Victoria Dougherty's Blog, page 18

Herein Lies the Truth

I have a close family member who tells a lot of big, whopping lies. Lies about the past, about emotions and their impact on her and others, lies about what she had for breakfast, for heaven’s sake.

When I was a kid, this family member – let’s just call her Marta – told me a heartbreaking story about her very painful, difficult childhood.

She had been abandoned by her family, you see. Then tossed out of her grandmother’s house because the woman simply didn’t want another mouth to feed. Somehow, Marta had found her way to a convent and was raised by a group of wonderful nuns. They adored Marta, teaching her the ways of prayer and selflessness. Marta almost became a nun herself – she’d wanted to very much – but her grandmother reappeared in her life and forced her to marry a man she wanted nothing to do with. A man her grandmother thought would position their family for future prosperity.

But a portrait of Marta remains at the convent where she spent so many happy years. An artist who did occasional work for the church had been struck by Marta’s beauty and used her face as the inspiration for his painting of Mary, the Virgin Mother. Marta promised to take me to that convent one day and show me that portrait.

And I believed her.

(c) Hackney Museum, Chalmers Bequest; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation

It wasn’t until my teens that I discovered through various sources that almost everything Marta had told me was either twisted or completely fabricated. There was no convent and no artist. Her grandmother had never tossed her out on her ear.

At first I was shocked and devastated. I couldn’t believe that Marta – who I loved and trusted and who was so good to me – was just a big, fat liar. I went back through everything she’d ever told me about herself, about others, and pondered the little inconsistencies in her accounts of things as simple as an exchange with a store clerk. In the end, I concluded that there was not a single thing that Marta had ever said that could actually be trusted.

I wandered around in a daze after this revelation. My whole world had been turned upside down, and I was really angry about it, wanting nothing more to do with Marta and her perverted versions of events. I even told her so.

“Don’t be so hard on Marta,” my aunt told me. “She loves you and that is the truth.”

My aunt also went on to tell me the real story of Marta’s life, one that has since been corroborated by other family members. It’s a story of devastating loss, betrayal, of rape by an uncle and a prison guard, of an abusive marriage. By any standard, it is a far more heart-wrenching tale than the one Marta put forth to me.

Slowly, I began to realize that the true story was one Marta simply couldn’t bear to tell.

“But why did she have to lie?” I asked my aunt. “Couldn’t she have just said nothing?”

Truth is, I knew the answer to that question. Marta needed to tell me something. She needed my sympathy, and needed me to understand why she was the way she was. Every lie she told – from how much a bag of apples had cost her at the grocery store to the year she was born – was a deflection, a protective measure meant to soothe the pain from the unmentionable. With her lies, she was able to create a mosaic that showed truth from a distance and enabled her in some way to right the wrongs that had been visited upon her.

The unlovable was taken in and loved.

The rape victim was to become a nun.

The ugliness Marta felt inside was transformed by an artist’s portrait.

And in the end, Marta became the Virgin Mary.

That was the truth Marta needed to tell and she was sticking to it. I imagine she felt she had to, because to contemplate the facts was too much for her.

Marta’s distorted worldview and the havoc the eventual exposure of her lies wreaked upon our family was my first experience with having to learn to love someone who was tragically flawed. With having to forgive so many things which – at least on paper – appeared unforgivable.

It was also my first experience in discovering the true power of fiction. How a story can tell a greater truth, even when it warps and obliterates fact.

It’s why when I started this blog with the aim of chronicling some of my family stories, I did it with the full intention of leaving the stories just as they were – told sometimes from multiple viewpoints. Letting the inaccuracies bubble up all on their own and the more significant truths prevail. These are the unfiltered and sometimes unverified tales that make up family lore.

And they are powerful.

The truth of the matter is that sooner or later, the truth does tend to come out and that organic process of verity as opposed to truth, is far more beautiful and frightening and enduring than the products of mere research. A fact is just a fact, after all. It comes and goes as new facts are unearthed. But verity is bigger than that. It is, as defined, a true principal or belief of fundamental importance. Verity is what myths are based on, and myths, while often fantastically unreliable – even downright ridiculous, are much mightier than a mere account.

It’s how a monster like the Minotaur – half bull, half human – illuminates us about courage and cleverness in a way that still resonates thousands of years later. Even if the story is just a load of bull.

And it’s why on Thanksgiving this week, as Cousin Betsy waxes nostalgic about her dear, late husband, who she couldn’t stand the sight of while he lived; as dad goes on one of his crazy-assed political diatribes – pissed off about immigration, although he’s an immigrant himself; while your sister-in-law recounts her Facebooky life – sounding off in nauseating detail about her selfless acts, fabulous vacations and twenty year honeymoon with a man who make loves to her five times a day without the aid of pharmaceuticals, we might want to try not chewing our sweet potato casserole with quite so much contempt. Like Marta’s, these stories are often brimming with hidden meanings. Ones of longing, shame, hope, desperation, love lost and found.

If we’re going to be honest about it, that’s all that really matters.

Vive la France

Apocalypse Now and Then

I’ve always been compelled by people pushed to their extremes. I’m sure a lot of it has had to do with the fact that my own immediate family history has been pretty dramatic.

I remember pestering my dad to tell me his story. I could tell it was big because he never talked about it. Then finally, when I was in Middle School, he told me how he’d watched his father die by Nazi firing squad in his own backyard. His father had been a political opponent of Hitler’s in their small community near Vilna and that didn’t go over very well. My dad’s mother died in a mass grave somewhere – either in a Communist or Nazi concentration camp – he wasn’t even sure which.

He spoke those words with an even tone – restrained. Without a single tear, or heavy sigh. It was what made his story so powerful to me. He told it cold. At night, I would put pictures to his story in my mind, creating a sort of slide show that would replay over and over again as I drifted off to sleep.

