Cathy Lamb's Blog, page 42

Who are your thankful for? Why?

This is my little brother, Jimmy.

He is the one I dedicated “The Language of Sisters” to.

I bought him this monster cake for his birthday because I knew it would make him laugh. (He didn’t want his photo on facebook!)

Jimmy is Wendi’s husband and Noah’s father. He was in the Army Reserves for eight years. He was a professional sky diver. He’s a firefighter and a paramedic.

Jimmy spends every day at work helping other people. It’s what his whole professional life is about. He comes in on what will be, for many of them, the worst, or one of the worst, days of their lives. He’s calm, he’s competent, he’s experienced.

He gets some pretty hard calls, as you can imagine. Terrible situations. Crying and chaos. Fire and smoke. Accidents, heart attacks, burns, deaths, blood, diseases, the ravages of people on drugs.

And he helps. He fixes. He solves. He comforts.

He and his family have always been there for me and my family, during good times and very bad times. I know they always will be.

Jimmy makes me laugh. He makes scrumptious food, especially his cinnamon monkey bread, which he brings for Thanksgiving at my house every year. It is our tradition to eat the monkey bread as an appetizer. It is odd, we know this, we do.

My brother is one of the best, most loyal friends of my life.

And that’s why “The Language of Sisters” – there’s a wonderful brother in there! – is for him.

It’s a little thank you for being an outstanding little brother.

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Hello everyone,

A few of my books are on sale in case you are needing a fall book, a Thanksgiving book, or a book to read because you want to laugh and cry (More laughs, fewer tears, I hope).

My Very Best Friend, $2.99 on kindle.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00P53BX3K/...

The Last Time I Was Me, $6.99 on kindle

https://www.amazon.com/Last-Time-Was-... 75&sr=1-6&keywords=cathy+lamb

Henry’s Sisters, $4.99 on kindle

https://www.amazon.com/Henrys-Sisters...

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Happy Halloween!

Tonight, Innocent Husband and I will sit outside wearing our scary ghoul outfits. We will be very, very quiet and still, like ghoul statues, until the kids get to within about three feet of us and then we will yell, “Boo.”

Those trick or treaters love it even when they jump two feet in the air.

Then we give them a Hershey bar.

Yes, this is our annual Halloween date night. We know it is rather pathetic. We do.

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Wishing you all a happy fall.

Snapped this photo while on a walk today with my friend, Joan.

She made me laugh so hard I almost cried.

Hope you have a fall filled with laughing so hard you almost cry.

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Ch apter 1

I was talented at pickpocketing.

I knew how to slip my fingers in, soft and smooth, like moving silk. I was lightning quick, a sleight of hand, a twist of the wrist. I was adept at disappearing, at hiding, at waiting, until it was safe to run, to escape.

I was a whisper, drifting smoke, a breeze.

I was a little girl, in the frigid cold of Moscow, under the looming shadow of the Soviet Union, my coat too small, my shoes too tight, my stomach an empty shell.

I was desperate. We were desperate.

Survival stealing, my sisters and I called it.

Had we not stolen, we might not have survived.

But we did. We survived. My father barely, my mother only through endless grit and determination, but now we are here, in Oregon, a noisy family, who does not talk about what happened back in Russia, twenty-five years ago. It is best to forget, my parents have told us, many times.

“Forget it happened. It another life, no?” my father says. “This here, this our true life. We Americans now. Americans!”

We tried to forget, but in the inky-black silence of night, when Mother Russia intrudes our dreams, like a swishing scythe, a crooked claw emerging from the ruins of tragedy, when we remember family members buried under the frozen wasteland of the Soviet Union’s far reaches, we are all haunted, some more than others.

You would never guess by looking at my family what some of us have done and what has been done to us. You would never sense our collective memory, what we share, what we hide.

We are the Kozlovskys.

We like to think we are good people.

And, most of the time, we are. Quite good.

And yet, when cornered, when one of us is threatened, we come up swinging.

But, pfft.

All that. In the past. Best to forget what happened.

