"I Love To Tell The Story" by Susan Barnett Braun

I met Susan Braun at the Write-to-Publish Conference in Wheaton, IL in June 2011. We are writers more or less in the same place in our careers: struggling, trying to find an agent or publisher for a completed book, unsure of our place in the market. At that time I had already made the move into e-self-publishing (though still hoping for commercial publishing for other works), and Susan was not far behind me.

She has now published her memoir, I Love To Tell The Story: Growing Up Blessed and Baptist in Small Town Indiana. It is available as an e-book and as a paperback at Amazon.com.

But let's let Susan tell us something about the book.

AATTA: Give us a one sentence summary of what your book is about.

SBB: It's possible to grow up in a Baptist church and emerge unscathed (and actually blessed) by the experience.

AATTA: Why did you decide to publish your memoirs rather than just writing them down for your kids?

SBB: I enjoy reading memoirs. However, I noticed a pattern in so many memoirs where the protagonist has a terrible childhood, full of abuse or events that she later construes as very negative. Looking back at my childhood, I have wonderful memories. I wondered why no one was telling the positive stories, and I decided to publish mine as a way for those of us who've had happy childhoods to celebrate our heritage. A pleasant childhood, by the way, doesn't necessarily mean a childhood with no conflict. A happy childhood can also be pretty darn humorous.

AATTA: The title of the book, and of each chapter, comes from a hymn. How does music play into your memoir?

SBB: Growing up Baptist, we sang a lot of hymns. They didn't mean a lot to me at the time: they were just a fact of life. But now that I've grown up and go to a church that has largely given up on hymns for "praise and worship" music, I've come to realize just how meaningful hymns were and still are in my life. Their lyrics and melodies are so rich, and many of the words sustain me to this day. Each chapter in the book is titled for a hymn that ties in with the theme of that chapter -- it just seemed appropriate.

AATTA: I notice lots of references to things you remember from the 1970s -- TV shows, music, etc. What was it like to relive those years?

SBB: It was cool and groovy, to be sure! As I immersed myself in my childhood again, I mentally lived for months with The Love Boat, The Flintstones, bell-bottom pants, President Nixon, and baloney with the red strip along the edge ... it was nostalgic, and also made me think about how much has changed in our culture.

AATTA: Groovy? I guess that's an expression that's coming back. Many of the memories you document are pretty specific. Do you really remember those things in such detail?

SBB: Actually, I do remember my childhood in more detail than many others do, perhaps ... I've spoken to folks who say they have no memory whatsoever of who their second grade teacher was, for instance. This floors me, because I most certainly remember Mrs. Gebhart :) Seriously, though, I'm not sure why I remember childhood details so well. Part of it is probably that I kept diaries for a decade or more during childhood, and I still have those. Also, I'll admit to a bit of creative license: perhaps I moved an event that happened when I was 12 to age 10, just so the story flowed better.

AATTA: What do you hope a reader will take away from your memoir?

SBB:I hope he will come away feeling good about life! I hope she will have memories that return from her own childhood, and that there will be many "Oh yes -- I'd forgotten about that!" moments. I hope that any reader would see the book as a pleasant escape to a time that was simpler in many ways, and that, really, it's okay to have had a happy childhood!

 

A Muted Christmas this Year

That’s the best way I can describe out Christmas season so far: muted. We have put up no decorations. We attended one party so far, of our adult Life Group at church. I wrote the first draft of our Christmas letter that will go out with our cards, but so far Lynda hasn’t reviewed it. And we will significantly reduce the number of cards we send out. We have done no Christmas shopping.

The reasons? Busyness. Health. Apathy.

I’m still working through the whole rheumatoid arthritis outbreak that hit me in July. I’ve seen a rheumatologist twice, and actually all affected body parts seem much better. I’ve been able to resume walking for exercise a little, and can sleep mostly pain free. Lynda has been taking physical therapy for bound-up muscles that don’t want to work the way they did twenty years ago, or even five. I think she’s marginally better than she was at the beginning of the summer. Meanwhile, we aren’t particularly excited about the physical effort involved in decorating. We may yet do some.

We won’t have much of a Christmas here this year. We’ll drive to Chicago a few days before to be with our son and his partner in their new house, and will return a couple of days after. Lynda’s brother will be in town, so we’ll have some quiet times with him and their mother. Rumor has it that we will possibly have a visitation of grandchildren and their parents over New Years, but we’ll have to see if the rumor is true.