On my mom’s side, she and her parents fared better, but not by much. A world war and a Soviet takeover obliterated the life they knew and thrust them into a new existence of danger and intrigue – at least until they escaped to America.

I was well familiar with those stories – no prying needed there. They made their way into our dinner conversation somehow in some way almost every night – usually prompted by a report in the news. As a small child, I turned one of their stories into a heroic mind movie, replacing the characters – my family and others – with talking squirrels. My older brother had nightmares for years, stemming from being caught trying to escape Czechoslovakia with my mother. He’d jump up from bed, hands in the air, crying “Don’t shoot.” Consequently, one of my squirrels had the same affliction.

It’s been odd at times to think that I’m the only one in my birth family who hasn’t had a gun pointed in her face. I’ve certainly spent way too much time imagining what it would be like. I’ve wondered about my reaction both during and after. Speculated as to whether I could act under pressure and do the right, moral thing when push came to shove. I always hoped I would be the good squirrel.

I think it’s that hope, that speculation about circumstance and motive that has inspired me to write about this kind of stuff pretty doggedly – whether I’ve been immersed in the very adult world of spies or have been swimming through the rough seas of an emotional Young Adult novel. It’s the role I’ve taken on since I was a kid: people tell me their experiences and I process them, turn them up, down and around, try to make some sense of it all and eke out meaning.

It’s a beautiful process – like helping a troubled child navigate the loss of his innocence.

But lately, that child has been vexing me and I’ve found myself stuck.

For the first time in my life, I’ve been experiencing a form of writers block. It’s not that I can’t write. I have been writing and editing every day. I’ve just been feeling a bit creatively adrift.

“You need to recharge your batteries,” my husband said. “When is the last time you took a break to exclusively feed your imagination?”

Hmmm. The truth is, I can’t remember when. Doing something for pleasure that might spark my imagination – while I’ve completely agreed with the idea in concept – always seemed frivolous to me. Like I was wasting time.

And I have been in a constant war with time.

But reluctantly, I made the decision to take my husband’s advice.

I could’ve gone on long walks, to the movies, or put a dent in a “to read” pile that has grown as tall as an NBA basketball player, but none of those things were doing it for me. Just thinking about them was burdensome.

I needed something bonzai.

Walkers – The Walking Dead _ Season 5. Gallery – Photo Credit: Frank Ockenfels 3/AMC

Then I remembered that a character in one of the YA novels I’ve been writing is a huge horror fan. A Walking Dead fan to be specific, and my editor, Kate, shares her obsession with that particular show.

I know as a writer I was not supposed to do this, but I actually wrote in my character’s Walking Dead fixation before I ever saw a single episode. I meant to watch it, and had every intention of becoming fully fluent in all things zombie before finishing my draft, but once again time got in my way.

“[The Walking Dead] has all of your themes,” Kate told me. “Faith, loss, redemption, destiny. Consider it research.”

Someone once told me that a writer always goes home to stir the creative gumbo. Home can be a place – literally. A visit to an old stomping ground, stalking the ruins of a childhood haunt. It can be a bottle of Jim Beam, even if you’ve long switched to Oban or given up the juice altogether. Or a call to an old mentor – the kind of glorious bastard who never lets you get away with any of your usual crap.

For me, I’ve come to realize, home is the end of the world.

Whether it’s Doctor Zhivago, Schindler’s List or a wild west style Armageddon filled with gun-toting rednecks, Dudley Do Rights (or at least Dudley Do Not-As-Wrongs), and of course, drooling, oozing, quasi-dead creatures with a rabid hunger for human meat.

I have always felt a sense of familiarity with the moral dilemmas that true-blue s**t storms can bring to the surface. In that world, gut-feelings trump intellect, muddled, over-evolved dictums on social order and political correctness become obsolete. Yet bonds strengthen. Love becomes cherished again. Evil, no longer shameful to identify. We lose our comforts, but reconnect with our primal instincts to fight, lead, follow, hate, worship.

We stop being so damned precious.

“Nowadays you breath and you risk your life. You don’t have a choice. The only thing you choose is what you’re risking it for.” – Hershel, The Walking Dead

In the rigmarole of chauffeuring my kids to their myriad enrichment activities, picking out paint colors for our bedrooms, trying to make it to the gym, and deciding on meals everyone in my family is willing to eat, my connection to the handful of things – people, principals, beliefs – that have the ability to bring me to my knees had become a bit fuzzy.

Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) – The Walking Dead – Season 4 _ Gallery – Photo Credit: Frank Ockenfels 3/AMC

I’d immersed myself in all the stuff on the mid-list, as the past year had been filled with the kinds of important life events that can’t exactly be called horror movie awful, but involve careful navigation. Aging parents, a child’s growing pains, a rocky patch in a lifelong friendship. The truth is, I wanted to lose sight of the bigger things, take a break from Reality with a capital R.

In its own, funny way, The Walking Dead – this long, winding narrative about the possible extinction of the human race by means of a zombie apocalypse – has actually come to serve more as a reminder of reality for me than an escape from one.

Thanks to Rick and Darryl and the whole gang, I was able to put my nose back to the grindstone. Instead of another day of back to back zombie episodes (I’ve finally made it to Season 5), I sat down to some edits.

That went pretty well.

Next, I took a look at my epic YA love story – the one that’s really been giving me trouble. It was same-old at first, and I wanted to bang my forehead into my keyboard. But I read on and actually added a sentence or two – good words, the kind that sparkle. Nothing revolutionary there, but a start.

Then I sat down to write this post.

Love and Forgiveness

I ran into a friend of mine at the gym the other day.

On her face was a configuration of emotions – serenity, wistfulness, sorrow. She had an end-of-the-road look about her.

“One of my best friends is dying of cancer,” she said. “It could be any time now.”

I told her how sorry I was, and she sort of smiled and went on to tell me, truly, one of the loveliest stories I’ve heard in a long, long time.

