The Early Years
I was born in the blustery cold of the Massachusetts winter. It was February,
and as my mother always told me; I took my time. That means it was also
the middle of the night.
My young years were spent in Salem. I can't say things were good then because they weren't. We were a very lower middle class family; my mother a former factory worker who chose to stay at home to raise me; my father a bus driver. They always took care of me though, delivering some of the most amazing and memorable Christmas's a child could imagine; at least for those times when a good Christmas gift didn't involve a widescreen TV, an iPad and whatever the most popular immersive video game is. Though my childhood was modest, what I remember most is that we lived in a building owned by relatives who clearly were not family that my mother liked.
Not to sound soap oper-ish, my mom came from a family of 14 children. She was the youngest girl and the apartment we lived in was owned by the oldest girl and her husband; strangely enough the brother of my father. My mother told great stories as I became old enough to understand what was happening around me. Dinner when she was a child in one of those stories consisted of beef stew with a lot of kids around the table waiting for the spoiled oldest girl to wake up from her nap and join them. They couldn't touch the stew until the princess arrived, who then picked all the best beef from the pot before passing it onto the next oldest. As my mom rounded out the story, by the time the stew got to her, she had a pot full of gravy at which point she and her brother chose peanut butter.
My mom hated peanut butter in the years that I was at the age when it was a staple. To me, there was nothing quite as good as that creamy golden brown goodness smeared on lightly toasted bread with a little butter mixed in. Yum! Like the trooper that she was, my mom would pour heart into every slice that she made for me. Of course it wasn't until I was older that I discovered how much it made her gag.
My mom saved every penny from the tips that my dad brought home. She was a determined woman and was intent on getting us out of the house we were in and away from the relatives. They were a little bizarre to say the least, but I won't go there just now. Instead, I'll just compliment my Mom on her tremendous drive. We bought a house when I was seven; a tiny house with a converted attic that became my bedroom. The room was painted completely lilac; walls, doors, trim. It's a wonder as an adult my favorite color is purple. But then again, purple is a far cry from lilac.
Though life was modest there in Peabody Massachusetts, it was good. My
Dad wasn't around much and when he was, he wasn't really enthused with the
standard Dad duties. He and I were never really close. It was all up to my Mom. I remember soon after moving
into the little house in Peabody which had heated floors via hot water pipes
embedded in the foundation, my Dad was on a cross-country bus tour, I walked
down the stairs from my room to find my mom sitting at the edge of the
dining room floor crying. The room was flooded with water spewing from a
hole in the middle of the floor. A pipe had burst, my Mom was alone with
a 7 year old and we had just spent all the money we had saved on the
house and the move.
We managed to get the floor taken care of with the help of a bank and a change to base-board heating, and my Mom and I developed a close relationship that carried over to my teenage years. We helped each other, encouraged each other and became good friends.
The Writing Bug
I was a somewhat typical teenager with the exception of not being much
of an athlete. I was thin, and loved hanging out at the beach with friends
at night time. My friends were a bit nerdy which helped to begin my love of
science fiction, in fact night time on the beach helped to create some interesting
stories that drove my creative mind to expand. That of course along with a
discovery of obsessions for Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Twilight Zone,
Land of the Giants; I could probably go on and on. The one thing they all
had in common was they made me think while they brought me into worlds of
pure imagination. Suddenly, I wanted to create worlds like that.
I started writing with pen and paper. I had an idea that came into my head that would begin in the very distant future, then carry into the future and end in the present. I was driven and the character descriptions were pouring through my fingertips into the pen and onto the paper. I didn't have any way to enter words other than what seems archaic now, and thought about what the future would be like and how easier it would be with the devices that were already starting to crop up. But ink worked and I was so enamored by the simple art of writing that I even created a character who would live in a distant future world where pen and paper would never be necessary, yet this man, a Governor, worshiped writing as an art form. Suddenly one of my first major characterizations came out of my own feelings myself. Governor Andrew Simms enjoyed documenting his life and his loves in the pages of the many journals he had filled throughout his years, appreciating the simple art of placing pen upon paper and letting his thoughts flow through the ink dispensed. For those wondering, the character of Governor Simms survived the years it took for me to finally pursue a dream, and is a critical character in my first novel. In fact, words that the character wrote within one of those journals using ink upon paper are the closing words in the epilogue.
As usual, my Mom found a way to feed the dreams of her son with little money. I got a typewriter, though I can't remember if it was my birthday or Christmas. I do remember staying up late at night banging out my visions on the keys of that infernal machine. It was clunky, and the paper I fed into it was barely thicker than a tissue, but it worked. My story was coming together and Governor Simms became one of many characters that began to fill in the gaps of something I believed in.
As I continued my love for writing and persisted to create as often as I could, the craziness of teenage years melted into the need to get a job. There was a shopping center between where I lived and where I went to school, so the first job hunt began while I was in High School. Of all things, the first store that called me for an interview was a book store. I remember very clearly that question about experience, and I remember very clearly my answer; "How do you get experience if everyone wants you to have experience to get the job." The manager's name was Ron and I'm sure he doesn't remember this but he told me later when we had worked together for several months that it was that answer that made him decide to hire me.
