mary e. pearson

jbknowles shared a talk that Jerry Spinelli gave at the ALAN breakfast where he gave a list of memories, simple phrases or words that brought back powerful memories for him and that might contain deeper stories. Jo made it into a writing exercise. I loved what she shared, so I gave it a try. Here’s mine:

1. Stepping on overripe apricots in the summer
2. My third grade teacher so red with rage
3. The joy of spitting watermelon seeds through missing teeth
4. Climbing like a fearless monkey on fences, trees, and roofs
5. Writing with ice plant on the sidewalk
6. Sitting in a car with smoking adults and the windows rolled up
7. A bee loose on the back seat of the car finally finding my backside
8. Desperately wanting to tie my shoe in kindergarten so I could go out and play with the others.
9. My mother humming and singing as she cleaned the house.
10. The scent of Brylcreem on my father’s slicked back hair.

What are your snippets of memories?
(And bonus points to anyone who can sing the Brylcreem tune)

Time has an interesting article on birth order. It doesn't bode well for us last borns--at least according to some studies. I do have to agree that us later children are much more agreeable. Although my older brother and sister probably have their own opinion on that. My husband and I are both the third child. Interesting how that ended up. How about you? Where are you in the pecking order? Do you really think it makes a difference?

oh yeah, that's me in the picture, the cross-eyed butterball in the middle. Maybe Time is right.

Yesterday I had lunch with an old friend. My oldest friend actually. We met when she moved in two doors down from mine when we were both four years old. She shaped my childhood because we spent every minute together. Interesting, but we both became writers, though very different types. She writes in the educational realm, an expert on teaching kids with disabilities who are second language learners. She travels all over the country and once we actually ended up at the same conference and we roomed together. Who would have thunk that we would both end up writing? But I have to say, we were both pretty creative kids. Our parents kicked us out the door to play, and we had to think up stuff to occupy ourselves. We weren't scheduled with activities.

Of course, some of those activities would have made our mother's hair permanently permed if they had known about them. Like climbing down into the sewers, or jumping off roofs, or accidentally starting a fire (it was small) in the garage right next to a tank of gas. But somehow we survived. (and lived to write about it ; )

Did you do anything as a child that it was better that your parents were blissfully ignorant of?

RAIN . . .
California has finally broken its drought. It rained, it hailed, and yes, we even had a bonafide tornado in our area last night that lifted out a giant eucalyptus tree. I have a friend who was thinking about moving to California because of all the sunshine, so this serves as a full disclosure notice to her.

MY CLAIM TO FAME . . .
I was reading an interview of Joan Didion and she mentioned a book she admired and my eyes nearly fell out of my head when I saw what it was. The book is Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir, and holy mackerel, if it isn’t about Lakewood, California, the town where I grew up! I ordered the book and have been reading bits each night before I go to bed. It is a poetic, episodic book about this post war suburb where all these tiny two and three bedroom houses were built at the same time and they all pretty much looked alike. When the author, D.J.Waldie, described the doors on his father’s house, I thought, yes! Those were my doors! My parents lived in that house for 45 years and only gave it up when it became too much for them to care for. I love Lakewood still. It was predicted that it would become a slum, but the predictors were wrong. It grew into a beautiful town with lots of parks and close knit neighborhoods and few people ever move away. I lived there from birth until I was eighteen and got married (yes, I know that’s young, but that is for another post.) Oh! And yes, there is a real Lorelei street there!

OKAY, THE GOLDEN KITE . . .
I promised details. Lin Oliver called. It was a lot like one of those "first editor calls." It totally catches you off guard. When I answered the phone and she asked for Mary Pearson, I thought, hm, what is she selling. And then when she told me AROLS won the Golden Kite Award, my very articulate response was “you’re kidding.” I don’t remember a lot of what I babbled after that, but I do remember when she mentioned stickers. I love stickers. And I love shiny ones. Maybe I am part fish. Seriously though, it is way cool to be honored by a writing organization and writers who understand what it is like to face a blank page and make a story come out of it. I am invited to LA to accept the award this August at their National Conference and I will be doing a workshop too, so if you will be at the conference, say hello!

AN INTERVIEW . . .
I was recently interviewed by Liz Burns for Pop Goes the Library. If you have any favorite Seinfeld quotes I didn’t mention, tell me what they are. Oh, and one of my favorites that I forgot: Shrinkage! Ya gotta love, George.

WEBSITE . . .
I updated my website–God Bless, godaddy–they are my new web host and they are so much easier to update with. I had so many problems with AOL. Now when I update, it works first time, every time. It just might encourage me to update more often. Anyway, one of the pages I updated was my LINKS page and I added the Charity Navigator. It’s a very useful site to check out charities before you give to them. Oh, and I added Bookworm to the links page too, under “fun stuff.” Fair warning: It can be addictive. My all time best? 175,000 points. But usually I get cocky and rearrange letters so a hailstorm of hot tiles come down and I burn up. Oh, to live dangerously.