This friend of my friend’s – we’ll call her Marilyn – had several years ago been embroiled in a horrible divorce. She and her husband, whom we’ll call Jake, had cheated on each other, called one another every possible, filthy name in the book, had fought over their bedroom furniture, collection of DVDs, even all the family photos they’d collected throughout their marriage. It was brutal and ugly and they were both at fault. They let down themselves and their children – a pitiful end to a union that had undoubtedly begun with the ambitious, heart-stopping words most of us married people spoke at our weddings: “With this Ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow.”

Even when the divorce was finalized, and the anger had begun to subside, it seemed all that remained of that original promise was shame and bitterness.

A couple of years after the dust from their split had settled, Marilyn was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent treatment. She was hopeful that would be the end of it, and set about going on with her life – sweating through Spinning class at our gym, driving carpool for her daughters. But three years later, she received her worst and final diagnosis – that of terminal ovarian cancer. This friend, daughter, and mother of two teenage girls had only months to live.

At this point you might be asking, “Isn’t this supposed to be a lovely story?”

But wait! Don’t quit reading now. I acknowledge that was the horrible part. The park your lawn chair on the railroad tracks, pop a cold beer and wait for the inevitable portion of this saga.

The lovely part – no, lovely doesn’t even begin to cut it. The magnificent part, the miraculous part, came in the immediate aftermath of Marilyn’s diagnosis. When she called Jake, her ex-husband, and told him the news.

I’ll just cut to the chase here, because Marilyn and Jake did exactly that. What happened next was that Marilyn and Jake fell in love again. And not just in a friendly, hand-holding, I’m really sorry you’re going to die way, but a balls-out, heart wanting to explode, Harlequin Romance, listen to Lionel Ritchie records together and cry kind of way.

Jake took over all correspondence about Marilyn’s condition – sharing bits of news with friends and family members, asking for prayers. He whisked her away to fancy dinners, shuttled her to doctor’s appointments, guided her on long walks, helped her to the toilet.

Her illness has progressed pretty rapidly since those early months and Marilyn has become frail. Jake now brushes her hair and reads to her. He pushes her wheelchair to their daughters’ games, and has moved into hospice with her – holding her all night.

“Are you sure you didn’t make all this cancer stuff up just to get laid?” One of Marilyn’s friends joked.

And days ago, Jake surprised Marilyn with a trip to the oak tree under which they were married. He had to carry her, as Marilyn is down to only about 60 LBS now. She can no longer eat and is basically starving to death.

Under that oak tree, Jake and Marilyn renewed their vows. “To have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part.”

“They just forgave each other,” my gym buddy told me. “It’s as simple as that.”

Marilyn’s illness brought everything into relief for them. The fact that they’d been crazy about each other once and then proceeded to screw up massively. Anger had replaced love, and even when they’d wanted make up, take back the terrible things they’d said and done, it felt too big. Like they’d gone too far down a very dark road and there was no going back.

Only there was.

And when they did go back, it was instant, sublime – a bolt of lightening illuminating the night sky. They needed no couples’ therapy or promises to never hurt one another again. They simply didn’t have time for that.

“You know what this has taught me?” My friend said. “None of us have time for that.”

It’s a radical statement. Aren’t we, according to the experts, supposed to examine our feelings, work our way to acceptance and forgiveness, negotiate the new terms of our bandaged relationship?

Seems like a colossal waste of time when you look at it. Isn’t the nature of forgiveness to let go completely – put it behind you and embrace the love that’s left. Build on that, do it right. We all know what right looks like, feels like, what it should be. It’s as plain as delighting in the flavors of a favorite dish, taking in the boundless glory of an ocean view. And we know damned well the pitfalls we need to avoid. We can name them like state capitols: jealousy, selfishness, entitlement, neglect.

Don’t misunderstand me here. I’m not saying we should welcome back a spouse who thrives on slapping us around or a friend whose betrayal cost us dearly. One who shows no sign of remorse or change. Being a doormat is not what forgiveness is about.

Sometimes forgiveness is just about letting go and moving on alone. Wishing someone no ill, even if they’re still a son of a b***h and will probably always be a son of a b***h.

But I do think we can all learn a few things from Marilyn and Jake’s extraordinary love story. Even if we’re not facing a death sentence. Instead of patching things up, they opted to start fresh. They made a conscious decision to love one another regardless of the mess they’d made of things years earlier, and in the process gave their girls and each other a most unequivocal gift. Something few of us are able to achieve.

Forgiveness with no footnotes, no terms.

Love, pure and simple.

I Don’t Have To Say I Love You (But Dusty, I Do!)

I’ve been listening pretty obsessively to the Dusty Springfield station on my Pandora app lately. It plays a lot of Stan Getz, Bobby Darin, and of course, Aretha Franklin, to whom she’s often compared.

I love Aretha. With a voice at once like a piano and a trombone, few performers are as worthy of their icon status. And Aretha tells a marvelous story. I’m with her, standing at the kitchen sink and gazing out the window when she’s looking out onto the morning rain, reflecting on how she used to feel so uninspired. Just as when the chorus swells and she sings about feeling like a natural woman, it makes me want to take my husband in a close embrace, touch my forehead to his, sway to a song only he and I can hear.

There aren’t many singers who can bring you into a story like that. Who can take you on a three minute journey, leaving you wistful, with an emotional hangover worthy of a novel.

Yet time and again I find myself gravitating more towards the Dusty tunes.

Musically, Dusty and Aretha are pretty close cousins – at least when you compare Dusty’s soul period to Aretha’s body of work. And it’s not just because they were from the same era and shared back up singers. There’s a very strong and bluesy, gospel-infused similarity to the way they approach a song. At times, Dusty, can seem like Aretha’s sister from another mister – a fellow outlier with something inside her that can’t be contained. Less a light, than a full-out solar flare.

