Pictures, Words and Stories

Happy first day of Spring!  I know friends have snow on the ground as I write this blog post and I'm hoping that it's at least sunny for them today. It's a beautiful morning here.

"A picture is worth a thousand words."

The adage refers to how ideas can be conveyed by a single photograph. In writing novels, however, we need the thousand words or more to convey the idea. My historical novel, A Decent Woman, clocks in at 85,950 words. That's a lot of words :)

I took this photograph last Spring and I could tell you so many stories about this photograph. You might think it's just a nice photograph taken of a cat lounging on an overcast day and of course, that's true. It's much more than that to me.

The wicker table sat in my maternal grandparent's white clapboard country house in Cacao, Puerto Rico, high up in the mountains where they grew coffee, banana and plantain trees, oranges and lemons on their large farm.The ceramic pot belonged to my girlfriend K's father who passed away a few years back in Winchester, Virginia.The black cat I've named Noir belonged to my next door neighbor, Mr. Don who passed away a year ago. My friend M and I found the unpainted wicker chair next to a dumpster in Northern Virginia.The mountain laurel in the pot on the small retaining wall came from a holler in Front Royal, Virginia. A man I was seeing brought me the plant on our first date.

The little wicker table belonged to my maternal great-aunt Paquita who gave it to my grandmother. I don't know who owned the table before that. My grandparents took it to their coffee farm where it sat for decades before the farm was sold. My cousins and I played on that table, used it to play school and had tea parties on it. My mother packed this little table in brown paper and tied it with rope like a present and checked it in as luggage on a TWA flight from San Juan, Puerto Rico to Alexandria, Virginia in the days when we could travel with two pieces of luggage.

In those days, my grandmother and mother traveled back and forth from Puerto Rico to the US with plants with clean roots, plant clippings, food, clothing and anything else that fit in two suitcases. My Polish grandmother used to visit us bearing huge kielbasa, Polish sausages, in her luggage! A suitcase to us kids always meant it was Christmas. We couldn't wait to see what our relatives had packed and whether or not the items for us was still exciting.

The well-traveled little table. It traveled by jeep from the mountains of Cacao to the city of Ponce where my grandparents lived and then, to Alexandria, Virginia where my parents lived. The little table traveled with me to California, Austria, back to Virginia and when my mother passed away, we headed to Belgium where the table lived for 13 years. I packed the little table and drove it to France where it continued to be an end table in my daughter's bedroom. When my kids and I left Europe, the table traveled to Maryland, Virginia and now, it sits on my patio in West Virginia. The little wicker table has traveled almost as much as I have!

I hope one day that the little white wicker table will sit in one of my children's nurseries, so I think it's time for it to come inside. I know Noir will miss it :)

Peace and love,
Ellie

Sometimes There Are No Words

In A Decent Woman, my historical novel about Puerto Rico in the early 1900's, I deal with many issues of the day - racism, poverty, the forces of nature, birth and death. The situations my characters find themselves in are no different from issues we face today. My heroine is a midwife who encounters all those issues. I was familiar with many of the situations that my characters found themselves in, so many times it wasn't a huge stretch for me to write those chapters. When I wasn't familiar with a subject, I used my imagination and research to fill in the gaps.

I put myself in my character's head, body and soul when I write. When I can't come up with an appropriate or poetic word or when I need a more powerful word, I go to the thesaurus and dictionary that sit next to my laptop. I can usually find and select words that convey and enhance what I'm trying to say, but most times, I show and don't tell.  A character's actions and behaviors can very often give the reader a good sense of scene, mood and feeling, so I challenge myself to not use fancy words.

One of the most difficult scenes in my first novel to write was when a minor character's infant dies. I've never lost a child which I've always said would be the death of me. I'd surely lose my mind. How cliche those words and phrases sound. Working on the scene, I found words such as palpable, gut wrenching, anguish, sorrow and pain. None of the words seemed appropriate, so I wrote what the mother's face looked like, what she did with her hands, body and eyes. It was a tough scene to get through. There can be nothing more painful than losing a child. I did the best I could. I'm a mother of two adult children.

Yesterday, a good friend invited me to share a late breakfast with her. I was excited to see her as we'd both been so busy this winter. As we sat in the restaurant catching up with omelets and a side of pancakes, she took a phone call. I watched the blood drain from her face as her eyes filled with tears. "I have to go see my friend and you must come with me. I can't go alone." Her face told me that there was no backing out. We quickly paid our bill and left the restaurant. On the drive to her friend's house in another town, my friend told me that she'd found her adult son dead that morning. Her only child. A woman I've never met. My friend had lost her daughter years ago and although I felt like a major, major intruder, I would be there for my friend. No doubt, memories were flooding her mind, as well. I couldn't imagine. I said prayers for everyone.

I won't go into the scene that we walked into. I will tell you that at times of deep sorrow, anguish and pain, there are no words.

Rest in peace.

Ellie