere I turn today it’s Mother’s Day this and Mother’s Day that. So far I’ve not had a breakdown of any kind, so that’s a good thing, but there’s also no telling how much or how rough it’s going to weigh on me once reality sets in? Who knows, maybe it never will. I’ve always thought of these days as manufactured holidays to sell cards, flowers and chocolates; I was going to send my sister flowers but decided it was weird and might upset her so I didn’t. Navigating this within the family is weird. We all have to find our own ways with these sorts of things, and there’s no road map or instructions to follow because everyone is different and everyone grieves differently. I don’t think I’ll ever not be aware of the loss, no matter how busy I get or how focused I can be on things; the compartmentalization that I have used consistently since childhood probably won’t work as well here, or at least it hasn’t so far. It’s also weird because I think I’ll be doing better and then I’ll have a bad day that I can’t snap out of with any success. Last night wasn’t good, for example; I lost the whole evening and don’t even remember what I was doing or what I did. I kept falling asleep while watching documentaries (Paul was working upstairs and then went out to meet a friend for a drink, leaving me to my own devices and I just wound up going to bed relatively early. I did sleep really well, though, which was quite marvelous. I feel very rested and relaxed today; no idea how long that’s going to last, but hopefully long enough for me to get a lot accomplished and done today around everything else I have to get done before returning to the office tomorrow.

But just looking around at the kitchen/office, it looks like I did indeed get things done yesterday, I just don’t remember doing them. There’s a load of dishes in the dishwasher that needs putting away and I also need to check everything to see what all is needed from the grocery store today. It’ll be nice to get out of the house, even into the heat and humidity which has returned in all of its hideous nastiness; but getting things out of the way is always a pleasure and then I can look forward to easier weekends in the future, right? I’ve been lethargic too much this year already, methinks. Even as I typed that I thought you’re being too hard on yourself again which is one of those things I was talking about earlier in this post; I don’t know how I am supposed to be. Should I be pushing myself to get things done and working hard, or should I be gentle and easy with myself because I am not myself and pushing myself, bring rough on myself, could be more damaging than giving into in to the sadness, the depression, the lethargy that comes with mourning. Reminding myself how much harder this is on Dad than it is on me doesn’t help, either, because then I start worrying about him and being almost eight hundred miles away and…you see how it all begins to spiral? So when the spiraling starts I have to medicate, and medicate means the easy chair and something mindless and distracting that doesn’t require too much focus, hence documentaries and such on the television. I watched a really fascinating one last night about the American-Philippines war; in which during the Spanish-American War we sent the Navy to seize the Philippines, which were in the midst of their own struggle to free themselves from the Spanish. They were looking for independence; we were looking for empire and territory; so once we defeated and drove out the Spanish we took over, and the revolutionaries continued fighting for freedom against the United States, which didn’t come until 1946. (Barbara Tuchman titled her section about the Vietnam War in her March of Folly “America Loses Herself in Vietnam”; but I think we actually originally lost ourselves–along with our ideals, morals, and principles–in the Philippines.)

It might be fun to set a book–a thriller, with international intrigue and so forth–in Manila in 1940. (It also makes me think of the television series rip-off of Indiana Jones, Tales of the Gold Monkey, which I loved loved loved back in the day, and am still bitter that it only lasted one season.)

Yes, Greg, what you need is more book ideas.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. May your Mother’s Day be lovely, Constant Reader, and give your mom a big hug (or at least give her a call) for me, okay?

Flowers on the Wall

I love Carol Goodman’s work.

I don’t remember which of her books I read first; I am thinking it was The Sea of Lost Girls, but that may be wrong (probably is; my memory is for shit these days) but I DO know I first met her in person at the HarperCollins cocktail party at Bouchercon in St. Petersburg, and she’s just as marvelous as a person as she is a writer. Since then I’ve delved into her canon of brilliant books–have yet to come across one that is even slightly disappointing–and each one makes my fandom flame burn even more brightly.

And then in Minneapolis, over lunch with a few friends at that wonderful Irish pub near the hotel, I discovered the clincher: she is also a Dark Shadows fan. She even joked, “I’ve realized that most of my books are really about Barnabas Collins and Maggie Evans”–which made me think even more deeply about how much of an influence the show was on my own writing (Bury Me in Shadows owes a HUGE debt to the show). She has a new book coming out this summer, which is very exciting–I have that weird thing about never wanting to have read everyone’s entire backlist, so there’s always one more book for them to read without me having to wait to get my hands on it–and during my trip to Alabama for the First Sunday in May I listened to The Ghost Orchid, which was so good that when I got home that Sunday night, I grabbed my headphones and listened to the final thirty minutes of the book while unpacking and doing things around the apartment.

I came to Bosco for the quiet.

That’s what it’s famous for.