But what I like most about Dusty Springfield is that she was always changing, evolving, trying on a new costume. She moved from early sixties “Gidget-style” bop, to smarmy-sexy Burt Bacharach tunes, and then, yes, to Aretha-laced soul like “Son of a Preacher Man.” All with equal elan. And with a preternatural Dusty-ness.

Aretha was always Aretha, which is damned amazing. But I struggle to imagine her belting out a Eurythmics song, for instance. And I suspect Dusty could knock that one out of the park. She could do a cool and artsy “Sweet Dreams,” or a mournful, but electrified “Who’s That Girl.” All without losing her essence.

I bet Dusty could put a whole new spin on Madonna.

Beyonce.

Taylor Swift.

Meghan Trainor.

Loretta Lynn.

Nancy Sinatra.

Sheryl Crow.

Hell, she might even pull off a Celine Dion, but without the cringe factor.

Dusty’s “Heart Will Go On” might’ve implied a bit of violence – a drunken night, bitter words, rough sex. Even her most syrupy ballads had an undercurrent of love gone wrong. You could imagine her as the girl who was left crying in the dark, mascara running down her face, after her lover left – slamming the door behind him. Or the woman who’d had too much sex with too many men. She wanted to be wanted more than she craved the actual wild thing, but got sucked in again and again. Maybe he would call this time? If not? Pass her a drink.

Her heart would indeed go on.

And Dusty could do a killer Aretha – a feat not many white women, or black women for that matter have been able to accomplish with such casual grace. As a working class British lesbian, she could embody the voice of a black American preacher’s daughter.

Downright transcendental.

I love the versatility, the audacity of Dusty’s easy switch from British to American to pop to soul to disco to 80s British reinvasion. Collaborating with The Pet Shop Boys, then showing up on the Pulp Fiction soundtrack helped her stay relevant in a way few performers were able. The sixties, for most, were such a hard act to follow, but Dusty was on the charts until only a few years before her death from breast cancer in 1999.

She is to me the definition of true, multifaceted talent.

But what do I know? I’m a writer. And I approach music like a writer, which many music lovers might object to. A true aficionado might say Aretha is the superior talent because she can only be Aretha. She is the epitome of style – a very specific style. A woman like Dusty Springfield dabbles too much. Like Eva Cassidy. She’s neither here nor there, but everywhere. She’s an actress more than a singer. And yeah, ok, story’s important in a song, but it’s not everything. There’s some great music out there that makes no sense at all and completely ignores a basic three-act structure, a true tunehead might say. Just look at Ornette Coleman. Thelonious Monk. David Byrne. The B-52s. House music.

All true. I’m not above grooving to a nonsensical song. Or even one that tells a bad story but has a catchy beat. I’ve got Duran Duran and The Best of Disco on my iPod, after all.

But unlike the men Dusty sings about, I love her best of all.

What’s in a Name?

Victoria’s Secret “Angel”

My name is Victoria and it has never felt right to me.

Not when I was a kid and my friends called me Vic or Vicki, nor when my family called me Vikinka or Viktorka or any derivative of my more formal moniker.

Right around when I hit college, people stopped calling me by nicknames entirely and Victoria was settled on for good. While it was definitely more consistent, it still felt neither here nor there.

It’s funny, even after the long-form “Victoria” became pretty much the only version of my name people used, there was a whole cadre of people who just always got my name wrong. For reasons I can’t explain, a lot of folks have simply called me Veronica – even after I’ve corrected them numerous times.

They say, “Right, right, it’s Victoria – of course. I’m sorry Veronica.”

Veronica Lake

Weird.

Or maybe not so much.

About a year ago, my mother made an illuminating admission to me. She told me how much she hadn’t wanted to name me Victoria at all. How after I was born, she could hardly even say my name. And when she did, no matter how hard she tried, no matter how many ways – Vic-toria, Vic-tor-i-a, Vic-tor-ia – the name always tripped out over her tongue tinged with a note of bitterness.

I’d had a brother named Victor, you see. He’d died of the flu the year before I was born. So, back when I was a baby, and my mom’s suffering was still so fresh, my name was simply too painful for her to say.

Queen Victoria

It may seem strange that my mom gave me the name Victoria in the first place – that perhaps it was some form of masochism on her part. Because really, couldn’t she have given me another name?

My mother said she’d wanted to give me an Italian name, actually. After fleeing communist Czechoslovakia, she’d spent several months in an Italian refugee camp. Her belly felt my first kick in the countryside near Positano, and my other brother, John – eight years old at the time, had his baptism in Rome. She made many friends there while she waited for permission to come to America. Italy was the first place that made my mom smile after Victor’s death.

And Italy was her stepping stone to America.

My mother had spent most of her life dreaming about a life in America. But not merely for the usual reasons – freedom of speech and expression, freedom to travel, social mobility, freedom from random imprisonment and other forms of persecution, etc. My mother’s reasons were more personal.

America was where my mother’s parents, Bedriska and Victor lived. They’d fled Czechoslovakia when my mom was only six and my mother had spent twenty years pining for them. She’d risked her life and her surviving children’s – mine (in utero) and John’s – to escape from behind the Iron Curtain.

My mother wanted desperately to have a relationship with her parents. They had loomed so large, for so long in her imagination. She had envisaged what it would be like baking kolacky with her mother, shopping for a dress, just being held by her.

She wondered what her father’s muscular hands might look like opening a difficult jar of pickles, or feel like if he were to stroke her hair. Both of my grandparents were physically imposing – my grandfather, an Olympic hockey player, was built like a Sherman tank. Victor was a name that suited him very well. My grandmother, tall and beautiful, could have been Greta Garbo’s sister. Bedriska – Fredericka in English – was a name she owned.