As my mother says, in her broken English, wagging her finger, “No use going to Moscow in your head. We are family. We are the Kozlovskys. That all we need to know. The rest, those secrets, let them lie down.”

Yes, do.

Let all the secrets lie.

For as long as they’ll stay down.

They were coming up fast. I could feel it.

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If you want to write a book, first you buy a pretty journal.

Then you open the pretty journal and you naively hope that inspiration hits about the main character but it doesn’t so you sit there on your butt and slug down coffee and eat chocolate even though it is morning and chocolate is not recommended as a healthy breakfast alternative.

You stare at the blank page and nothing comes at all, not one hint of an idea of who this book will be about, so you think it would be best to wander around your house aimlessly and meow at the cat and she meows back and you do it again and you know you are in a serious conversation with your cat and you don’t think this is odd at all and then you pretend to clean but you don’t really clean because cleaning is so very, very boring.

You know that you could be abducted by handsome green aliens tomorrow to Jupiter and if you had spent today cleaning that would really tick you off.

Eventually, after days of staring at those blank pages in the pretty journal, curse them, you hate them, those white, pale, insipid pages, you think of a character but she is stupid. She is wimpy or whiny or weak. She is dull or complainy.

She does not have real problems only thinks that she has real problems so you go back to eating chocolate on your butt and muttering to yourself and meowing and not cleaning because of the upcoming handsome alien abduction.

You know your character needs a job so you ask Daughter Number Two, Adventurous Singing Daughter, what kind of job your character should have and she looks at you impatiently, sighs and rolls her eyes, as she is reading a really good book, not yours and she says, “Mom, just make her unemployed,” and she goes back to reading her really good book, not yours.

And you ask Daughter Number One, Rebel Dancing Daughter what kind of job your character should have and she doesn’t know but she is so excited because she wants to travel to some dangerous country in Africa or the middle east and you can feel your hair turning white the more that little mouth goes on and on about “exploring the world,” and then she says what would you say if I told you I was dating a vampire?

And you don’t know what to say because but you realize that your mother lied to you by omission by not being honest about how mind boggling it is to raise teenagers, especially ones with wild streaks, like your children, and you just want to start drinking but you remind yourself that you don’t drink but then you say to yourself, “Maybe I should start up.”

And you ask Darling Laughing Son what job your character should have and he says, “I dunno. But I’m hungry again,” and you say, “You have already been fed and watered with four meals today and it’s only two o’clock in the afternoon,” and he says, “I’m starving to death, momma. I’m starving. Can you make me something?” and you do make him something because you cannot have Darling Laughing Son starving to death on your watch.

And you ask Innocent Husband to whom you have been married to for twenty three years what kind of job your character should have and he says,“You look good tonight, baby. Let’s just go to bed.”

And one night you finally get an idea for a character and then you have to give her a family and friends and maybe someone irritating and mean in her life, too, unless she is a loner, sort of like you, you really need to get out more when you are writing your books, you weird hermit, and definitely this character must have problems and conflicts and a past but you can’t think of anything you haven’t already written about so you start thinking about writing a romance book with steamy scenes instead and you find your husband, to whom you have been married to for twenty three years and you say, “You look good tonight, baby. Let’s just go to bed.”

But in the morning no ideas arrive and you think you should go back to being a fourth grade teacher again, the kids were nice and the other teachers were cool cats, but you would have to get up by 6:30 in the morning to get there on time and Lord A Mercy, so help me God, you know that that would be impossible for you to get your big butt out of bed at that time.

You bang your head on a table, as if that will knock some smarts into your little brain, or at least a small plot, and it doesn’t because banging your head on the table has not worked in the past, you have done it enough so you should know this by now, you weird hermit fool.

But finally you have a plot and you wait for the first sentence of the book to come through the sky like lightning so you can start writing but it doesn’t and obsessively buying more flowers and plants for your garden does not help because flowers and plants do not talk or think, at least that is what most scientists say.

Finally the first sentence comes because you have begged your little brain to think of something, anything, only one damn sentence, holy moly that is all I am asking for, and you start writing 2000 words a day and when the first draft is done you read it and say out loud to yourself, “You suck,” because, frankly, you do. You do suck.