The silence reigns each day between the hours of nine and five by order of a hundred0year-old decree made by a woman who lies dead beneath the rosebushes–a silence guarded by four hundred acres of wind sifting through white pines with a sound like a mother saying hush. The silence stretches into the still, warm afternoon until it melts into the darkest spot of the garden where spiders spin their tunnel-shaped webs in the box-hedge maze. Just before dusk the wind, released from the pines, blows into the dry pipes of the marble fountain, swirls into the grotto, and creeps up the hill., into the gaping mouths of the satyrs, caressing the breasts of the sphinxes, snaking up the central fountain allée, and onto the terrace, where it exhales its resin- and copper-tinged breath out onto the glasses and crystal decanters laid out on the balustrade.

Even when we come down to drinks on the terrace there’s always a moment, while the ice settles in the silver bowls and we brush the yellow pine needles off the rattan chairs, when it seems like the silence will never be broken. When it seems that the silence might continue to accumulate–like the golden pine needles that pad the paths through the box-hedge maze and the crumbling marble steps and choke the mouths of the satyrs and fill the pipes of the fountain–and finally be too deep to disturb.

Then someone laughs and clinks his glass against another’s, and says…

“Cheers. Here’s to Aurora Latham and Bosco.”

“Here, here,” we all chime into the evening, sending the echoes of our voices rolling down the terraces lawn like brightly colored croquet balls from some long-ago lawn party.

“God, I’ve never gotten so much work done,” Bethesda Graham says, as if testing the air’s capacity to hold a longer sentence or two.

Carol Goodman’s books are, above and beyond anything else you might want to say about them, incredibly literate and smart. She reminds me of Mary Stewart in that way; Stewart’s novels, often dismissed as “romantic suspense” (don’t even get me started on that misogyny), were smart, clever and incredibly literate, with Shakespearean references and quotes and allusions to classical literature. Goodman’s works are also the same; Goodman’s background in classics scholarship is utilized in every one of her books but not in a way that feels intrusive or showing off. It’s all integrated into the story and not only moves the story forward but deepens and enriches the characters as well as the plot, which is not easy to do. Her books are often built around some sort of academic/intellectual backdrop, from boarding schools to small colleges to actual archaeological digs (The Night Villa is absolutely exquisite; superb in every way), and her heroines, aren’t pushovers (as in most “romantic suspense”) but strong and smart and driven, if haunted by their own insecurities and past failures. Goodman is also not afraid to cross the line over into supernatural occurances, either; the previous one I’d read had a touch of the woo-woo, as does The Ghost Orchid, but it’s not intrusive and it actually plays out so honestly and realistically that you don’t question it.

The main character of the book is a young woman named Ellis Brooks. Ellis is a young author-to-be who is working on a novel based on what is called “the Blackwell Affair.” She had already written and published a short story based on an old pamphlet she found; the book research makes her a natural to be chosen for a residency at Bosco, an old estate in upstate New York that has become an artist’s colony, sort of like Breadloaf, but for a much more extended stay and for fewer artists. “The Blackwell Affair” actually took place at Bosco, when the original mistress of the estate, Aurora Latham, brought an experienced medium named Corinth Blackwell to Bosco to hold seances to try to reach the spirits of her dead children–any number of whom were either stillbirths or died shortly after being born; she had four children who lived but lost three of them to a diphtheria outbreak the year before. Corinth Blackwell and the only surviving Latham child disappeared one night after a seance; hence “the Blackwell Affair.” As Ellis does her research and gets to know her fellow artists better, she becomes more and more aware that the past at Bosco doesn’t rest, and the untold stories of the past must be unearthed before everyone at Bosco can be safe.

Goodman is also a master of the dueling timeline; one in the past and one in the present, and weaves the stories together so intricately that I marveled at the mastery, as the present day characters wonder about something and then we get the answer in the past. There are so many secrets, so many lies, so many spirits; but as always with the best ghost stories, the past is finally laid to rest when the truth is exposed.

I loved this book, and it reminded me not only of Dark Shadows (knowing she’s a fan I’ll always see it in her work now) but also of Barbara Michaels’ best along with Mary Stewart. Can’t wait to dig into another Goodman novel!

Drowned World/Substitute for Love

Saturday morning in the Lost Apartment and I finally slept well last night, and I even slept in for an extra two hours this morning. I could have easily (and gladly) stayed in bed for even longer, but I have too much to get done this weekend to allow myself to slovenly lay in bed for the entire morning, so once Scooter’s outrage about not being fed at six a.m. manifested itself into non-stop yowling, I got up and fed him. I feel very rested today, which is lovely. I was tired and dragging all day yesterday, and when I finished work I had things to get done. Paul and I ran out to Costco for a restocking (I hate that sometimes they have stuff and sometimes they don’t; they didn’t have several key things I always get when I go) and then I picked up the mail and a prescription. I need to get gas this weekend as well as make groceries, and the tires need to be aired up as well (the low pressure light came on in Alabama last weekend, but only one tire was low and it wasn’t officially low; it was simply lower than the other three tires), and there’s all kinds of other things I need to get done this weekend. I am editing a manuscript which needs to get finished this weekend; I’d like to do a little more work on my own manuscript; and I would absolutely love to finish reading Lori Roy’s brilliant Let Me Die in His Footsteps this weekend as well. It’s seem rather daunting when it’s put that way, but I am confident that not only can I get all of it completed but without driving myself insane, either.