Greta Garbo

In those first few, heady months they were back together, my mother was starstruck by her parents. Everything they said held tremendous weight. My mother had come from a communist country and out of fear had hidden her opinions all of her life. And here, in this new, free country, her parents had opinions about everything and shared them willy-nilly. They talked about which politicians they preferred, their plans for the future, things they liked and didn’t like about their adopted country…

And the names they wanted my mother to bestow upon her unborn child.

My grandparents were determined that my mom should name me after her sisters, Victoria (named after my grandfather) and Helen. At the time, Victoria and Helen were still stuck behind the Iron Curtain, and my grandparents – perhaps – felt an homage to them was in order. My grandmother and grandfather had never met my deceased brother and I don’t think it occurred to them that the similarities between Victor and Victoria would cause my mom such grief.

And at the time, my mother didn’t have it in her to speak up for herself. So, reluctantly, with a forced smile, she agreed to name me Victoria Helen.

Victoria and David Beckham

My mom’s story of how I came to be “Victoria” explains a lot, especially in terms of my own ambivalence towards my name. Honestly, even now when people ask me how I prefer to be addressed – whether by Victoria or Vic or Vicki – my inner voice always answers, “I don’t really care – pick one.” Then I say out loud, “Victoria is fine.”

And while name issues have played a pretty insignificant role in my life, I do find it interesting how my mother’s unspoken feelings about my name seem to have affected my own perceptions about what I am called. Victoria has always felt like a name that was thrust upon me instead of given me.

And I think about how differently I feel about the names of people who are dear to me. My husband, Jack, my children.

I remember seeing my babies’ names for the first time, written down on an official document at the hospital shortly after I gave birth. It was a powerful experience to behold their names in black and white. It made them real. I remember my husband running his fingers over our son’s name and saying it aloud with tears in his eyes.

Our daughters’ names felt no less significant. We’d spent months going back and forth about what to call them. With each of our children, we waited until they were born and we’d looked into their murky eyes before deciding which name to give them. Naturally, we’d narrowed it down to two possibilities for each sex, but we wanted to see our babies first – just to make sure we were making the right choice.

And each time it was so clear.

Eamon.

Charlotte.

Josephine.

They could have had no other names.

It just makes me ache that my mother was denied that experience. That my name is a forever reminder of her greatest heartbreak – my brother’s death, instead of her greatest triumph – her courageous escape from Czechoslovakia.

And I hope that being able to choose her own American name – even if it was a direct translation of her Czech name – was in some way a consolation. Georgiana is her American name. And she does love it. Jirina, her Czech name, only exists for her now in the old country, on her old documents, on a list of Czech political prisoners from the 1950s and 60s. It endures in the abstract for my mother, like an old address.

As for my name, I still don’t really care much. It means something, I suppose, when I see Victoria Dougherty written on the cover of my novel, but I might use a different name when I publish in the Young Adult category next year.

If I do, perhaps I should ask my mother to give me a nom de plume. Something Italian.

Sophia Loren, Italian goddess

Interview With a Pacifist (An Emergency Post for the Fabulous MCV Egan)

My friend Catalina – who I just adore – is having offering her wonderful book, The Bridge of Deaths, for FREE August 14-18 and I just had to write this emergency post to get the word out.

Here on Cold, she’s also offering us an exclusive (sort of) interview with her main character, a naive, twenty-four year-old pacifist named Maggie.

But first, here’s a summary of The Bridge of Deaths – you know, just to whet your appetite:

In the winter of 2009-2010 a young executive, Bill is promoted and transferred to London for a major International firm. He has struggled for the better part of his life with nightmares and phobias, which only seem to worsen in London. As he seeks the help of a therapist he accepts that his issues may well be related to a ‘past-life trauma’.

Through love, curiosity, archives and the information superhighway of the 21st century Bill travels through knowledge and time to uncover the story of the 1939 plane crash.

The Bridge of Deaths is a love story and a mystery. Fictional characters travel through the world of past life regressions and information acquired from psychics as well as archives and historical sources to solve “One of those mysteries that never get solved” is based on true events and real people, it is the culmination of 18 years of sifting through sources in Denmark, England and the United States, it finds a way to help the reader feel that he /she is also sifting through data and forming their own conclusions.

The journey takes the reader to well-known and little known events leading up to the Second World War, both in Europe and America. The journey also takes the reader to the possibility of finding oneself in this lifetime by exploring past lives.

“An unusual yet much recommended read.” – The Midwest Book Review

An Interview With a Pacifist:

What’s your favorite thing to do when you’re not saving (the world, clients, your mate)?

I have to choose one favorite thing? There is so much in life that is simply magical, thrilling and important. I belong to a Peace activist group in the London area and we are not shy to express our complete distaste for all violence. My life is however not in any way limited to being a Peacenik and if there is a good party or fun weekend trip with friends, I have been known to miss a protest or two. I am only twenty-four and as much as I am sure we live many lives, I am not about to waste any good fun to be had in this one. Ah my mate, Bill does need a lot of saving doesn’t he? I really thought he’d be just a fun time when we met, I did not expect to feel so complete with him, not that I would have imagined or designed him that way as ‘the perfect mate’ mind you. I had dated a few foreign blokes before, but not from across the pond, he is lovely though.

What is it about Bill that makes you crazy in a good way?

There is so much that is frustrating and endearing. He keeps his thoughts so hermetically sealed, that I have to dig and pry to get answers don’t I? After all he is the one with the nightmares and the phobias, but I get to do all the digging. No room to be the saved damsel in distress here, I get to grab Bill by the hand and guide him kicking and screaming to meet his fate, well I exaggerate, perhaps not screaming but a bit of kicking.

Do you sometimes want to strangle your writer? Thrash her to within an inch of her life? Make them do the stupid crap they makes you do?

