Starting Over ~ Life in the Day Camp

Posted on July 4, 2013 by Linda Barrett

HAPPY 237th BIRTHDAY, AMERICA!

In the beginning…thirteen states…

And then there were fifty…

Dear Readers:

About 300 million folks will celebrate America’s birthday today. I will be among them. In my corner of the world, we’ll raise voices in concert, wave flags, down hot dogs, hamburgers and ice cream…we can’t forget the ice cream 🙂

How will you be spending the 4th? Leave a comment and you’ll be entered into my July contest! Choose two books from the fab authors of On Fire Fiction which are shown below, PLUS a $25 gift certificate to either Amazon or BN. You might burn yourself here – some of these are hot, hot, hot. But others are not, not, not 🙂

As always, thanks for stopping by. I hope to see you on Tuesday, July 9th, for the next edition of Starting Over.

Best,

Starting Over ~ The Pink Ribbon Sisterhood

Posted on July 2, 2013 by Linda Barrett

THE BABY HAS A NAME!! Oops– THE MEMOIR HAS A TITLE!!

It took longer to decide on a title than it did to birth this baby. And I’m not kidding. There were times I thought this work would forever be referred to as The Memoir. But I’m very happy to announce that HOPEFULLY EVER AFTER: Breast Cancer, Life and Me will be released on October 1st, appropriately at the start of Breast Cancer Awareness month. I certainly hope the book will raise awareness not only of the disease but of what choices women now have to combat it.

So how did this book come about? Why did I write it? Let’s get the obvious out of the way: I’m a writer with fourteen novels behind me. My natural instinct is to take pen to paper or put my fingers on the keyboard and figure stuff out by writing. Two bouts of breast cancer is a lot to figure out.

IT’S ALL IN THE FAMILY–

If you shake a family tree hard enough, you might find Uncle Joe, the bootlegger during Prohibition. Or Aunt Hattie, the one who ran away with the traveling salesman. Or even cousin Elmore, who became a U.S. senator. Take a minute to think about your family. Is it not full of characters and stories? From the humorous to the tragic, people create their own stories simply by making choices and living with them.

In my family tree, you’ll find ten siblings who chose to immigrate from Poland to the United States at the turn of the last century. In their search for a better life, they brought with them their love of family, hopes for an opportunity to thrive, and a bunch of BRCA1 genes about which they knew nothing. The last item was certainly not a legacy they would have wanted to bequeath.

I’m in the sassy wig sitting with Jean Brashear at a Ninc conference. The straightest hair do I’ve ever had!

My grandmother was the oldest of the six young women and four young men who landed in Ellis Island a hundred years ago. They were a close knit family and started out living near each other in New York City. Soon, they formed a family society with monthly meetings which became annual events as time passed. But because of these annual gatherings, I got to know many second and third cousins who didn’t live near to me.

So when I found out that my cousin Pearl had cancer, I knew who she was even though she was part of my dad’s generation. And when I heard that my cousin Shirley from New Jersey had cancer, I knew who she was, too–a beautiful young woman, a kindergarten teacher who left two small children and a loving husband. And then her brother got cancer, too. My cousin Blanche fought four different cancers. My family visited the cemetery too many times.

That ‘s when we acknowledged that “cancer ran in our family.” But there was no pattern. Some of my stricken cousins had been born to the sisters, some were daughters of the brothers. If we had known then what we know now… But “then” was the 1960’s and 70’s and 80’s. What seems odd to me even now is that all of the original ten lived out natural lifespans. My own grandmother also died of cancer in 1963 at the age of 76. But she had neither breast nor ovarian cancer.

In recent years, there have been other cousins and of course, my own two battles with the disease. So I wrote a book to satisfy my own curiosity. My need to know why cancer “ran in my family.” Frankly, it’s a damn good reason to write a book.

CONFRONTING HEREDITARY BREAST AND OVARIAN CANCER is another book that’s important to me. This is a terrific reference book, clearly written and broken down into easily identifiable sections. It’s primary author is Sue Friedman, DVM who founded the non-profit organization Facing Our Risk of Cancer Empowered aka FORCE. I’ve written about FORCE in the blog several times before because it’s the only non-profit organization in America that focuses exclusively on hereditary breast and ovarian cancer. You can check them out at www.facingourrisk.org.

Because of my need to know, I researched my family and current achievements in medicine. Because of my need to share what I’ve learned in a fun way, I wrote HOPEFULLY EVER AFTER: Breast Cancer, Life and Me. I hope you’ll look for it when it’s released.

FUN STUFF!!! Congratulations to the winner of the June contest: Laney aka Elaine. Full disclosure – because Laney doesn’t own an eReader and lives in Canada, she chose to receive several of my Superroumance books (paperbacks) instead of the offered prize. As far as I’m concerned, the winner is the boss, and I’m happy to oblige. (The dollar value was the same).

NEW CONTEST!! For July, I’m giving away two books from a new group of choices by authors from On Fire Fiction. You might burn yourself–some of these are hot, hot, hot. But some are milder. Your choice of two plus a $25 gift card to Amazon or BN.

Starting Over ~ Life in the Day Camp~WE’RE GRANDMAS NOW

Posted on June 27, 2013 by Linda Barrett

GRANDMAS ARE MOMS WITH LOTS OF FROSTING.