But, as it turns out, we have one other very good reason not to decorate right now. Back in April or May we had a hailstorm—enough pea to grape-sized hail to cover the deck like snow. Then, the Sunday before Thanksgiving, we had another hailstorm of similar size and intensity. At some point in the Spring one of our skylights began leaking, allowing a trickle of water to run down the skylight well then along the ceiling then down the adjacent wall. I couldn’t remember if this leakage was before the first hailstorm or not. At least four times since then, in heavier rains, water has come in.

It suddenly occurred to me over the weekend that maybe the two hailstorms had caused roof damage. And maybe, though I couldn’t remember for sure, the hailstorm had damaged the skylight. If so, this would all be insurable loss. So Monday I called the insurance company and initiated a claim. I asked them, while they were at it, could they assess damage from a couple of blown off and loosened pieces of siding up at the top of the chimney, 30 feet above the ground in an inaccessible place. That happened in a different storm, I told them, but would they please evaluate it.

Yesterday the adjuster came out, and by the end of the day we had a sizable check in our hands. Of course, I left the house today without picking it up to deposit it. We will be getting a new roof and new skylight. They will re-do the sloped ceiling in the large room where the damage took place. They will paint the stained wall in that room. And they will even fix the siding on the chimney, all as one claim (even thought I did not represent it as one claim). Today the restoration company called me, wanting to come out today to look it over. I think the repairs will move quickly.

What does this have to do with Christmas decorations? The room where the damage is is the room where we put our Christmas tree, and most of the other decorations. If we had put the tree up before Thanksgiving, and the Christmas village and the garland by the fireplace and along the banister, and the manger scene, and the many Christmas knickknacks as we usually do, these would have been more things to protect. I probably wouldn’t have bothered calling the insurance company until January, if I remembered to call at all.

I find that Christmas decorations might help with the Christmas spirit, but I’m good not having them this year. Christ in my heart is decoration enough.

The Christmas Plot

I am so tired of the Christmas plot. Maybe it’s because of the TV channels we are watching this year. Normally, I don’t watch much television except for news and a little sports, maybe an occasional movie. But this year the wife wants to watch some of the Christmas shows. So we’ve been watching Lifetime and ABC Family and Entertainment network shows, seemingly made-for-TV movies. I normally try to multi-task by reading or writing or working on crossword puzzles, but I’ve actually watched a couple.

Here’s the Christmas plot on these channels: A early-30s career woman with a non-committal or philandering significant other has a chance to go somewhere between Thanksgiving and Christmas, or at least do something new, where she meets a virtuous hunk who works in a charity. She has trouble completing her mission, falls for the hunk, leaves the skunk, and winds up with the hunk. At some point she wishes upon a star or a Christmas tree or…something.

Case in point: An Indianapolis newspaper reporter, who has been limited by her boss to writing fluffy features, is sent to a small town in Indiana the week before Christmas to unmask a secret Santa who anonymously does a good deed of expensive charity each year. She goes to the town, quickly focuses on the richest man in town as the secret Santa. He’s out of the country but then comes back. He’s a hunk, his wife dead, no kids, and devotes his attorney skills to saving the rain forests. Just before she left for the assignment her significant other left her for a woman with whom he had a one-night stand. She falls for the rich guy, who she finds is not the secret Santa. Her S.O. comes to the town trying to make up since his new girl was a fraud, but she dumps him. She finds the secret Santa, an unlikely candidate given the size of the charitable gifts, but decides not to unmask him. At the end she leaves the Indianapolis paper to take over the editorship of that small town paper, and will certainly wind up with the hunk. Oh, yeah, since there was no room at the inn she was staying at the local rest home, which happened to have been run by the secret Santa.

Case in point: A career woman who is mistress to her married boss has a minor auto accident in front of the house of a hunk with two kids. In the accident an electrical shock changes everything. That man who lives there says they are husband and wife of ten years, and they have two kids. They all think she is wife and mother to them. Except she’s never seen them before, has never been married, and certainly has not had two children younger than ten years old. Various friends say she is married to him. The show progresses and she comes to terms with the problem. Oh, yeah, his job is running some kind of neighborhood charity. Eventually she finds being this man’s wife is much better than being the mistress of a philanderer. At the end of the program she relives the accident, wakes up as who she was. But it’s still the house of the charity-running hunk, whom she meets for the first time but knows all about him (not because of the ten years she didn’t spend with him but because of the five days she did, or didn’t) and will end up with him. We never learn if the two kids are in the house, the product of a former wife.