I certainly do not want to give any spoilers here for the end of the book, but well, yes I would have liked my freedom and adventure to last a bit longer. And I did drink quite a lot of Sauvignon Blanc didn’t I , so yes for every hangover let’s trash M.C.V.

Favorite food?

I love Scandinavian fare because of my mom. Danish food and desserts are the best.

Tell me a little bit about your world. What are your greatest challenges in that world?

London is a great town, we have so many good museums and restaurants. I love how alive and quiet it can be. When I walk in certain areas I can tap into so much and I do not mean just history, but the fun stuff, like scenes from great films or knowing that musicians I love lived in certain places, and got the very ideas for the songs I love right there in Soho. Like Cat Stevens or as Bill would immediately point out Yusuf Islam; I mean when I go to Soho and walk down Denmark Street and Charing Cross road, right by where I met Bill at Foyles I can imagine how Cat Stevens drew from all that to write the songs that I love so much. See it is not just in history where a suspect mind and discernment is important, Bill was so sure that Cat Stevens was a militant aggressive person and he is actually the absolute opposite, but of course the media distorted his comments during the whole Salman Rushdie Satanic Verses thing and when the counter statements were made it was not in the front pages, but rather the back ones. When I showed Bill how something so relatively recent could be so distorted I think it really helped open his mind to all we were investigating from 1939 and the plane crash.

Describe yourself in four words.

Cautiously Optimistic, happy, hopeful and discerning.

What do you do for a living?

I counsel teenagers, I help them look into themselves for that feeling of security and sense of self rather than to be outwardly influenced by others. I work with very typical teens, nothing heavy just growing issues you know. I am such a free spirit (perhaps that should have been one of my words above) that the powers that be know I would not be strict enough with certain cases, got into a bit of a mess a few years ago… well that is neither here nor there, no sense in giving it any more energy, just help them choose classes and such a Guidance Counselor, I don’t like labels and I believe they have all the answers inside themselves, they just need to tap into them.

What do you fear the most?

War, actually the apparent inevitability of many horrible wars. If only we were clever enough to learn from the past right? But I guess that would be every pacifist’s worst fear wouldn’t it?

http://www.amazon.com/The-Bridge-Deaths-Revised-Edition-ebook/dp/B00MR8OY1O/ref=pd_sim_sbs_b_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=01A15D7XQTERCX2CE5ZK

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00MR8OY1O/ref=cm_sw_r_fa_ask_DCunJ.KSVWE3J

http://thebridgeofdeaths.com/

Sundays With Merle

Years ago, my Aunt Viki and Uncle George owned a small, cheerful retirement home near Tampa, Florida. It was called Park Manor and was made up of mostly middle class old folks who more often than not felt some connection to my family’s Czech heritage.

Viki and George, although only in their early forties at the time, were like Mom and Dad at this place – and they got to know each and every one of the people who chose to make their lovely, little assisted living facility their home.

As you can imagine, there were a lot of unforgettable characters at Park Manor: The octogenarian former beauty queen who slinked around in low-cut party dresses by day and transparent negligees by night. She had a huge crush on my then twenty-two year-old brother and used to invite him to her, ahem, room. Then, there were the warring Czech brides. Fifty years earlier, one had run off with the other one’s husband, and they hadn’t seen each other since. In the kind of twist of fate that proves God really does have a sense of humor, these ladies were made roommates at Park Manor. Ignorant of their past, my aunt figured that since they both spoke Czech, they’d make fast friends. Instead, they had to be placed in opposite wings, or else be found rolling on the floor, pulling each other’s hair out.

But of all the love birds, the wicked witches, the playboys, the card sharks, the war heroes, the comedians, and the master bakers, none was more memorable than Merle.

At one hundred and one years-old, Merle stood slender and erect, with only the help of a hand-carved cane. Short gray hair, equally gray eyes that twinkled like deep water on an overcast day. Neat, comfortable clothes, no make up other than lipstick – “You can’t forget you’re a woman,” she’d say.

Merle had been married twice and widowed twice. Always ready for a laugh at her own expense, she displayed on her night table a come hither picture of herself – taken by her second husband, on her second wedding night. In it, she was seventy-five years of age, and looked pretty darned good in a long, black, silky nightgown with her hair swept up.

She always had a story, and I never heard a single negative word come out of her mouth on any of my visits. And this was a woman who’d lived through World War I, The Great Depression, World War II, Segregation, The Cold War, Vietnam – Jimmy Carter, for goodness sake, she used to say (alhtough always in good humor).

But the most extraordinary thing about Merle was expressed on Sunday afternoons.

Sundays at Park Manor were by far the most popular visiting days, as many families chose to stop in for lunch after church. By mid-afternoon or so, many visitors would start to take their leave. There were dinners to be made, and old folks get tired.

But at Merle’s, the party was just getting started.

Nearly every single Sunday, Merle’s room was so filled with visitors, that many had to linger in the hall and take turns going in. Boisterous laughter, children’s squeals and just about any style of music – Ragtime, Swing, Rock-n-Roll – echoed throughout Merle’s wing. Her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren from her first marriage were there, but so were her second husband’s children. Although she couldn’t have met them until they were well into middle age themselves, she’d made inroads into their hearts and counted her second husband’s grandchildren as hers, too.

And everyone stayed up to the minute when visiting hours ended.

I guess I paid such close attention to Merle because of the wasted love I’d seen in my own family. I’d watched too many loved ones give away the ties that bind like they were 25 cent raffle tickets. They ran from their mistakes in their young lives, and kept running throughout midlife and even beyond. It seemed to work for them. By and large, they were free to live lives unencumbered by the inconveniences that true emotional responsibility can visit upon a life.

And they remained free of the benefits as well, always appearing vaguely uncomfortable when faced with the gush of a happy child’s love, or a chance view of a tender kiss stolen between a husband and wife at a crowded family gathering.

And sooner or later, they simply ended up.

