Writers Were Once Quirky Little Kids Too . . .
As a fiction author one question I probably get asked most frequently is: “How does your mind come up with this stuff anyway?”
Do you really want to know? Okay, here it is . . .
I write what I know.
I’ve found that in writing fiction, what seems to work best for me is to write what I know—along with a big dose of what if. In doing so, I feel somewhat knowledgeable about what I’m writing but have the freedom to add some interesting twists and turns, along with a little nonsense. The other reason is probably more accurate—my own life, for the most part, has been exceedingly more comical and off the wall than anything I could possibly dream up on my own—so why not take advantage of it? Were there an official category for Stories Sort of Based on a True Story, Taking Tuscany would certainly qualify. Here are some facts about my life that have contributed to help make up the story you have just read. Personally, when I read a fictional story, I often wish or hope that some of what I’m reading is true … especially if I like the story. I guess I’d like to think that some of the good stuff really did happen to someone. I hope you, too, will enjoy finding out that some of the good stuff in Taking Tuscany really did happen … to some degree … somewhere … to someone.
Let’s begin with the notion that A. J. has gone from being a ten-year-old child (in Saving Sailor) who lived in the small town of Squawkomish her entire life, to moving halfway around the world to a foreign country. Taking Tuscany picks up a few years into this adventure, where A. J. is now thirteen. Just as she was adjusting to an Italian girls’ school, she was pulled out two weeks before the end of the school year and put in a new coed school. All of this took place during a very impressionable time in her life.
Enter real life. In 1972, the same year that A. J. was thirteen, coincidently, so was I. I had lived my entire life on the west side of a small lake in Washington state, and my parents decided to move our family of seven across the lake to the east side. Not exactly halfway around the world, but with the drama that comes with being thirteen, it may as well have been. It had taken me thirteen years to establish my popularity status, my lunchroom status, where I sat on the school bus … and suddenly there I was, a nobody, down there at eye level with the rat at the bottom of the totem pole, starting all over again.
I thought being cool consisted of owning a pair of Big Mac overalls or baggy navy jeans and a sailor top. These east-side girls were weird—they had matching three-piece outfits from Nordstrom’s—brand new, no less. And they even fit! They couldn’t even begin to appreciate the amount of Clorox it took to make new navy jeans look ages old (by soaking them overnight in a tub of bleach)! What was considered cool on the west side of the lake wasn’t even on the radar on the east side.
Add to this an abstract, philosophical A. J.-type mind. As a creative little poet and devout Catholic girl, I had an insatiable curiosity for the deeper mysteries of life. I loved, loved books—read everything I could get my hands on about heroic and noble people. They intrigued me to no end and I wanted to be one of them. I had lofty moments where I daydreamed of joining the convent or living a life of charity like Mother Teresa. (This continued throughout my life—until I met a really cute guy and married him instead.) At one point some of the new-age teachings of the seventies began to creep into our school. I often engaged my “Search for Identity” teacher in discussions about living the life of an enlightened loner—you know, in a cave, like Siddhartha—to try and figure out my sole purpose of being, or whether my true essence was more yin or yang.
The majority of the east-side girls, however, were more interested in which matching outfit they would wear to school the next day, what car they would get for their sixteenth birthday, or when cheerleader tryouts began. Rather than conform to their shallow material way of life, I spent many solitary hours in my modest bedroom with my mattress on the floor, writing poems of teenage wisdom while listening to the latest Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young album. Favorite song: “Don’t Let it Bring You Down.” Did I mention this bedroom of mine was inside a five-bedroom waterfront home on Evergreen Point Drive in Medina … about a mile from where Bill Gates recently built his current home? I’m sure Siddhartha would relate.
So there I was, the teen guru with no followers. And I got lonely. Real lonely. I refused to give in to the superficial game of life going on around me, so I just pulled inside of my melancholy little mind and wrote more poems and rode my huge palomino draft horse, Mooney—who could understand me better than anyone else. My dad had an inkling of what was going on inside his troubled child and gave me the books I’m Okay, You’re Okay, and How to Be Your Own Best Friend. And for a while I was okay and my own best friend. I asked him a few years ago what was going through his mind about me during that time. “You were pretty scary,” he replied with a smile.
At one point in Taking Tuscany, A. J. alludes to thinking she’s possibly possessed by the devil, and asks Sister Aggie about it. As far as thinking I was possessed with the devil goes … I’m sorry to say, but I have to admit that it’s true, true, true. I did manage to make one very good friend who was equally as intellectual and “deep” as I was. Karen had a horse named Lucky and together we rode and philosopholized (an A. J.-ism) about all of the shallow, empty dweebs among us who had no clue what life was really about. We made up for all of them. Sometimes I thought so hard and so deep I drove myself completely nuts. I asked Karen’s mom once what was wrong with me. Why was I so different? Why could I not stop pondering infinity, eternity, and the all the unanswerable mysteries of life that drove me to the brink off insanity? She told me there was a name for my deep thinking. It was called meditating. So there I was meditating my way through life at age thirteen, scared to death my mind was going to wander so far out there it would never come back. Leave it to Karen’s sixteen-year-old brother to set me straight. “I know what’s wrong with you,” he offered, free of charge. “You’re possessed.”
This was not said as a joke. And the movie The Exorcist had just come out in the theaters. The entire mention of it freaked the living daylights out of me.