Case in point: A trust-fund 30-ish woman is about to be cut off by her jet-setting parents, unless she finds a job or husband. This one doesn’t have a philandering S.O., but has played the field. She’s on the street window shopping when a letter to Santa, dropped by a postman, blows in front of her. The girl asks for a new wife for her father, since his wife (the girl’s mother) died. The letter gives an address. She stalks him, learns he has a multi-truck snow removal business but seems to spend more time running a struggling soup kitchen, the charity of his dead wife. The woman begins volunteering at the soup kitchen and both the daughter and the man begin to like her. But he’s dating another woman, a cold-fish he knew somewhat in college, and is planning on marrying since his daughter needs a mother. The trust-fund baby falls for him, but is exposed as a fraud, then uses her last trust fund payment to rescue the soup kitchen from eviction—on Christmas eve of course. At the end of the show the cold fish is out and the trust fund baby is in.

And on it goes, ad infinitum. Is there no originality in these script writers that they have to use such limited plot lines? Or, is it more that the audience of these few channels are 30-ish career women with philandering SOs, or women who were there once, and so this is what they will tune in to?

We all want to see a happy ending, and character arcs that show growth in the good guys (or girls), and perhaps some movement or the bad guys toward the good side, or at least remorse at them having been bad. So perhaps the script writers are giving the broader American audience what we want.

It’s December 1st. Only 24 more days of the Christmas plot to get through. Must concentrate harder on the multi-tasking.

Another Memory About Edward

[from the eulogy I gave]

Edward's entrepreneurial spirit first showed itself at scout camp. His first year at Camp Yawgoog was 1966, the year after my first year. He went to the commissary and made a very important discovery: They didn't sell gum. I suppose this was because gum on sidewalks, under tables, and under chairs can be messy. Not being a gum chewer, I didn't notice this my first year.

The next year, Edward came prepared, his footlocker containing lots of gum, of all flavors and varieties. He sold gum by the stick, no doubt earning as much from each stick as he paid for the entire pack. I hate to think about how much he made, and what he did with it. I suspect it mostly went to the commissary.

That wasn't enough, however. Edward also realized that the thing other boys were most likely to forgot to bring to camp was soap. So he also stocked up on soap. He sold these, also at a sizable mark-up. A worthy service to his fellow boy scouts, no doubt.

But even that wasn't enough. From time to time Edward would go to the washout, look for soap left behind by someone, and confiscate it. Then when a boy would come to him to buy soap, he would say, "I've got new soap for such and such a price, and I have used soap at such and such a price." I wonder how many times he sold the same bar of soap to the same kids.

R.I.P. Edward Oscar Todd 1st

On October 30, 2011, my brother, Edward Oscar Todd 1st, died at home after a long illness, at age 57. He fought excessive weight for years, then diabetes, then numerous complications therefrom. He was cremated and his ashes will be scattered at sea. That seems a suitable disposition for a commercial fisherman who made his living from the sea until his illnesses advanced to disability.

I want to put one of his childhood pictures on this post, but don't seem to have it electronically. I'll get it and add it later.

I asked to say a few words at his funeral mass, and was granted the privilege. My topic was the growing up years. I spoke without notes, but want to get the stories in writing so that others in the family could read them and have them. Here's the first installment.
=========================

I want to share memories of Edward during our growing up years. I know many of you knew him as Ed or Eddie, but in our family we never used diminutive names. It was always Norma, David, and Edward.

The first memory isn't actually a memory, but rather a story Mom and Dad told. I imagine Edward was around two years old when this happened, so I would have been four. At the Church of the Epiphany, our Episcopal church in Providence, RI, the baptismal font was at the back of the church. Whenever an infant was to be baptized, the priest would invite all the children to go back to the font to watch. We sat in the front pew, left side, so the three of us made the walk all the way to the back of the church for a baptism. One Sunday we were back there to watch. The priest held the baby, dipped the sea scallop shell in the water, and baptized by pouring. At the end, Edward ran from the back of the church to the front, and yelled at the top of his lungs, "Mommy! Daddy! They washed the baby's head!"

The next memory fast forwards several years. I suppose Edward was maybe 8 years old, or at most 10. It was a quiet weekday night. Dad was at work at his night job in downtown Providence. Edward and I were watching TV with Mom, and Norma was somewhere in the house, probably in her room. It was getting close to bedtime, when Edward asked Mom, "Why do women wear bras?" Then, before she answered, he added, "Is it to make their breasts look bigger?"