And then the realities of life kicked in.
Life
Things were going well at my little job at the book store, at least for a little while. My Dad started showing signs of alzheimers early enough for my Mom and I to realize something wasn't right. I continued working at the bookstore throughout my senior year in high school and beyond, and we tried to muddle through. He didn't see what was happening to him, and we didn't know at first what it really was. What we did know was that his memory was starting to fail.
The following couple of years were fast. I continued writing when I could, but I was beyond happy to enjoy my love of books through my work in the two book stores I eventually worked within. I also started dating, but I'll leave those stories private for right now. I eventually landed a rather decent position in downtown Boston where I was able to keep tabs on things at home. Though my Mom was trying to ignore that the inevitable may be coming, I had to help her prepare for a forced retirement that was clearly on the horizon.
After some time working for a
travel-oriented corporation in Boston,
and then a pretty sizable airline at Boston's Logan airport, I decided to
relocate to Florida. Why, is another story I'll keep for another time, but
I was more than happy to leave the snow behind so I packed up the Geo
Storm along with all my stuff and sought out a new start. My Mom was preparing for
my Dad's job loss at this point, and Orlando would work much better for
her. She was even prepared to go work in the theme parks. Once we got here
though, my Dad got bad. It was bad before we moved, in fact he forgot a
bus route completely at one point which is the moment that really signaled
the end of him as a working man. In Orlando though, he would grab keys,
head to the car and get himself lost and eventually wandering around a parking
lot wondering where he was.
As we accepted the inevitable while preparing to put my Dad in a nursing home, (my Mom had reached a point where the thought excited her and again started thinking about working for Universal or Disney) my Mom started noticing strange twitches in her legs. I was in a solid relationship at that point, and my partner and I both started noticing that she was slurring often. While I'm ashamed to say my first assumption was that she was hitting the bottle, the truth came after a lot of doctor's visit, a lot of people who didn't know why she was starting to lose control of her legs, and one doctor that we were referred to that knew immediately. It was the first time I had heard the phrase A.L.S, and the beginning of a huge change in my life.
I remember saying to the doctor "well, she's going to recover, right?" The answer was "no", and then I chased the doctor out of the room to ask her what the heck it all meant. That's when she mentioned Lou Gherig's Disease. That I knew. I've never in my life felt so completely lost. My mother had no idea what was really going on, and I had to break the bad news to her. There were a lot of tears. My dad was so far into the alzheimers that he wasn't capable of understanding the tears. It was a tough day, but what I didn't understand at the time was that the next two years would be progressively tougher.
My mother was a magnificent woman, one of the most magnificent
persons I've ever encountered. Sure, it's easy for all to say the same
about the people that bring us into this world and spend their lives
teaching us to be the best that we can be. My mom to me was magnificent
because she managed to do so much with so little. I had a good life and
am the person I am because of this woman. She loved life and passed that
onto me. It was heartbreaking to watch someone who was always active and
embraced life in the way that she did to slowly lose all control of her
body. I kept her out of a nursing home for as long as I could, but she
eventually ended up unable to walk and in nursing home care. All through
the years of her
slipping away, the smile that was ever present on her face remained
there. You couldn't understand a word she was speaking, yet the hearty
laugh that I grew up with was there until the end. So the magnificence
of my mother is that in the horrors that her life ended in, her legacy
was the love for life that she instilled in me. Her laugh lives on in
me. More than anything else, that's what she would have wanted.
Dream On
My mom was not alone when her life was over; each hand held as she walked out upon her last breath. My father lost his battle with alzheimers about six months after my mother passed. The reality of life is that things are not always good. But I think the important part of the not good is to understand what it can do to make you who you are. I'm a stronger person, I appreciate life much more than I did in younger years, and I laugh as often as I can. I am also determined to stop chasing dreams and start making them. So back to writing. That's where the making dreams begins. The first novel is finally out there. I can say I did it. It's the same story I started many years ago with the same characters including Governor Simms along with his love of the art of writing, although a lot of the story has changed and some new characters were added. In the long run, it's a start for me; the first step in making dreams happen. My dreams.
So why write all of this? As I wrote on the home page, it's what I do. While
writing about me is not the most comfortable thing I've ever done and
I'd rather be creating a new story, or a new character that has some
crisis or another that ultimately enables them to become a hero, I
thought I should add something about me in honor of launching the
website. For this part of my life, I'm celebrating the start of
changing times; the publishing of a novel, and the launching of a new
site. Witihin this site, there are many examples of my writing meant to
entertain and to bring any readers who want to come on a journey with me
into the worlds I create. I invite you to read, enjoy, smile and mostly,
though I'm not a comedian and my words won't be what brings a chuckle out
of you, to find your reason and laugh before the day is out.