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But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, about Joshilyn and her (third) book. She’s the gifted writer I met last summer at the first Mississippi Writers Guild Conference (that’s us at right) the one who said to me, at the end of one of the workshops she taught (in addition to being the keynote speaker): “Go forth and blog.” She’s the reason I created Pen and Palette to begin with, so from time to time I’ll pause to give her a nod and some of the endless white space on this magical paperless notebook. (By the way, this is my 101st post since I started the blog in August! I guess I should have celebrated my 100th post on Tuesday, but it wasn’t on my radar.)
A flood of people, paramedics and policemen, poured through the glass doors, streaming around the four of them as if they were rocks in a river.
Later she describes a suspicious character this way:
Stan Webelow had a pixieman face, and his hands were moist and soft, as if he’d deboned them.
As if he’d deboned them? Who thinks that way? A brilliant wordsmith. And I love how she captures the “Southern way” that’s such a part of Laurel’s DNA that she can only act in certain ways:
Laurel had been raised on Miss Manners and King James, maybe in that order; neither source had ever told her what was proper on a night like this. She didn’t know if she should offer to make coffee or start screaming until someone gave her medicine.
Isn’t that exactly the dilemma of every Southern woman in a crisis? Coffee? Tea? Nervous breakdown?
I ordered Joshilyn’s book from her “virtual signing” and when I opened it I read her words to me with joy: To Susan: keep writing! XXO, J
As the sun peeked through the windows this morning, I headed outside to take pictures of our Japanese magnolia tree (right) it’s buds trying to break through into the early spring morning, having survived the snow of only six days ago. A squirrel was digging up goodies from the dirt that has been thawing all week. And our camellia bushes were in full bloom… I even had to bring a few in for the kitchen table.
Oreo sneaked out onto the front porch (she’s literally a housecat in her old age) to welcome the new life that was budding everywhere. And I came back inside thinking about Mamaw and why I dreamed about her last night.
But I knew. Her life is woven throughout the early chapters of the memoir I’m writing, from the years she made all my clothes during the summer vacations I spent at her house in Meridian, Mississippi to the wedding gift she gave me in 1970—a patchwork quilt sewn from scraps of all those dresses. The quilt! That’s it! That’s the connection with Joshilyn’s book and why I dreamed about Mamaw after reading it…. Laurel (in The Girl Who Stopped Swimming) is a QUILTER! So there it is… that mystical connection, always crouching just beneath the surface of our subconscious, if only we will listen for it. I can look at that quilt all these years later and remember what those dresses looked like. With my mother’s onset of Alzheimer’s, I can’t help but worry about my own plight one day, and I wonder if this quilt will help me remember.