Knowing Mom, I'm surprised she didn't answer, "Sometimes." But she didn't. She gave a good answer of the purpose of this particular woman's undergarment. Edward was satisfied, and trotted off to bed. I had the privilege that two extra years of age gave of staying up a half hour extra. So I told Mom that I would talk to Edward, straighten him out about what types of questions he should be asking. Mom said that I would do no such thing, that what he had asked was totally appropriate.

More to be added another day.

My First Real Earthquake

Monday night we were in Oklahoma City, the final night on our trip to Rhode Island for a family funeral. At some point during the evening, maybe a little after 9 PM, we felt the house shake and the rumbling of an earthquake, along with the sound of it.

This was my first real earthquake to be in. I say "real" because I've been through two previously. Both were small. I don't remember where they were on the Richter Scale, but certainly less than 3.0 and maybe less than 2.0. The first of those happened a couple of years ago while I was driving in or near Bentonville, Arkansas, and I never felt it.

The second happened perhaps a year ago. I was at home in Bella Vista, Arkansas, on a Saturday, I think, when hear a loud, sharp SNAP like sound. It could almost have passed for an odd thunderclap, except the skies were clear that day. I thought it might be an earthquake, went to the computer, and soon found it was. There was no movement with that—only the sound.

So Monday evening when the house began moving and we heard the rumbles, we had to think for a moment about what was happening. Five or so seconds later and it was all over. Or at least I did. Our son-in-law said they had a much larger one Saturday evening, clearly moving the earth, lasting for about 30 seconds. Plus there were after shocks between that big-ish one and the one we felt. So had was more ready than we were. These all took place around Prague, Oklahoma, a small town between Tulsa and Oklahoma City.

Last night, just after midnight, there was another earthquake in about the same spot. 3.0 on the Richter scale, they say. I guess I should have felt it, but was either asleep or rolling about trying to sleep. And, looking at the USGS site for earthquakes, I see there was one we slept through early Tuesday morning, a 4.7 intensity one, and even one we drove through at 7:05 PM Tuesday evening, a 3.6 intensity one. When I say "drove through", we were already 60 miles past the epicenter, and didn't feel a thing in the car.

So, one more thing to check off the bucket list: "Live through an earthquake". Not that it was really on my bucket list. And not that I really have a bucket list. I was scheduled to be in San Francisco at a conference way back in 1989 when the earthquake hit SanFran, but had cancelled the trip. I notice the USGS website with the best map scale doesn't show a couple of these yet. Once they do, I'll update this blog post with a link.

Life is a Whirlwind

This is one of my favorite metaphors to describe life: a whirlwind. Every day is packed with activity, some days almost to the breaking point. The whirlwind isn't a tornado, with its damage. Perhaps it's more of a waterspout, a whirlwind over water. It throws up a lot of spray, but in the absence of a man made object it doesn't cause damage.

Of course, the whirlwind is to some extent our own making. We crowd life with all kinds of non-essential activities. Young parents make sure their kids are involved with team sports and gymnastics and dancing and church activities and...whatever else you can think of. Teens continue the practice, adding dating to it. Club sports become school sports. Naturally when they become adults they continue the cycle of endless activity.

I have done the same thing. I don't remember my childhood years being a whirlwind. We came home from school every night. The only evening activity was boy scouts, which began in 5th grade. I didn't start school sports until sophomore year in high school. Didn't even try out in junior high. In college the busyness began, mainly due to working to pay the college bill. Even the early adult years weren't all that bad. Lots of church activities, and raising kids, but not really a whirlwind. Even the overseas years, in retrospect, seem leisurely. Maybe not right at vacation time, the planning, packing and going, but the day to day life was a breeze.

Now the kids are out of the nest, and the last way I should describe life is as a whirlwind. But that's exactly what life has become. It's all my own doing. Wanting to be a published author has added complexity to life that is most easily described as a whirlwind, two orders of magnitude added to what could otherwise be a leisurely life. The writing isn't too bad. It's more the promotion that adds to the to do list. I'm not handling it very well.

Of course, many other things dare to tread on the path I've established for myself, such as funerals in southwestern Kansas one Saturday and in Rhode Island the next. Kind of hard to get any real writing work done in the car, or on a plane. Concentration at those times is rather difficult.

So I think that is an apt metaphor. Not a simile. Life is not like a whirlwind, it is a whirlwind. Possibly this poem somewhat describes it.

Conflicted

I long to live that day when I will rest,
and cease to tax my brain. Then I will die
and stand before my Maker. Yet, I'm blessed.
I long to live! The day that I will rest
is somewhere out there, far beyond the quest
that now demands I try, and fail, and try.
I long to live that day when I will rest
and cease to tax my brain. Then I will die.