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I just finished THE BOYFRIEND LIST by elockhar. What fun! And like everyone else, it got me going down boyfriend memory lane. Just like Ruby Oliver I started remembering ones “who didn’t really count” and squeezing them inbetween others. Ruby is so believable–great voice–and I loved watching the events and boyfriends unfold. Oh!–and her parents! They were a riot–and gawd, so true to life. So now, my boyfriends . . .

Don Marcus - age 4. He is my cousin. I don’t really remember him as a boyfriend but my mother recounted to me that I said I wanted to marry him. She was fairly horrified ; )

John - Grade 3. My first REAL boyfriend. He even gave me a St. Christopher to wear around my neck. We talked on the phone a lot. But of course we never kissed. That would have been too gross.

Carl - Grade 7. Carl had a terrible stammer and when he decided to ask me to go steady, he couldn’t get the words out. I had to help him. So really, I sort of asked me to go steady. Our going steady only lasted for the weekend.

Bob - Grade 9. The first boy I kissed. He was a surfer and so was I at that time. We went together for 3 months and then he broke up with me (sob! Ruby, I understand!)

Dave - Grade 10. Another surfer. Good looking. Big blue eyes. We went together for 7 months, but during that time I tried to break up with him twice. He wasn’t for me, but he, well he kept talking me out of it. I finally got tough.

Jeff, Eric, and Big-Iowa-Guy whose name I can’t remember - Grade 11. Technically not boyfriends, but since Ruby included every relationship so will I. Jeff, was actually a younger man–only a sophomore! Oh, the scandal. We shared a brief kiss. Eric was a one time date, and the same with the Big-Iowa-Guy. After the difficulty of breaking up with Dave, I was a little boyfriend shy.

Dennis - Grade 12. oo-la-la, a college man! And a great kisser. And . . . well, the guy of my dreams! He still is. End of boyfriend list! He’s been my boyfriend ever since ; )

Emily, congratulations on an excellent book that still has me smiling!

I have a special fondness for adirondacks. When I was growing up, we had one in my back yard. My father made it, perhaps from a kit, more likely just out of his head. He was handy with wood and tools. Over the years, it was painted over and over. One summer it might be brown. A few summers later green. Still later, white. But with all the use there were the inevitable chips and paint from earlier seasons would show through here and there. I liked those little chips of color.

If you happened to have read, A Room on Lorelei Street, you may have noticed a well seasoned adirondack in the story. One of those times where a bit of real life seeps in to a story. With the wonderful weather and sunshine, yes, sunshine, I’ve been thinking how nice it would be to have that old adirondack chair again–maybe with a fresh coat of purple-- to sit in and soak up some of that sunshine this weekend. All I have are Costco aluminum chairs. It’s just not the same.

Hope you all have a great weekend.

Everyone on LJ seems to have very unique lives. I don’t think I have five things no one has ever done. Hmm. Let’s see:

1. I’ve been married to my high school sweetheart for 30 years! And I still absolutely adore him!

2. I’ve been bitten by a black widow while sleeping in a bed (I was away from home, sleeping in a rarely used bed. I still have the quirky habit of looking under the sheets every night when I go to sleep.)

3. I went through rabies treatment when I was five years old (14 shots in the stomach!)

4. I’ve been eye to eye with a Moray eel. (And learned I can swim much faster than I thought.)

5. Um, hmm . . . nope. Just four things I guess.

I cut a sprig of my Lily of the Valleys this morning and they now sit in a tiny vase on my desk. What a surprise to see that the little bells had burst forth in my garden when I wasn’t looking.

I love these little flowers. I’ve only had them in my garden for two years now. I didn’t know you could grow them in California and one day I was wandering through the nursery, and there they were! I thought I had won the lottery when I lifted them into my basket.

One of the reasons these flowers are so special to me has to do with the first time I remember seeing them. In my mother and father’s bedroom, beneath a paint-by–numbers portrait of the Virgin Mary was a vase sitting on a little bookcase. Stuffed in the vase were plastic flowers: Lily of the Valley.

Every time I went through my parent’s bedroom to get a book from the bookcase, I would pause and run my fingers along these little plastic bells. I think because the Paint by Number Virgin Mary was looking down on them, I somehow thought they were pure and holy.

Funny though, I didn’t think there were really any flowers like that. I thought that just like my mother’s painting hanging on the wall, they were the creation of an artist somewhere. I mean, c’mon, a neat little row of bells? I don’t think so. They didn’t look anything like the shaggy dandelions of my seven year-old world.

Later, when my mother told me that yes, indeed there were such flowers, and that she saw the real thing where she grew up, my wonder grew.

Now when I look at these flowers sitting on my desk–the real thing–I get some of that childhood wonder back.

I love spring. Is there some flower–not necessarily your favorite–that pricks a childhood memory for you?