Always a plus!

We watched The Boston Strangler film on Hulu last night (after an episode of Somebody Somewhere, which I am really growing fond of), and it was quite good. It focused on the two women reporters who figured out there was an actual serial killer and did all the pursuing of the case, all the while tweaking the police who were falling down on the job and forcing them to actually do their work. I wasn’t old enough when the killings were actually happening, but my dad had a copy of Gerold Frank’s The Boston Strangler and I did read that, as well as watched the Tony Curtis film version of the story when it was released to the television networks after its theatrical run. I don’t really remember much of reading the book, other than one landlady who was certain one of her tenants was the Strangler, and the story kept coming back to her and her suspicions. That always stayed with me over the years (what if your tenant/neighbor was a serial killer and you started to suspect? which became my story “The Carriage House”–yes, Virginia, that story gestated in my head for nearly fifty years before I wrote it) and to this day I still remember how chilling that was and how much I worried for the landlady. (It’s also the plot of the ancient Hitchcock film The Lodger, in which the landlady suspected her tenant was Jack the Ripper.)

I was thinking yesterday about the entry I wrote yesterday morning and the way I was/have been feeling for quite some time, and I realized that I’ve been a very passive participant in life; I’ve been kind of letting it happen to me for a while now rather than living my life actively. I don’t know if it’s exhaustion, both physical and emotional, or a reaction to trauma; or maybe, perhaps, even both. The last few years have been rough on everyone; I don’t think we’ll ever know the full extent of the trauma we all experienced as a result of that paradigm shift back in March of 2020; the shutdown, the battles over what was responsible and what was irresponsible; the insanity of the anti-vaxxer movement and everything else that was just plain wrong over the last few years. I suppose for some of us the trauma goes back even further, to the 2016 election. But it’s kind of true. I think I was very active in my own life and the pursuance of goals before 2016, and ever since 2016 I’ve just been kind of coasting along, letting things happen instead of making them. As a general rule I don’t like coasting through life; it was the recognition that was what I was doing in my early thirties that led to the big changes in my life, which was followed by the achieving goals I had always dreamed about, since I was a little boy.

But roadblocks and speed bumps encountered aside, I think had I been able to look ahead twenty-one years when my first book was released to see where I am today, I’d have been pleased and thrilled and more than a little bit smug about what I’d accomplished. A character trait I’ve never wanted to have is arrogance, and I am always afraid of sounding arrogant when talking about myself and my career. I never want to sound arrogant or smug (well, unless I am dealing with haters, in which case I love giving rein to smug condescending arrogance), but over forty novels? Over twenty anthologies? Over fifty short stories? Fifteen Lambda nominations, and seven Anthonys in total? Nominations for the Macavity, the Shirley Jackson, the Lefty, and the Agatha? How could I not be satisfied and proud of myself?

As I was making room for the Costco purchases once we got home, I was putting some things up in the storage attic and needed to move a box, so I looked inside of it to see what it was. Clippings and things from my career, it turned out–once I carried the box down the ladder to the laundry room I could see I’d written Career Memorabilia on it in Sharpie–and inside was all kinds of things. Back issues of Lambda Book Report from the days when I was either its editor or did some writing for them (or when they were reviewing my work), and back issues of Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide, too, along with Insightoutbook catalogues (what a serious blast from the past). Of course I had to bring that box down and keep it for sorting through and scanning purposes (I am serious about cleaning shit out of the storage attic this year), and hilariously found the September 2000 issue of Lambda Book Report, with Michael Thomas Ford on the cover. (Peering inside, I saw that Paul actually was the one who interviewed him!) Scanning all of this stuff will be a huge undertaking, and I do actually hate the thought of throwing it all out once it’s done; I don’t know if Lambda ever archived the back issues or not, so this may be all that’s left of it out there. Same with Insightoutbooks; it was very important and crucial to queer publishing between 2000 and when it went under sometime around 2009 or 2010 (that may be wrong; I also found an issue of LBR from 2008 or 2009, and I would have sworn under oath that LBR stopped publishing a print edition long before that. (You see why I no longer trust my memory? Mnemosyne no longer comes to my aid anymore these days, which is most unfortunate–and yes, the reason the goddess of memory comes to mind is because of Carol Goodman’s marvelous The Ghost Orchid–more to come on that score.)

But I also did some cleaning up and filing around here while I was making dinner (ravioli) last night, so this morning the office doesn’t look as bad as it usually does on Saturday morning; the sink is filled with dirty dishes and there’s a load in the dishwasher to put away, but more of the things I generally wind up doing Saturday morning are already done, so there’s no excuse for me not to be highly productive today other than malaise and laziness.

And on that note, I am going to get these minor chores handled while I keep drinking coffee and my mind finishes awakenening.

