Making Myself Cry

I'm editing 12 stories for the new Christmas collection. I did four yesterday. Every time I read Christmas At the Riley's: Carmine Goes to the Dogs I cry like a baby! I don't know if it's because like Carmine I am a middle child, the quiet and bookish one sandwiched between the more colorful and boisterous older sister and younger brother, or if it's just because in the back of my mind I am remembering those magical Christmases past when exactly what I wanted was under the tree on Christmas Day morning? (Except that real live camel...but now that I'm older and aware of livestock and exotic animal laws, zoning, permits and such I can understand why my parents never gave me the camel I desperately wanted!) In the story I can taste the bitter disappointment of the middle child who doesn't get what his heart aches for...but it all works out...and I cry.

Then this evening I'm reading/editing Christmas Cakes. In this story Mrs. James is based entirely on my late 92-year old friend Pauline. It's even mostly set in her actual house, only fictionalized as to location and time period. I promised her that I would write her into a story after she was gone when I was missing her, and hear her voice through the character based on her. She loved finding herself in my stories- and cried the first time she found herself as an avid Scotch/Irish historical romance-loving elderly woman in a short story set in an indie bookstore. I will never forget her calling me up the night after I dropped the story off at her house, her saying, "I read your story." A dramatic pause, then a somewhat teary, "I need to ask you, is that me in your story?" And then us laughing about it. She was tickled about the character, and deeply touched that I thought so highly of her I wrote her into one of my stories. That was my last gift to her- literary immortality. In Christmas Cakes she is alive and doing exactly what she did her entire life. She was the most generous, loving woman I ever knew. This story is set toward the end of the Depression. Mrs. James takes in a young other and her two sons, 11-year old Danny, and his much younger brother who's sick with pneumonia. It's always makes me cry when Santa shows up at the house...and the end leaves me in tears too.

Kelly just shakes her head...I'm just sentimental like that I guess, or maybe in this instance I'm just missing Pauline...gone two years this past September. But maybe it was just hearing her voice through this character, remembering Christmases past...who knows. It could be everything or anything!

I have a huge to do list- finish editing 13, finish editing this Christmas Story collection (has undergone a name change already, but not sure if that's the final title or not...any suggestions?, and complete my NaNo novel.

Tally ho! Off I go!