Comfort and Connections for a Motherless Daughter

Guest Post by Linda Campanella

As my mother’s life was coming to an end, one day she confided that she hoped her family and friends would not forget her. Even before she confessed this private hope, she had done or said things that betrayed it. For example, for what she believed would be her last Christmas she gave two dear friends, both of them tea lovers, little hand-painted tea pots, and on the note accompanying these gifts she told her friends she hoped they would think of her whenever they sipped their tea. She asked her children to spray Chanel No. 5, her signature scent, on her pillow every once in a while so that our father could imagine his sweetheart of 52 years lying next to him. 

Surely she should have known and believed there was no way we could ever forget her – or allow ourselves to. After she died I realized that when we lose someone we love deeply, we cling to, and actively (perhaps even compulsively) seek out, things that will help us remember and feel connected to those whose physical presence in our lives we miss terribly. For those who’ve not yet experienced that kind of loss, it may be reassuring to know that it is indeed very possible to remain closely connected, in meaningful and comforting ways, to those who are no longer with us on earth. Sometimes the connections are intentional – things we plan or create; other times they are accidental – memories or feelings that just happen, descending on us seemingly out of nowhere.

Almost immediately after my mother’s death, I found myself surrounding myself with birds for reasons very personal and also spiritual. I acquired a coffee mug with a bird painted on it, a glass sun catcher for my window with a hummingbird in the center, birdfeeders for my yard, bird ornaments for the Christmas tree, a silver pendant with a silhouetted bird, carved mahogany birds for my bookshelf… Suddenly I was spotting birds everywhere, and I needed to have them. To this day I find comfort, and connection with my mother, in these birds. 

In March after my mother’s death (she died in September), I was alone at our cabin in the Berkshires and, perhaps for the first time, allowing myself to fully acknowledge and indulge my immense sadness over being a motherless daughter. As I sat out on the deck staring at the lake, alone with my grief in a location where I especially missed my mother, suddenly a hummingbird flew in front of me and hovered no more than three feet away; I could have reached out and touched it. Instead I reached for my iPhone so that I could photograph it and provide family members proof of this miraculously wonderful visitor. Why did that hummingbird appear in that spot at that moment?  It is not difficult for anyone to imagine what I concluded as I sat there, tears flowing and heart racing. Before I could snap a photo or say anything to it, the hummingbird flew off. I was momentarily distressed, but then I quickly became strangely and wonderfully comforted by the realization that my mother was near, that she would always be with me, that she heard what I was thinking, and that she knew I absolutely had not forgotten her.

Besides the birds, there are many other things that connect me with my mother.  Of course there are photos to remind me of her and her love – none more special to me now than the one of her smiling widely while seated in a big chair at the cabin; taken several weeks after her diagnosis with terminal cancer, that photo sits atop the printer on my desk where it is always in my line of sight.  I can’t eat a Clementine or a quesadilla without thinking of her. I think of her when I wear the fuzzy yellow socks I bought to keep her feet warm when she was confined to her hospital bed during the final stage of her life. Although I couldn’t do it in the first few months after she died without experiencing intense sadness and crying, today I often choose to put on an Edith Piaf CD and belt out the songs that my mother loved and that she and I would sometimes sing aloud together.

I love winter because it is the season when I can wrap myself in warmth and memories of my mother when I wear the many colorful scarves she knit and gifted to daughters, granddaughters, and friends during the last five years of her life. Because of what we shared during my mother’s illness and after her death, some of my mother’s dearest friends have become my own close friends, and we are so grateful for this unexpected gift – a gift that not only has connected us with each other but also continues to connect us with my mother.

Often I’ll glance at my hands and see my mother in them; I have her toes, as well. Last winter I put on a pair of her gloves and in a few moments realized the scent of Chanel No. 5 was tickling my nose. I drew the gloves up to my face for a deeper whiff, and suddenly my mother was with me again; I could see her smile and hear her laughter.

How I miss her! I am deeply relieved and grateful that I still feel her presence in my life in so many ways. None of them is a substitute for the woman I adored and admired, but each of them is a connection that reminds me of how lucky I was to have had her physically in my life for as long as I did.

I do spritz Chanel No. 5 on her pillow every few weeks during one of my regular visits to my father. Sometimes I pull the covers back, ready to spray, and the scent rising from my mother’s side of the bed makes me realize Dad has beaten me to the punch.

Linda Campanella’s poignant memoir, When All That’s Left of Me Is Love, was written in the months immediately following her mother’s death and published in August 2011. The book is a moving and insightful account of one family's determination to embrace life fully while anticipating death. Described by readers as “unforgettable,” the author’s emotional reliving of her joy-filled yet heartbreaking last year with her terminally ill mother and her first few months as a motherless daughter is an uplifting portrait of living, loving, believing, and letting go.  Campanella is a management consultant who lives in West Hartford, CT, with her husband. They have three grown sons and a one-year-old mini-goldendoodle. More information about the book and author can be found on the web (www.lindacampanella.tateauthor.com) and Facebook (www.facebook.com/linda.campanella.memoir).