Ray of Light

The cemetery where Mom rests is small. I remember it as being much bigger, of course, but everything there is smaller than I remember. But most of my memories of Alabama predate my adulthood, so things that seemed enormous to a child don’t seem quite so large to an adult.

I’ve written about it before, just as I’ve written plenty of stories (and even a book! Or two!) set in the county of my birth, where my people are from as we say in the South, and where my people are buried. Before Mom died, I hadn’t been to this cemetery since we laid my paternal grandfather to rest in those blurry years between the turn of the century and Hurricane Katrina. But I’ve written about this cemetery in an unpublished short story I originally wrote in 1983, called “Whim of the Wind” that opens When I was young and spending the summers in Alabama, the graveyard at White’s Chapel held a peculiar fascination for me. When I wrote those words, I was living in California and hadn’t been back to Alabama in at least two or three years; it would be another eight before I returned for my last visit pre-funerals. That story was loved and appreciated not only by my professor but by the class as well. I tried several times to get it published, but to no avail; there’s something missing from the story itself that makes it incomplete, but no editor whose ever read it has been able to put their finger on it. (I do recall having solved the problem after reading Art Taylor’s brilliant story “The Boy Detective and the Summer of 1974”, but of course didn’t write it down and don’t remember what it was. (I shall reread Art’s story at some point to see if it triggers my memory; it really is upsetting that I didn’t write it down–which I always do)

And yes, it’s called White’s Chapel. I always assumed it was called that because it was “whites only”; Dad told me over the weekend of the funeral that it was built by someone named White, which is how it got its name. Hurray for it not being racist in origin? Small victories. But when I was there that time, we drove around the county and through the little town/village which was really where all the Blacks in the county were forced to live, which is no longer the case but was when my parents were children. Lovely, right? I still don’t remember ever seeing any Black people during my childhood visits, which seems hardly possible, does it?

I am both of Alabama and not of Alabama. Dad and I talked about that this weekend, too–I don’t think my sister feels the same tug from Alabama that I do. It’s weird for him to go back there, too–there’s hardly anyone left that he knows; even my aunt commented that she didn’t know a lot of people in the county anymore, and thats kind of sad. The land my grandmother’s house sat on has been sold and the house itself–uninhabitable for years–will be torn down and that part of my history, that part of my life story, will be gone forever. My grandfather’s house, where Dad grew up, is long gone and I think my eldest cousin’s son is going to build a house there. The small, battered old houses I remember from when I was a kid are also all gone; enormous McMansions of brick and mortar with columns and muli-car garages dot the landscape now, so it doesn’t seem as poor down there as it used to.

We started the day at the cemetery where my maternal grandparents rest alongside my youngest uncle, thrown from a rolling car when he was eighteen and the car rolled over him; I remember the funeral but never knowing much more than he died in a wreck (the driver was drunk; the other two riders escaped with minor injuries). There are lots of relatives and ancestors at Studdard’s Crossroads cemetery, which is also well off the paved county road on an incredibly narrow red dirt road. We stayed there for a few hours, and then headed over to see where my mother’s grandparents were buried; another where my other uncle is buried, and finished off at White’s Chapel, with Mom and my paternal two uncles (one died when he was two). It’s so beautiful there, and so different than what I remembered and have written about–which is actually a good thing; I completely fictionalized the present-day county predicated on my childhood memories–but yes the pine forests and the red dirt, the incredibly blue sky, and fall away drops alongside the roads (not near as steep and deep as I remembered).

I’m glad I went. Seeing Dad again, seeing that he’s okay, lifted an enormous weight from my shoulders–I was terribly worried and hated being almost eight hundred miles away–but also being able to talk to him about Mom, and their shared histories, as well as more family histories on both sides that I didn’t know, was a big help. I by no means think I am over the hump or well on the way to recovery; I know from my own bitter experience that you can have a good day after a trauma and thus think with relief, oh good now I can get on with everything only to have one of the dark days immediately after. It takes time to heal, and I am never going to stop missing my mother. I just have to get used to not having her anymore.

(I had originally intended to post this yesterday, but then I got the Anthony news and that kind of sidetracked the day for me.)

The Power of Goodbye

I got home last night around eight o’clock. I am very glad I went up there this weekend; it meant a lot to Dad and it was kind of helpful for me as well. I am still kind of in shock that I was able to sleep in the motel room on Saturday night; I actually slept better that night than I did at home on Sunday, but here we are. I am composing an entry about the First Sunday in May; I started writing it last night when I got home but don’t want to finish it while I’m sleepy or foggy from sleep. It needs a clearer head, to be certain. It was hot and humid yesterday, and I have a bit of a sunburn on my scalp from the incredibly bright hot sun as we went from cemetery to cemetery.

I am very tired this morning, but am really glad I went this weekend. I feel like some of the darkness has receded–perhaps not for good, make that most likely–I have long since learned to know that once the constant darkness starts to recede that there are still going to be bad days in the weeks and months to come, but that first wave of grief that I’ve been living with seems to be over. Stay tuned, and keep your seatbelt fastened; there’s still more turbulence to come.