I remember my aunt telling me that her experience at Park Manor had taught her that most people who ended up alone on Sunday after Sunday had earned it. I found that to be a devastating revelation.

Shortly after Merle finally died, my aunt and uncle got an offer they couldn’t refuse. It was from a large convalescent home chain, and sowed up their own hard-earned retirement. It was tough for them to let go because my aunt and uncle really cared about the people at Park Manor and had looked out for their dignity, their quality of life. On their last day, the place was filled with house-made chocolate pudding and tears.

Later, my aunt admitted to me that she could have never sold the place while Merle was still alive.

That Merle. Considering I only met her a handful of times, she’s had a pretty disproportionate effect on the way I view my life. When I find myself wallowing over my usual litany of complaints – undoubtedly revolving around childcare, work, and a lack of ME time – Merle often pops into my mind.

I’m sure I romanticize her to some extent, and that there are people out there who might tell a whole different story about the way she conducted her life – one that reveals her human foibles. Like if she got piss-drunk before the school play, then heckled the entire 7th Grade cast of “The Importance of Being Earnest”, or called her Aunt June a whore during Thanksgiving dinner, or threatened to leave her husband for their son’s history teacher, perhaps.

But even if all those things were true, I’d still hold her up as a gold standard. The way I want to end up.

Merle’s example has served as a lifelong reminder to me that the benefits of love accrue. Even when we mess up spectacularly, it’s worth going back for more, trying to right what we’ve done wrong. Merle’s life seemed to exemplify that. How could she not have given so much more than she got, seeing the devotion she inspired, long after her family had stopped needing her, after all?

Merle seemed to embrace the sad and wonderful truth about the human family. That the people under your roof are not happier when you’re more fulfilled, when your time is respected. They’re happier when you go out of your way for them. When you drop what you’re doing to have a laugh and a kiss.

The same way I’ll be happier if my children set aside their Sundays for me when I’m in my own version of Park Manor – one that hopefully includes a travel club, Barre classes and rabid boxing fans. Maybe a couple of dance halls and a Tiki bar. A cowboy or two.

Because even if my son and daughters are crazy busy and have cupcakes to make for a bake sale, or a big presentation at work due early that Monday morning, I want them in my room – laughing, talking, listening to music. Fighting to take their turn from the hallway.

The (Ghost) Stories We Tell

When Michele Gwynn and Jami Brumfield asked me to come on their Blog Talk Radio program, Cover to Cover, I figured I was in for a good time – a thought-provoking, interesting, eminently bloggable time.

Case in point, Michele writes about murders, angels, aliens, ghosts and a German dominatrix who changes careers and becomes an officer in the State Police (dream job for an aging whippersnapper – badum ching!).

Jami is a passionate paranormalist (Is that even a word? Don’t know, but it fits) and hypnotherapist, no less, who writes fun and suspenseful novels about witches, vampires, ghosts, werewolves and forbidden love.

Pull me up a chair.

We talked about all sorts of things. History, and our love of it, visiting concentration camps, Germany as a seriously underrated vacation destination, and our admittedly genre-bending fiction. Not surprisingly, the conversation got a little bit woo-woo when Michele asked me about the paranormal elements in my own work.

It’s funny, I don’t consider myself a paranormal writer at all, and I think if you go strictly by genre rules, I’m not. I’m a Historical Fiction kind of girl, who weaves some pretty significant Thriller elements into my stories. But more often than not, a certain degree of magical realism does enter into the way I spin a yarn. My characters can have visions – religious or otherwise, divine love (albeit wrongly) from some pretty sadistic acts, and see the occasional ghost. One of my characters even becomes the Angel of Death after his own untimely demise. I suppose that is a bit divergent from, say, a Philippa Gregory or Ken Follett story – even if the latter, like me, tends to have a taste for the world of cloaks and daggers.

So, I guess a bit of enchantment is somewhat unusual for Historical Fiction, a genre which focuses on, as Ms. Gregory points out, “the animation and recreation of a life, of fleshing out historical bones.”

But is it unusual in history, this blending of fact and hocus-pocus? History is filled with leaders who feel they were communing with God or being guided by spirits. Just ask Joan of Arc, the Egyptians, or any number of Native American tribesmen and women – especially ones from days past.

Nor is a paranormal element unusual in historical writing. Homer comes to mind. Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

In my own life, I’ve always felt a co-existence with the “other.” From niggling feelings that end up being prophetic – foreshadowing the death of a loved one, or a turn in luck. Perhaps a paralyzing wave of deja vu.

To simply answered prayers.

And I know a thing or two about living with the dead. Breathing life into a pile of bones, all while relishing the nitty-gritty of uncovering the very facts of a time and place – the ones that make that skeleton dance.

Like any self-respecting history buff, I live in a house that was built while Thomas Jefferson was still among the living, for heaven’s sake. A place ripe for otherworldly shenanigans.

While I’ve heard only a handful of whispers in the night during the dozen or so years we’ve lived there, those incidents have been as palpable as sexual attraction. They provoked a physical reaction, an electric charge of anticipation and fear, a thrill.

So, I can’t imagine telling a story that doesn’t acknowledge at least the potential for belief in the existence of other worlds, of souls, of an overlap in space and time that even Einstein allowed for. He did, after all, speak of reality as an illusion, of love as something outside the constraints of the natural world, of mystery as the most beautiful thing we can experience – the source of all true art and science.

Because really, does any one of us – no matter how rational or literal – know a single someone out there who hasn’t felt the hair on his neck stand up? Who doesn’t have a ghost story to tell?

And here’s the link to the program:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/cover2cover1/2015/07/16/historical-fiction-in-novels

The Never-Ending Surprise Party

I was cooking dinner when my husband called. He’d already been gone for ten days on this punishing, potato sack race of an international business trip and still had another week to go. So, I just couldn’t contain myself when his number came up on my phone. I mean, really, I jumped up and down.