I wish I’d thought of that. It’s one of those sayings attributed to “author unknown.” But I’ll confirm that the idea resonates in the day camp. Many, if not most, of my friends here are grandmothers. Do we show off the latest pictures of the kids? You bet. Do we brag occasionally? Oh, yeah. Are our grandbabies the cutest, brightest, funniest, sweetest inventions since chocolate? Absolutely.

But we’re also glad when the visits are over and all the kids–children and grandchildren–go home.

MY GRANDKIDS BELIEVE I’M THE OLDEST THING IN THE WORLD. AND AFTER TWO OR THREE HOURS WITH THEM, I BELIEVE IT TOO. — Gene Perret

A funny thing, though. As soon as we say goodbye at the airport, we yearn to see them again.

It’s become an all-or-nothing proposition in America over the last decade or two. Extended families no longer live near one another, so BIG VISITS compensate and leave us all exhausted. First, the scheduling. Then the waiting and crossing off the days. Then right before, a frenzy of shopping, cooking and freezing. Most important, the planning of “what to do” with everyone after arrival. We must have fun activities! And then, finally, the tykes arrive with their parents. And with every hug and kiss, we melt. And are reborn.

IF I HAD KNOWN HOW WONDERFUL IT WOULD BE TO HAVE GRANDCHILDREN, I’D HAVE HAD THEM FIRST. — Lois Wyse

My own grandmother lived a hundred miles away from me in upstate New York. Every so often I’d arrive home from school and there she’d be! My parents didn’t do the countdown thing. I guess they believed in surprises. A wonderful surprise. This lady was the only grandparent I had, and she was everything a little girl could want in a grandmother. Some years ago, her memory inspired me to write a story about her, and about grandmothers then…and now. My own boys were half-grown at the time. I’m sharing my memory with you today–a story of family–so this blog post will be longer than most.

~~~~~Real Grandmas–A Family Story~~~

A real grandma has big jiggly arms. My grandma did, and when I cuddled up to her on the couch, my head fit perfectly against her unique pillow. She’d read to me in her Yiddish accent, “Vee, Villie, Vinkie vent through the town…” It sounded just fine.

A real grandma knows how to knit. My grandma did and when she started a sweater, she actually finished it. Long after I’d go to bed, she’d continue to knit and leave her work-in-progress where I could see it first thing in the morning. I was always amazed at how red or navy blue string could turn into a bulky garment, a thing of substance, just by moving two long needles against each other. It seemed like magic, but Grandma could do it.

A real grandma also fills the house with scrumptious aromas, and needs the special assistance of a ten year old granddaughter. Those apple pies, those rugelahs–rolled out dough cut into triangles and re-rolled into crescents with sugar, cinnamon, raisins, nuts, jelly, anything delicious would do. And the strudel made from dough so thin, you could almost see through it. They are all in my mind’s eye as clearly today as when Gram and I shared my mother’s kitchen on one of Gram’s visits so long ago.

“Lindala, you’ll scrape the orange and lemon like this,” she said as she gave me the “rebvison,” the four-sided metal scraper used for such work. I took it proudly. This was not a baby job! She crushed walnuts, set aside raisins and kneaded the dough. The finished products looked like miracles to me, but Grandma just nodded at her efforts and brushed the flour from her hands.

Those delicious fragrances filled my childhood home, but no recipe was written down. How could she write: a pinch of this, a little of that with enough of the other until it was right? Grandma’s kitchen methods did not end with baking. She made chicken soup in exactly the same way. This artstic style continued until I was about twelve years old.

Whether I had a flash of insight or whether I slowly forced myself to acknowledge that Grandma was old, I don’t honestly recall. But I do remember thinking and worrying about her dying some day. After my initial grief at this realization, I took action.

“Grandma,” I said, while holding pen and paper in my hand, “exactly how do you make rugelahs?” And she told me. Slowly, we worked the amounts out together. A written recipe was finally born in our family, and it was perfect. Anyway, that’s what my boys tell me.

My boys have two grandmas. One does aerobics and one plays catch wtih them using a hard ball and a baseball glove. Their grandmas are in their seventies, in the same decade of life as my grandma was when I grew up.

My sons think that real grandmas are athletes, that real grandmas work full-time until forced to retire at 75, and that the only food grandmas know how to cook is chicken, the quintessential low cholesterol choice. They have never seen either grandma bake as much as a cookie or knit the ubiquitous scarf. But if you’d ask them about their grandmothers, as I did, they’d tell you that those ladies were absolutely perfect and that they were very real grandmas. Just like mine was.

~~~~

THE BEST BABY-SITTERS, OF COURSE, ARE THE BABY’S GRANDPARENTS. YOU FEEL COMPLETELY COMFORTABLE ENTRUSTING YOUR BABY TO THEM FOR LONG PERIODS. WHICH IS WHY MOST GRANDPARENTS FLEE TO FLORIDA. — Dave Barry

Leave a comment to say whether you enjoyed this type of memory and if you’d like to try writing some family stories of your own. I’ve taught others how to do it, and I can get you started right here on my blog. It’s a lovely way to pass down memories without saying, “When I was your age…” which no child likes to hear!

June contest ends today. If you leave a comment, you have a chance of winning a choice of two books shown below plus a $25 gift certificate to Amazon or BN.

As always, thanks for stopping by. I hope to see you for the next edition of Starting Over.