I didn’t finish listening to Carol Goodman’s marvelous The Ghost Orchid in the car, but I can finish listening while doing some chores around the office that always need to be done. It’s really fantastic; with DNA from Dark Shadows, Mary Stewart, and Elizabeth Peters; another one of those books that make you think why do I even bother? But Carol’s one of my favorite writers (and favorite people) so I prefer to enjoy her work than beat myself up over not being able to write books as well–there’s no point in that kind of thinking in the first place.

I do feel like the cathartic feel from this weekend might help me buckle down and get back on top of everything. I am so behind on everything that it’s not even funny. I do have an eye appointment this Saturday–just getting my prescription checked; will order new glasses from Zenni if they are needed (and I suspect they are)–and hopefully I will be able to get deeper into the book this week and maybe–just maybe–get all caught up by the end of this coming weekend. I need to go over my to-do list and come up with a new one; I won’t be able to take books to the library sale because of the eye appointment but I should take a box down from the attic this week to get started on the ultimate purge, and hopefully think ahead and plan as much as I can while this good feeling lasts.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again later.

Another Suitcase, Another Hall

Well, hello there, Constant Reader! Gregalicious checking in on you from the road, from a motel in Jasper, Alabama. It’s a bit surreal being back in this part of the world, once again seeing for the second time this year the part of the country from which I sprang, as it were. I got up yesterday morning and headed north in a brutal thunderstorm; got Whataburger in Tuscaloosa (and it’s right off Highway 59! I can get it on all trips north from now on!!! Huzzah!), and then cut over to Highway 69 North and found myself driving through the backroads and back ways of where we are from; and before I knew it, I was at Fowler’s Crossroads (which appears in Bury Me in Shadows) and heading through the twisting back roads to meet Dad at Mom’s grave. A second cousin was also at the graveyard visiting her parents (she might be a first cousin once removed, or something. Her mother and my father were first cousins; I don’t know how all that degrees of cousin works, figure it out if you want for yourself), and then my aunt showed up to keep us company. Dad was tending the grave, and he and my aunt got some lovely flowers for the graves (her husband, my father’s brother, passed in either October or November). Afterwards, we drove back over to Jasper where I checked in and hung out with my dad for the rest of the day. I’m glad I made this trip. I am really glad I got to see my father this weekend, and we started thinking about my next trip up north to visit him (and stay in Mom’s house).

I also think that I’ll be able to get back to living my life once I get back home, too. Coming here, being here, has lifted a weight off my chest and off my subconscious mind; in fact, on the way here I was thinking about the book instead of giving as much of my attention to Carol Goodman’s The Ghost Orchid, which of course is fan-fucking-tastic, as all Goodman novels are. (I am hoping to finish it on the way back to New Orleans tomorrow–it has everything I love, including a dual time-line! EEEE!) This trip has been cathartic for me in ways I didn’t think possible, and of course, tomorrow I’ll be spending the late morning/early afternoon visiting graves, and remembering my so-far-distant past. I get it now–the whole graveyard visit thing, which I had always thought before was morbid and part of our weird American cult of death. Now I understand why visiting the graves matters; it’s a way to feel close to our lost departed ones, to remember loving them and being loved by them (Dad said something poignantly beautiful to me today–“she was the first person who loved you” which is both beautiful yet horrible at the same time: beautiful because it was true, yet horrible at the same time for not understanding and recognizing that when she was alive so I could be more appreciative. I saw Andrew Garfield the other day on a Youtube clip from a talk show, where he talked about grief being “all the unexpressed love you have for the person you lost” and that he hoped that the grief would never completely go away, because the pain, no matter how bad it is, is a reminder of that love. Maybe someday I will have something profoundly beautiful to say about grief and loss; I am simply not there yet. Dad also had copies made of some photographs of her–when she was FFA Sweetheart in high school; a “glamour shot” photo she had done for my dad when they were in their fifties; and a candid photo he took of her on a beach in San Diego when they lived there briefly. Mom aged really well, I have to say; in the candid shot she was at least fifty-seven but could have easily passed for her thirties. She had gorgeous skin that was luminous when she was younger; in that FFA Sweetheart photo when she was only fifteen–if she wasn’t wearing the FFA Sweetheart jacket it could have easily been a classic Hollywood glamour shot from Hurrell. Her skin literally glows, the way Ingrid Bergman’s did in black and white. I was very lucky to have a beautiful mother and a handsome father; how their genes and DNA somehow mixed and came up with me is a mystery for the ages.

She certainly aged better than I have. I look like Uncle Fester now but she was beautiful till the moment her heart stopped.