“Why do you think I’m possessed?” I asked.
“Look at you—it’s in your eyes.”
Great—that explained a lot. Now I felt sick to my stomach every day at school and scared out of my mind. I kept going to the nurse’s office saying I didn’t feel right. I guess one wouldn’t … if she were … possessed.
The school nurse had a little chat with me and finally got it out of me. “I think I’m possessed by the devil.”
She was a big black woman who couldn’t conceal her huge grin. “Child, you are not possessed. I think maybe you feel a little guilty about something.” She asked me about my family life and learned that I was the middle child, a right brainer, emotionally and hormonally out of whack, and a tad on the dramatic side. In other words: the black sheep of the family. That was why I felt bad, she said. “Go home and talk to your mom.”
Right. Couldn’t do it—for at least a week—until I overheard the school nurse say that she would call my parents if I kept missing class.
So I sat my mom down one afternoon and enlightened her. I told her the whole ugly truth. “Mom, I think I’m possessed by the devil and probably need to talk to the priest. I lie awake all night and drive myself crazy, thinking about things that have no answers, like, how can infinity go on forever and ever and ever … ?”
My mother stared at me … and laughed. “I’ve been telling you you’re crazy for years!” She said I was not possessed, and she had a surefire cure. “When those kind of thoughts start up, just think of something a little less complicated—like baking cookies.” She said there are just some mysteries God is not going to let us in on until we get to heaven, and things like infinity were one of them.
And that is where we left it. But it did help. I felt delivered—after all, if your own mom doesn’t think you’re possessed, you probably aren’t. I do have volumes of cookie recipes memorized, if anyone’s interested.
Winter was my favorite time of year when it snowed. As far as the hundred-foot ice ditch goes … true! We spent our childhood winters sliding down the world’s best and longest frozen ice stream—with the two cutest boys in the school. We’d hit speeds in the double digits. The only drawback was instead of draining off into a field, the ice stream crossed a busy street at the bottom of the hill, so we had to have someone give us an “All clear!” shout before we launched ourselves—then we’d pray it was still all clear by the time we reached the bottom! There were only a few close calls over the years. We also ice-skated under the moonlight on our friend’s pond at Silver Bow Farm, with a burn barrel ablaze to keep our hands warm.
About those chutes and ladders … Yes, we really did lower my little brother down the three-story laundry chute on a rope while mom and dad were out to dinner. He was the runt of our family and we still call him “the Ween” to this day. He’s a good sport. And we also had a very large housekeeper named Tammy who locked us out of the kitchen while she mopped the floor and ate all of our food.
The character of Annalisa was based largely on a childhood enemy of mine who always liked whatever boy liked me, and made my life miserable because of it. And, as a matter of fact, she really did look like a horse. Adding her character to my story is only poetic justice. One of life’s finer moments. Especially when she went sailing across the room as a troll doll!
Moving on to the steamy romance scenes: as in, A. J.’s Spin-the-Chianti-Bottle fiasco at Annalisa’s birthday party. I have to confess that I have never played spin the bottle … However, I once found myself in an equally traumatic predicament, with an equally valiant escape effort. While other girls my age were going to parties and playing spin the bottle, I was usually at home curled up with a good book, like, Beverly Cleary’s Fifteen, still holding out for true love. At one point a boy asked me to go steady with him (translation: He walked me home from school each day). On our way home one afternoon, we were invited to go along with three other “couples” to a sticker fort, which, they neglected to tell us, had recently been turned into a kissing fort. I should have known better—these girls had all been around the block a few times. I had never kissed a boy in my life. For some odd reason, I agreed to go along. I’m not sure what I thought we were going to do there.
Once we were all situated in a circle on the dirt floor in the sticker fort, it didn’t take long to figure out that we weren’t there to play cards. Two by two, the other couples started locking lips. Eventually all eyes turned to us—the only pair not kissing. Talk about peer pressure! Like A. J., I decided that this sticker fort was not the place, nor was this the guy I wanted to make “first kiss” history with. In the books I’d read, the girl always got butterflies in her stomach when it came to her first kiss. Me … I was getting more nauseous by the minute.
Rather than pucker up, I suddenly jumped up, blurted out something brilliant, like, “I have to go do my homework,” and fled like Cinderella at the strike of midnight, leaving my abandoned little prince behind.
Have I ever regretted that dramatic exit? Never. A true lady always knows when it’s time to go. She will also wait for her true prince to come along. That is one thing in life a girl should never compromise on.
Everything in Taking Tuscany about loving animals, having a critter cemetery, rescuing dogs from pounds, hiding hamsters from parents (after asking friends to give them to me for my birthday), sobbing my eyes out over sad animal and people stories, wanting to be a veterinarian … and a writer … all true. And I’m still hoping to lead the animals through paradise one day in my little white robe … Lord willing.
I’m happy to report that somehow both A. J. and I survived the tumultuous teens. By the time I finished my journey with Siddhartha, he was pretty much finished with me, too. When I stopped to look around, Jesus was the one who hadn’t given up on me, and was, thankfully, still out looking for me when I realized I was lost and wanted to go home. A Good Shepherd is like that—always keeping an eye out for that one lone straggler.
As for the theme of the story: The family is everything … absolutely true. At the end of the day: Family matters, life is short, eternity is long, heaven is good, and God is love. That is the message.