I'm verklempt (not really, I just love that word), I've been dilly dallying, going to the farmer's market, wandering around town looking in windows, cutting roses from the rose bushes that fill the back and side yards of my new place. I will post photos soon and I mean it this time.
I've been doing horrible stacks of paperwork, unpacking, chasing after a puppy, and yesterday for the first time in ages, I took myself and Cowgirl on a grueling, fabulous 6 mile trail run. The trail is rocky, mostly uphill, and it was hot and the wind was fierce and strong. My sandy shoes and salty skin and red face got me a clear mind, open heart, and big grin. Can't help but feeling like I'm 10 years old on the trail. It's my secret fountain of youthful joy.
I'm off to Texas again on Saturday for a week of film camp and final packing. The following Saturday I'll head back to Colorado, this time in a Uhaul truck, the small one, thank goodness. I've been looking for books I can listen to on tape during the drive and today, thanks to the Writer's Almanac, I discovered someone whose work I cannot wait to read.
Today is the 74th birthday of advertising exec-turned-writer, Ilene Beckerman. She began her writing career at the age of 60, and became a published author almost by accident. She had written and illustrated a book for her five children. She said: "My purpose was to say things to my children one doesn't have the time to say. I wanted them to know I wasn't always their mother. I was a girl, I had best friends, we did stupid things together. I was on a bus with my friend once eating dog bones so people would look at us. I wanted them to know."
She took her finished book to the ad agency she owned and used the machines to make a dozen photocopies. She put them in big red binders, with illustrations she'd sketched in plastic sheet protectors, and handed them out to her children and a few close friends. Then, the cousin of a friend sent one of the binders to Algonquin Books. The publisher called her about publishing it and Beckerman said that they offered her "an advance that had a comma in it. I think I fainted."
From the Writer's Almanac:
The book was Love, Loss, and What I Wore, published in 1995. It's the story of her life growing up in Manhattan in the 1930s, '40s, and '50s, and it's accompanied by drawings of the clothes that she was wearing during that time. She insists that clothing plays an integral part in many women's memories, that they can recall important events or distinct spans of their lives by what they were wearing at the time. When the book came out, bookstores were not sure whether to market it as memoir or fashion. It has now sold more than 100,000 copies.
Beckerman insists that clothes are the least important part of her book, which she considers a memoir. The book contains advice and aphorisms from her grandmother, who raised her, such as, "If you have to stand on your head to make somebody happy, all you can expect is a big headache." And, "It's better to be alone than with someone who makes you feel lonely." And, "You never know what goes on behind closed doors, even Miss America can have hemorrhoids." And, "If beauty brought happiness, Elizabeth Taylor wouldn't have needed so many husbands."
Her other books include: What We Do for Love (1997), Makeovers at the Beauty Counter of Happiness (2005) — containing unsent letters to Marilyn Monroe, Mother Teresa, Audrey Hepburn, Sarah Jessica Parker, and her own 11-year-old granddaughter — and Mother of the Bride (2000). She said, "Childbirth was a lot easier than being the mother of the bride."
I'm off to Amazon to look for some of these on tape.
Happy Monday!
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