I suppose it’s normal when you lose someone that you love that there are things you wish you could have back, that you have one more chance to talk to them. I wish I could go back to the Friday after Thanksgiving, which was the last time I was able to talk to my mother, and hold her and hug her and kiss her and tell her that I love her, instead of sitting there at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and feeling tired and dreading that twelve hour drive. The coffee was starting to make me feel nauseous because I hadn’t slept well and I realized you’re wasting time sitting here and the more coffee you drink the worse you’re going to feel so I abruptly announced I was going to just go ahead and go. I startled both Mom and Dad, and I know she didn’t walk out with me. I gave her a hug and a kiss at the top of the stairs and told her I loved her and went down the stairs, got into my car, and drove back to New Orleans at ninety miles per hour most of the way so I could get home as fast as I possibly could. Had I known that I wouldn’t see my mother again when she would know who I was? I would have stayed another day at least, or could have stayed another hour that morning, or something. I comfort myself slightly by reminding myself that of course she knew I loved her, that she always knew, even when I wasn’t the most lovable or best son–I was far from being a good child to either of my parents, really–but listening to my dad recite his litany of what he considers his failures as a husband and a father last night made me understand the futility of allowing myself to go down that path.

The first person who loved you.

That’s just wrecking, seriously.

I do think I am slowly starting to heal. I will never not miss my mother, but I think I am beginning to learn how to live with the loss.

Erotica

Work at home Friday, woo-hoo! The excitement really never stops, does it? Ah, well.

Yesterday was a pleasant enough day, despite my complete exhaustion by the time the afternoon rolled around. I was fine in the morning, focused and getting things done, but once I went back to seeing clients after my lunch break, I was physically and mentally fatigued. I also had to pick up the mail on my way home–the traffic wasn’t nearly as terrible as it had been the day before; I do NOT know what that was all about, nor do I want to know, frankly. I came home, did some things, and then collapsed into my easy chair. We started watching that new HBO MAX show about the Watergate burglars starring Woody Harrelson and Justin Theroux (and if you would have told me in 1989 that Woody from Cheers would become one of our best character actors, I wouldn’t have stopped laughing until 1992), but while it’s exceptionally well done, E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy aren’t the kind of people I want to know better or see anything about as the lead characters of anything. It was eerie how well they reproduced suburban life in that period (also having Cersei Lannister playing Mrs. Hunt was an interesting twist), but again…I couldn’t get a sense of whether this was parody or striving for accuracy (which shows how insane Hunt and Liddy both are/were), so after one episode we tapped out and switched over to The Diplomat, which is amazing. I fell asleep during the second episode (I’ll rewatch it to get caught up at some point) because I was, simply stated, completely exhausted from a week of working and not sleeping well and emotional upset, I suppose. Last night I slept like a rock–completely dead to the world all night, and even slept for nearly ten hours before rising this morning rested and refreshed. It is quite lovely, frankly, and I feel terrific for the first time all week. Of course tomorrow I have to drive to Alabama (and back again on Sunday) but I have already selected Carol Goodman’s The Ghost Orchid to listen to on the ride to and fro, and I am kind of excited at the chance to listen to yet another brilliant book by one of my current favorite authors.

I’ve not had a chance to pick up Lori Roy’s brilliant Let Me Die in His Footsteps, which I was reading on the way home from Malice last Sunday and loving every word. Despite the fact she has two Edgars and another nomination from her first three books (which is pretty amazing on every level), I think her more recent work is even better than her earlier work. This book is also pretty fantastic, and I can see why it did win the Best Novel Edgar. Roy has a very hypnotic writing style, and is a master of voice; this story is told by two very different and very distinct voices with an alternating dual time-line, which is also something I love, love, love. The pity is that when I finally do finish this book, there will only be one Lori Roy novel left that I’ve not read, When She Comes Home, and I’ll have to hold onto that one until she publishes another book unless I want to (sigh) finish her entire published canon thus far.

I dread the day when I run out of Carol Goodman novels to read, for example.

It’s been a tough week, and I think that its my subconscious dealing with the issues of what this weekend means, really. Over the course of my life I’ve become really good at compartmentalizing my life into different rooms in my brain and shutting and locking the door on things, thinking I can’t deal with that now, I’ll deal with it later but some things are too big to be locked away, and they seep out through the cracks around the door in its frame and drag like a heavy stone at my being and emotions. I hit a major wall when I got home from work on Wednesday; I just got overwhelmed out of nowhere with grief and collapsed into my easy chair for some purring cat therapy. I also find that my moods can easily be shifted with essentially a snap of the fingers this week. I am unused to this kind of grief, and periodically wonder–with a sense of dread and horror–how much worse this will be when I lose Dad, as he is the only parent I have left. I know I am lucky. I had my mom for nearly sixty-two years; most people don’t get that long with one parent, let alone two. How much harder would this have been to deal with when I was younger and more immature?

But that is the kind of thing I always dismiss when it comes to mind–the path of regret is one of futility, wasted time and energy and emotion. You cannot change anything, so what is the point of trying to figure out or thinking about how different things might have been had you chosen A instead of B at this point, or D instead of Y then? The ripple effect of every choice we make reaches people we don’t know in ways we’ll never know, so maybe different choices made by me could have resulted in horrible things happening to other people, and why on earth would I wish bad things for people I don’t even know? That sounds terrible, frankly, and nothing I would ever want.