Deliciously Happy New Year! (Recipe included.)

Guest Post by Ruby Dee

Things have been getting a little crazy around here, what with my book poised for release and all the media attention I’m getting. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the great reviews and interviews- folks have been so kind (so far!). But what happens is I get fatigued after focusing on making sure I make sense, or cooking up dishes for the photographer. And by the end of the day, it’s all I can do to stop myself from collapsing and calling out to my husband to just order a danged pizza.

Instead, I’ve taken to cooking up nice big pot au feu style dishes- not necessarily with beef, but using that means of cooking up dinner: a solid iron pot filled with fresh, locally grown winter vegetables, pork belly, beans, white wine and stock, all simmered for hours until the scent reaches out and grabs you by the throat, screaming “eat me!” Well, maybe not THAT intense, but so so tasty, you get the idea.

Pot au feu is a regional French style of cooking, dating back to when the home was warmed by hearth, and the one daily meal just simmered and cooked all day long there as well. While we don’t warm our home that way any longer, I envision the hearth turning to heart, and maintaining that style of feeding our family and home from there.  So big cast iron stock pots of loving goodness in the new year it is!

For new year’s day, I cooked up a pot of black eyed peas in chicken stock with sauteed greens, bacon drippings, peppers, and bourbon-glazed ham. You just can’t have a bad year with those ingredients to start you off right! What I do is sauté a shallot and garlic in bacon drippings until they start to sweat, then add black eyed peas that have soaked for a day in water with a dash of baking soda thrown in. I add enough chicken stock to barely cover the beans and all that to cook for an hour, then add chopped ham (leftover from the holidays of course!). Last, in a separate pan, I cook down some chopped up greens (of any kind- mustard, kale, whatever you like) in lime juice, cider vinegar, a spoonful of brown sugar, diced red pepper and chile flakes.  Once the black eyed peas have simmered away for another hour or two until the beans are cooked through and the flavors all melded together nicely, I add the greens to the beans and call that a healthy and happy new year dish.

And right now, I have a stockpot of leeks, sweet potato, caramelized shallot, green beans, bacon, and flageolet beans simmering away in a vegetable stock with curry, raisins and peanuts. It’s all I can do to not tear myself away from my desk and run downstairs this very instant! Though I’ll wait. As with all things that simmer, the longer I wait, the better it’s going to be.

Deliciously happy new year to everyone! Keep it tasty, and I’ll see you somewhere down the road.

Ruby Dee, from Ruby Dee and the Snakehandlers, brings many years various life experiences along for the ride. Ruby grew up traveling back and forth from Northern California foothill ranches to the cotton and oil fields of the Texas panhandle. She enrolled in college at 15, and dropped out to hit the streets as a punk. Later, she spent years fishing in Alaska, driving big rigs, and owning restaurants in Seattle, Washington, until she finally gave all that up to settle down back in Texas, where she is at long last furthering her career as a writer and singer/songwriter. These experiences are reflected in Ruby's writing style, and in the band's hopped up high-octane successes on stage and on the road.

Ruby’s latest release, “Live From Austin Texas”, out on Dionysus Records, is currently on the AMA and Texas Third Coast Music charts and has earned the band a Grammy nomination for Best Americana Album. Her cookbook, “Ruby’s Juke Joint Americana Cookbook”, shares 120 of Ruby’s original recipes, and includes a CD of music to cook by, including original songs by Marti Brom, Two Hoots and a Holler, Lloyd Tripp, Teri Joyce, Earl Poole Ball, and others (and Ruby, of course!).

Where is Robin Hood?

Guest Post by Barbara Lunsford

Now that tax season is upon us, I would like to clarify a small but significant misconception about Robin Hood, the guy who “stole from the rich to give to the poor”.

Robin Hood did not steal from successful, creative, industrious, and thrifty citizens to give to the less fortunate.  He stole from the greedy and powerful Prince John (Congress) and his tax collectors (the IRS) to give money back to the citizens who were being drained financially by the prince’s heavy taxes.  And as a result, the prince had to increase taxes (plus penalties and interest) to pay for the ever-increasing need to enforce the tax laws as resistance and rebellion grew (tax evasion, cheating, non-reporting, poor record keeping, non-payment, late filing, etc.).

Prince John’s system didn’t work then and it isn’t working now.  It robs us of our incentives to be successful, creative, productive and thrifty.  It encourages laziness, cheating, fear and rebellion.

“The Communist Manifesto”, Tenet No. 2, by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, calls explicitly for “a heavy progressive or graduated income tax”.  Amendment XVI of the Constitution of the United States (1913) gave Congress the power “to lay and collect taxes on incomes, for whatever source derived….”