And the edits begin, endless edits, eight or nine before it even goes to the agent and editor, and by the time it’s done your eyes are fuzzy and you can’t breathe quite right and you are still eating chocolate for breakfast, which is again, not a recommended breakfast alternative, and you need to go outside and talk to people, as you have not been abducted by handsome green aliens, you weird meowing hermit and you need to see if your friends are still friends with you, you do.

And that is how a book is written.

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Hello all,

I will be chatting about my new book “The Language of Sisters” at Jan’s Paperbacks in Aloha, Oregon on Saturday, October 8th at 1:00.

Also, for those of you who would like to buy a signed and mailed copy of my book go to this link:

http://www.janspaperbacks.com/node/409

I so hope to see you at Jan’s!

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The truth is that Rebel Dancing Daughter almost died twenty three years ago.

She almost wasn’t here, wasn’t our daughter. She almost didn’t make it.

And now she’s leaving.

Rebel Dancing Daughter graduated from college in June. She now has a job in California. She is packing her stuff up and moving out.

She will take the black high heels she danced in at parties. She will take my old jean jacket because it’s now “vintage.” She will take piles of her favorite books that are like literary friends to her.

And off she’ll go.

She’ll start a new life, a new career that is meaningful and helpful to girls living in poverty in Kenya. She will dedicate herself, every day, to making their lives better.

It is hard to believe that twenty three years have gone by.

I went into labor with Rebel Dancing Daughter when I was twenty three weeks pregnant. This is an extremely bad time to go into labor, as you know. Babies, especially back then, did not make it.

Without the excellent care I received from a high risk specialist, we would have lost her. I was in and out of the hospital many times and was on bed rest for thirteen weeks. I was on two different types of medications. One that left my resting heart rate at, often, 150. The other caused depression. I rarely got off my left side.

The fear that I experienced during that pregnancy, that my daughter would die, or be born severely disabled, is something that I have never forgotten.

But Rebel Dancing Daughter made it and grew up. She played sports, she took dance lessons, she camped and hiked.

And she has been through her share of hardships.

As a young girl she went with me when I took my mother to chemo and radiation. She brought joy to my mother in law when she was dying in a care home. She made my father laugh when he was suffering from terminal prostate cancer. She visited her other grandpa in a nursing home and happily chatted with him before he passed, too.

Rebel Dancing Daughter lived in France her junior year of high school and she has traveled all over, sometimes alone, always with little money. She loves politics and social issues and is infuriated by injustice and the lack of fairness in a painful world.

She worked multiple jobs during college, one at a nursing home in Scotland where she took care of a number of people who either fought in World War II, or lived through the London Blitz. One still had the sweater she knitted while in a war bunker as the Nazis bombed from above.

She listened to their stories and she comforted them when they cried because they didn’t know who they were or where they were. She changed diapers, cleaned them up, fed them herself with a spoon, and held their hands. She took care of them with courage and compassion.

Rebel Dancing Daughter is much older than her years because of what she’s been through. She’s a thoughtful, kind, smart young woman. She loves to read, to write, to laugh, to explore. She is fearless.

She adores the twins, Darling Laughing Son and Adventurous Singing Daughter. They are her best friends.

And now she’s leaving. Out the door with her dancing shoes. Out the door with my vintage jean jacket. Out the door with her beloved books.

It breaks my heart. But Innocent Husband I are proud of her, we are.

Good luck, Rebel Dancing Daughter. Be safe. Be kind. We love you.

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Greetings, all. I will be at Powell’s, Cedar Hills, Beaverton, TONIGHT, October 3, at 7:00. I am now at my kitchen table, staring off into space, eating morning chocolate, trying to think of something at least semi – entertaining to say. Hope to see you tonight, I really do. Cheers and happy day to you. (I’ve always thought this flower looks like a heart. Do you think so?)

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This is my favorite place to write. Unfortunately, I am not there.

Soon I will be chatting with my mechanic and paying a huge amount. Then I will do laundry. Then I will sweep the kitchen floor because not even I can ignore it anymore.

And who put all that junk in my garage?

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