I always look forward to hearing his quirky stories and cranky observations, especially when he’s far, far away. Since having children, I’ve become mostly an armchair traveler, so his musings about foreign countries I know – Ireland, England, Germany –  and don’t know – Russia – were not only going to be a fun distraction for me, but a chance for us to connect and have a laugh, help me miss him less.

“What are you cookin’?” he asked.

“Chicken with lemon rice.” It’s a family favorite.

“Yes!” he said. “You slow-roasted the chicken, right? I mean, you didn’t cheat?”

Of course I cheated. I’m single-parenting until next Saturday and don’t have time to baste a chicken for three hours. “Cheat? Me?”

“Because my day took an unexpected turn this morning,” he continued. “And I’m going to be home in an hour.”

I got all verklempt.

“Are you crying?” he asked me.

Honestly, since having children I cry watching cat commercials, but I really was so happy that he was on his way home. And I love that he kept it from me until the last minute. That our son’s jaw was going to drop, then morph into a grin like a fat orange slice when he saw his dad come waltzing in. That our daughters would squeal. Well, one of them anyway. The other one gets all pre-teen and says mushy things like, “Hey, dad.”

As a family, we have always celebrated surprises. We take spur of the moment trips to podunk towns that do or do not turn out to be fun, we reach out to new neighbors, we move, we buy old houses, dream up schemes and stories, have more kids than we planned, don’t want to know the sex of our babies until they’re born, take on too many projects and surrender to rotten, good-for-nothing luck, not just in the hopes of surviving it, but with the belief that in the end something special will come out of our long, dark journey. Like a new best friend or a golden, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Or maybe just some wisdom and empathy.

All, not most, of the best things in my life have come from surprises, so I’m not just being a Pollyanna here. The Berlin Wall coming down was a huge surprise, as was my decision to move to Prague shortly after. Falling in love with my husband came so far out of left field that I still find myself humming that Talking Heads song,

“And you may find yourself in a beautiful house,

With a beautiful wife,

And you may ask yourself…well, how did I get here?”

Every facet of having children has been surprising – from finding myself obsessed with their interests and emotions to a pitying degree, to how much and how little they are like me. People tell you a lot of things about becoming a parent, but nobody tells you that children will be a mirror held up to your soul – exposing the best and the worst of you, making you desperate to fix your own flaws for their sake. Selfishness, vanity, any sense of moral equivalency or ambiguity – at least in regard to their welfare – don’t get thrown out the window, necessarily, but are definitely thrown a curve ball.

And no, sister, you can’t have it all. You get so much more than having it all.

Plunging into the role of wife and mother has been a one-way ticket to being a better person for me. More than the accomplishments I craved like street drugs when I was growing up, more than therapy, more than seeking enlightenment. Not to beat a dead horse here, but that’s been kind of surprising. It’s been a one-way ticket in coach, mind you, on a train that often smells of perspiration, spilled cognac, cigarettes and live roosters, but damn, it takes you to the most unexpected, often glorious places.

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And lately, I’ve been surprised at the daughter I’m becoming.

Although we always loved each other tremendously, my mom and I weren’t actually close until my late thirties, when my youngest was born so sick. Without missing a beat, my mom kicked into overdrive. Her heroic efforts to ease our burden – taking the night shift at the hospital so that we could be with our other kids, massaging my feet after a shattering day, standing in for me at field trips and class parties – helped us both see each other anew. Since then I have slowly, sometimes painfully – in a cut and bleed, stitches and Band-aids kind of way – become a daughter.

It has been a narrow and bumpy road.

I’ve had to surrender some of my prized independence, care for my mother without taking on a condescending or bossy air, and accept the fact as lovingly and graciously as I can, that my littlest loves my mom more than anyone in the world.

More than she loves me.

Against everything that my younger self would have thought possible, I’m endeavoring to guide my mom through the twilight of her life – from the death of her husband to the change from her role as mistress of her own household, to being a part of mine. And I’m learning that I welcome and relish the challenge – most of the time. Even when I lose my temper and get it all wrong – which is often.

No surprise there.

I’m sharing my kitchen – which is huge for me – letting my mom rearrange things, throw out perfectly good mops in favor of her own, over-stuff my pantry, and serve us her “Chinese” food with a French baguette instead of rice.

“Mmm,” I say, hoping she won’t trot out her other “ethnic” dishes. Like spaghetti and meatballs served with a sauce of Campbell’s tomato soup cut with milk. My mom spent seven months in an Italian refugee camp after fleeing Communist Czechoslovakia and is the only person I know who loved everything about Italy, except for the food.

But while her forays into international cuisine are dubious, she’s actually a wonderful cook – when she’s cooking Czech food. Her goulash, potato dumplings, schnitzel and sweet and sour cabbage are a welcome shake-up of our family dinners. I can’t wait to cook Thanksgiving and Christmas meals with her for the first time in years. Goose, mushrooms, fruit tarts, spaetzle.

And the best surprise of all is that I’m once again finding myself falling deeper in love with the man I married. A guy who is not only welcoming his mother-in-law into his home, but is creating two lovely smoking lounges for her on our front and back porches. A man who isn’t afraid to be the bad guy when he needs to be – setting boundaries and confronting very real issues. Like when my mom contradicts our parenting, either behind our backs or right in front of the kids. From “Oh, come on, she can have another ice cream,” (Not after chocolate chip cookies and and a full bag of gummi worms she can’t!) to “If mama won’t buy you phone, I will,” (What the @#$%&*!??)

“It’ll take some adjustment,” my husband says. “But we’ll get to go away alone now, too – have overnight dates.”

I’ll get to tag along on business trips and expand my own career universe without feeling guilty for leaving for a couple of days.

“Most of all, it’s a chance to grow,” my husband reminds me.

A surprise always offers that chance – to those who are willing to embrace it.