In some ways, this morning I am kind of looking forward to the drive north. I mean, yes, the destination is grim and sad, but it’s a beautiful drive; I have a great novel to listen to, and I really am looking forward to seeing my father. I want to get a good look at him, you know, and listen to him and see how he is doing. It’s so hard to tell via email or text, you know? Nothing like having eyes on someone for a proper assessment. I’ve decided to go up there this summer for a while, keep him company and spend some more time with him. (And yes, hateful little voice inside my head, I am very aware that I should have been doing this when Mom was alive. No sense in regrets, but I don’t want to feel this way when I lose Dad, so…changes in mentality and thinking are necessary going forward. I do wish it were easier to get up there than it is, though. I don’t think anyone can fault me for thinking that, either.)

Ah well, I have work-at-home duties to take care of as well as chores, so I am going to bring this to a close and head into the spice mines. I’ll check in with you again tomorrow before I leave, Constant Reader, and have a lovely day.

Love Don’t Live Here Anymore

I think I was always aware of the existence of New Orleans; I just don’t know or remember how my impressions before visiting for that first real visit were formed. I know I learned about New Orleans from my love of history; the city was too important to the development and shaping of the country to not be featured extensively in books–particularly the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. The Witching Hour by Anne Rice, I remember, had me wanting to come visit; I discovered Julie Smith’s New Orleans Mourning after visiting for my thirty-third birthday and realizing that I’d found the place where I belonged, needed to be, and my dreams would all come true.

New Orleans has a very deep canon of literature; you name a kind of book, one has been written in that style about the city. And just as there are a lot of subgenres of crime fiction–you can pretty much find a book about the city in any of them. There have been a number of cozy series set here, in every type of cozy style. I’ve always wanted to find a good cozy series set in New Orleans to sink my teeth into–the humorous kind–and while I’ve tried quite a few, none of them really took with me. That’s not to say the books weren’t well-done and written, or unclever; they just didn’t connect with me. I eventually stopped trying to find one, really–but of course, as with anything, just because you didn’t connect with the first two series you tried, doesn’t mean you should stop trying.

Take Ellen Byron’s Vintage Cookbook series, for one good example. I greatly enjoyed the first book in the series, Bayou Book Thief, which went on to win the Lefty for Best Humorous Mystery earlier this year. It was a terrific series launch, and had me really looking forward to the second book in the series, which is when series generally begin to find their legs and hit their stride.

And so, on my travel day to Malice, I read Wined and Died in New Orleans.

Ricki’s heart hammered as she glanced at the ominous black clouds hovering over New Orleans from the front window of her shotgun cottage home. She took a deep breath, then used masking tape to make X’s on the windowpanes of the living room’s large front window. She grunted as she hefted a mattress ontp the top of the room’s couch and positioned it over the taped window. “We’re safe now,” Ricki assured her dogs, a German shepherd mix and a Chihuahua mix, who were watching her with curiosity. “Even if the hurricane sends stuff crashing into the windows, they’ll break but won’t shatter into a million pieces. And the mattress will keep everything from flying inside.”

A violent clap of thunder shook the house. Ricki cried out. Princess and Thor, the shepherd and Chihuahua, barked at it. I choose to feel calm. I choose positive and nurturing thoughts. Ricki repeated the mantra over and over to herself. She’d been saying it a lot lately. Seconds later, rain slammed the cottage roof with an almost deafening force. Ricki’s phone sounded an alert and she grabbed it. She read the message: Hurricane watch canceled.

“Seriously?” Ricki said with a frustrated groan.

Ricki is our erstwhile heroine, who recently relocated to her birth city, New Orleans, after her husband died in a freak accident while trying to create a viral video. Since her return, she’s found a love interest with the handsome celebrity chef who lives across the street; developed a friendship with her landlady; and opened her own vintage cookbook shop at Bon Vee, the mansion of the Charbonnet family–known for owning restaurants and their delicious food. There are some great characters at the Garden District mansion since converted to a culinary museum celebrating the family that Ricki befriends as well; all in all, a lovely little community of friends and support for her.

This book is set during Ricki’s first hurricane season, and yes, Byron gets what that is like absolutely right–the constant warning texts of warnings and watches and their cancellations–as well as the blase attitude of the locals; we never get concerned terribly until we know something for sure and even then, you can’t be certain if you need to evacuate “just in case.” Evacuating for most people isn’t free, and even if the only disruption is a power outage–if it’s long enough you have to throw everything in the refrigerator out.

Thank God we didn’t make our Costco run the week of Ida, which was when we were due to go. It’s also been a hot minute since I dipped into hurricane season in one of my books. (Mississippi River Mischief does have some hurricane content, but it’s one from the previous season) But I digress.