In 1950 a family of four paid only 2 percent federal income taxes.  In 2010 they paid almost 18 percent.  (Large corporations paid up to 39 percent.)  Would an increase of 2 percent to 18 percent in federal income taxes for a family of four in the last 60 years be considered a progressive and graduated income tax?

Don’t you know the authors of “The Communist Manifesto” would be very pleased to see that we have come to tolerate and embrace one of their major doctrines to expedite the conversion of a free-market nation to communism!

Where is Robin Hood?

Born in Big Spring, Texas, Barbara Lunsford has been a bean counter (accountant) for over forty years. She has one published book, Killer for Hire – The Final Chapter of the Alabama Twins Murder Case, a true crime case of judicial malpractice. She also has several blogs with one specifically devoted to all aspects of mystery crime at Mystery Crime Blog.

Keys to a Million

Guest Post by Douglas Misquita

When I received sample copies of my debut novel and held the first book in my hands, I realized the implications of the sentence “over a million copies sold”. I realized that a million people had to buy what I was holding in my hand for me to get that branding on my books. At that point I could not fathom how other authors had reached that staggering as-far-as-the-moon-is-from-the-earth figure! But there had to be a way and I began to think about how to attain that end goal. No easy task because I was going to have to fund all this on my own.

The easiest and quickest thing to do was tell everyone I knew about the book. But all those ‘viral uplifts’ don’t amount to anything if people don’t click ‘Like’, and you cannot put a gun to people’s heads and say, ‘Click like!’ (though I can recall at some points I was very dogged about it with whoever I caught online) but there’s no other way. Persistence is key!

But even among my online friends, a subset of them ‘Liked’ the social page I created for my book and even they had not read the book. So how could they enthusiastically recommend it? What next? Move beyond friends. Quick Google searches found me reviewers within the country who will give publish an unbiased review. Here’s where the anxiety comes in because this is the first acid test. You’re opening yourself to someone whose credibility rests on how objectively they review your book. But there’s no other option: you’ve run out of friends and it’s time to step into the big bad world. After all these are the real ‘million’ fans you could have. Courage, belief in your work, and an objective reaction to criticism are key!

Meanwhile, I was traipsing around LinkedIn and joined a number of groups and found out that while a few ideas were good, and there are some ostensibly knowledgeable and extremely critical people on those forums, many of those groups amount to debutants trying to campaign their books which doesn’t work. I mean all we’re doing is one telling one and another about our books but no one is contributing to a sale or review. But all said and done, those forums did prompt me to get a book video created and some of the people out there are really nice and encouraging. I did make some good online friends who I think I will turn to for advice and tips in the future. Extracting what works for you on a forum and being humble is key! It sets you apart; people will remember that you weren’t just a vulture.

After my LinkedIn days, I listed my book on goodreads.com and even tried online advertising. Advertising is something that I was very finicky about because of the return on investment, especially if you’re not in the US and once again how many times do you click an advertisement when you don’t know the product or the product owner? Anyway, advertising is important and so I decided to dabble in a small campaign just to see what it would return. Conclusion: unless you’re already famous or you spend like a million bucks (exaggeration) advertising isn’t very helpful. But at least I know now, where I should put my money next time. At about the same time after a lot of debate I signed up for a discounted virtual book tour. This was my most expensive investment because shipping books internationally (one reviewer was from the Bahamas!) will definitely lighten one’s pocket. But the good thing here is that I exposed the book to an international audience and it worked well with them, so I know that my style of writing is internationally accepted and my stories are good and entertaining and I know that there are great discounts happening during the year! Trying out everything is key!

And then my publisher stepped in. And I don’t know why – I’d like to attribute it to fate, divine intervention and the fact that perhaps they saw what I was trying to do for the book. One day they said, ‘Douglas, go ahead and get reviewers, anyone willing to create a buzz around your book, doesn’t matter if it’s bad. Get those people; we’ll ship copies of the book to them.’ Freed from financial constraints I went on a head-hunting spree and also got bold enough to list a giveaway on goodreads.com. And bang! Suddenly a lot of people were interested in the book. Freebies are key!

I know I need to tour and have book signings but I will do that when I’m confident I can draw a crowd on my own and don’t need a celebrity to launch me. That’s what’s left. There are lots of videos of famous authors at signings and on talk shows. Watching and learning from the greats is key!

So here I am 1 year of experimenting with marketing my book. I’ve learned a lot and am confident that I now know exactly what to do with the next books in terms of spreading awareness. I may not hit my million (so soon) but I know that I’m doing the right things and am on the right path. Knowing that a million will not come overnight and you need to fight for it is key! 

Douglas Misquita is a thriller writer from India. His debut action-thriller Haunted has been well received by fans of the genre. When he isn’t writing or playing guitar with a rock-n-roll band, Douglas works in the wireless communications industry. Find out more at http://www.douglasmisquita.com