The plot of this story is put into motion when several cases of really old wine–from the nineteenth century–are found on the estate, and because of its age, it’s really valuable. The decision is made to auction the wine off and put the money back into the museum–which doesn’t always break even–but the discovery of the wine brings some distant relations of the Charbonnet family out of the woodwork, all claiming they deserve a share of the wine sale proceeds. Ricki is also dealing with an intern; her crush across the street (with whom she time shares two dogs) has hired an assistant who sees Ricki as the competition and undermines her at every turn; and of course, one of the distant relations turns up dead and Ricki has to clear her friends–all of whom are suspects–of the murder.

There’s also a wonderful New Orleans pothole that plays a crucial role in the story.

I loved this book. I laughed out loud on the plane a couple of times–and smiled at others, when I recognized something from one of mine and Ellen’s boozy get togethers whenever she comes to town, which made the book all that much more fun to read for me. But it’s fun even if you don’t have a personal connection to it, either. Buy this book, love and cherish it!

And you can thank me later.

Human Nature

Wednesday!

I was tired yesterday. I slept okay Monday night, but not deeply and I did keep waking up so it was a restless night at best–and I sure as hell didn’t want to get up when the alarm went off yesterday morning. I was also behind at the day job when I got there, so had to play catch up a bit between clients. It was all good, but still a bit more stressful than I would prefer; I also kept thinking it was Monday all day which drove me a bit insane.

I also discovered that my insurance actually does not cover hearing aids for adults; I must have missed the part about having to be under eighteen when I looked it up. Which kind of sucks that in order to hear I have to pay for it out of my own pocket. The good news is I’ve made it this far without them, so I guess I can start trying to save up to pay for them somehow, or maybe I can get them financed or something. I’m not entirely sure, but it’s irritating. Our health care system has been fucked up since, well, the Reagan administration (quelle surprise; what modern day horror doesn’t date back to that bastard?), but the decline of the airline industry actually can be dated to Carter; he was the one who deregulated the airlines under the guise of increasing competition so fares would be more competitively priced. We see how well that worked out, haven’t we? American, United, Delta, Southwest and Jetblue are all that are left now from the glory days of air travel–Eastern, Pan Am, TWA, Continental, Northwest and many others having either folded or been taken over by another airline. Glad we have all these choices now, right? (Sorry, I was thinking about how the airline industry has declined over the course of my lifetime while at the airport the other day, and clearly it was still in my subconscious. I love Jimmy Carter, but this was a mistake.)

I slept better last night. I still woke up a couple of times but I feel very much more rested this morning than I did yesterday. I was tired when I got home from the office so immediately put the dishes away and started another load before the fatigue overtook me. I got caught upon Vanderpump Rules–more on that later–and when Paul got home from the gym we watched this week’s Ted Lasso, which was lovely and melancholy at the same time. (My God, how I love Jamie Tartt! Phil Dunster is killing it in the role this season, too. What an incredible character arc–and now we are seeing a lovely redemption for Nate, who disappointed me but we get to see our Nate again this season, which is so nice)

I did manage to work a little on the book yesterday, and it took me a little while to get reacclimated to the story and everything. I think I’ll be back on track with it again today and thru the rest of the week before I leave for Alabama on Saturday morning; and while the drive up there and back over the weekend will probably be tiring, I think I can see the end of the book coming. It might take me awhile to get there, but the end game is there and I need to really focus at some point to get it done. I may have to take a long weekend in mid-May to get there. Heavy heaving sigh. It’s always about time management for me, isn’t it, and being tired? How did I used to do this all the time? Oh yes, I was younger and hadn’t had COVID yet. *shakes fist at universe*

I need to stay away from Twitter more. I get so angry whenever I go there, and am always tempted to say something snarky or in kind to a troll–I don’t always succeed in deleting the tweet before hitting send, either–and while I am not worried about going viral or getting cancelled (if it happens, it happens, you know, and if I fuck up, I kind of deserve it), I am trying not to be that person. I don’t want to troll trolls on-line, nor do I want to get into tweet-fights with anyone. It’s all just a waste of time and energy that can be utilized better elsewhere (I do, however, reserve the right to troll anyone trolling a friend), and does no one any good. Twitter is the worst of us, really; originally intended for people to connect and interact with each other, it basically evolved into a place for people to complain. Oh, someone cut you off in traffic? Tweet angrily about it! You watched a show you didn’t enjoy? Tweet about it! And so on and so on. Twitter can be fun; I’ve certainly had fun there with friends and of course there’s always my “Greg meme” face, which can be used for surprise, shock, or horror (I actually have the picture saved on all devices for easy access and use as “the horror”); for some reason that always makes people laugh. It is a funny photo, and I will always be grateful that Josh Fegley snapped that shot so perfectly timed to get that expression on my face when the Evil Mark said, well, something evil while we were at Drag Bingo at Oz. I’ve tried repeating that photo without success; it was something in and of the moment, I guess.

Or I’m just older and my face sags so much I can’t replicate the expression. One or the other is the most likely, or probably both.

Heavy heaving sigh.

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again tomorrow.