Pardon my absence, that is if you notice

I've been here, but not here. I guess the ironies of the last two weeks are sinking in. In the last scene of the novel, Muriel gives the eulogy she's been writing in her head for years; the one she never got to give for her sister. It's honest, loving, critical, pure. In other words, it's what you want to have happen at the end of your life, you want to be remembered as you were. A friend of mine was musing about the eulogies given at my mother's memorial; everyone noted her rather prickly personality. There wasn't a fight she wanted to avoid, my mom. She was a battler right to the end. My friend was pondering what one would end up hearing about one's self, if people were honest and whether we'd be surprised. I responded saying we all do know our own foibles, we just hate to admit them. I think that's true. I have a feeling Amelia knew her own strengths and weaknesses, but knowing who you are has very little to do with wanting to change. And if it's working for you there's less incentive to change. I think Amelia's personality served her well, yet she was so distanced. Enclosed and safely away from her family, did she have regrets at the end? Who doesn't? Yet her regrets were obviously tempered by the things she accomplished.

My mother had too many regrets I would say. But then she had ample time to think about them, Amelia even cast away as she likely was, probably spent less time regretting and more time hoping for rescue. Still, at night I want to think that she lay there looking up at the stars and thought about home, about family, about the people who were close to her once and how far she'd come from them, and yet the unique bond they shared. I want to think that she may not have had regrets per se, but she did have things that were left unsaid. Things she might have wanted to relay, given the opportunity.

For more, read the book . . . and more on that later . . .

Amelia Earhart with her mother; courtesy Purdue collection

Looking a little pained, arriving in Boston.

Being a survivor . . .

When you've lost someone you love, there's not much to say. People hug you. They listen. They tell you, "I'm sorry." And they mean it all. Much to appreciate there, much to recommend because there's a need I find, to talk about what's happened, what one feels, a desire to express your sadness. There's also a competing desire to just stop, stop talking, stop thinking, stop feeling. It's familiar, mourning. I've done it before. It's part of what one does when one survives.

I began this novel almost four years ago. At the time my mother was incredibly unhappy. She constantly complained about how hard it was to be a "survivor." Her friends were mostly gone, she was recently widowed, she was losing her memory and the world she knew had transformed itself too many times. She could no longer even pretend to keep up. It was hard to witness because she had been such a force, always current with political and cultural events.

I put a lot of who she was into Muriel. I suppose when I began to write the character was a mixture of my own mother and the Muriel I found in her self published book about her sister Amelia. But thankfully all of that changed and the character deepened, now Muriel is both invented and totally realistic, a woman all her own. She turned out to be feisty and opinionated; for her surviving meant she had license to do and say whatever she wanted. And that's what took hold. My mother always said what she thought, though I wonder if she actually said what she wanted to say. Odd, that. She was opinionated and expressed those opinions with no compunction, but in other ways she was certainly a product of the era she was born into. Although she was a pioneering woman her focus in life was actually quite traditional. It was my father, he was in many ways her raison d'etre.

Today as I ponder my future as a new orphan well into the cusp of middle age, I think of where this novel began. It began with many things, but crucially it began with Muriel, with the idea of how one lives with so much loss. In that sense it began with my mother, I wanted to understand her and honor her.

So mom, this one's for you.

My City is Gone: Or What Amelia Earhart sees when she visits NYC for the very last time.

I saw the Pretenders at Madison Square Garden. Chrissie Hynde sang "My City is Gone." She was referring to her hometown in Ohio and I was living in New York. I, the inveterate New Yorker. What that meant for me was a certain attitude. I stared straight ahead, unblinking and dared strangers to confront me. They usually didn't. I wandered through neighborhoods where no woman should go, but always looked behind me, always was aware of who was on the street, front, rear, to the side. I taught in the South Bronx and made it home and back safely. I spent my middle school years going on an untypical reverse commute, from eighty sixth on the west side up to Harlem, mine the only white face in that subway car. I listened at night, lying bed in my parent's apartment, while arguments flared from the block behind us. Eighty fifth street was home to tenements filled with prostitutes. Shots rang out almost every night. I learned to ignore all of it. The only safe course was to keep a hard outer shell.

My city is gone, but it was still there when Amelia returns. In 1980 New York was raw, original, dangerous and gritty. New York was a place where you were always aware "shit can happen." Good. And bad. It was the place where I felt that anything was possible. It was the place I lived when I was that young. So I brought Amelia there, back there. I wanted her to feel that once again, to feel what she must have felt when she was young herself. Because she too knew that she could do anything.

I miss the Thalia and the New Yorker bookstore. I miss that notions shop and all the culturally affiliated businesses that would burst onto the scene at once. Indian clothing stores. Greek fruit stands. Hunan restaurants. It was a place where you could happen upon something that fascinated you. I always wondered what those chocolate covered ants and grasshoppers tasted like, but my stomach rebelled when I thought of trying them. Still, they made quite an impressive window display. Mine was a city of extremes; hope, fear, anxiety, passion, intensity, possibility, beauty, squalor.

That city is gone, but thankfully not forgotten. And in this book I get to remember it and honor it.

Steichen's Amelia

No Eulogies Please; or What Amelia Earhart Might Think on the Occasion of her own memorial service

So I will now return to my regularly scheduled broadcast. My novel begins with Muriel Morrissey in mourning. My novel ends . . . well let's just say with liberation. For her. And for Amelia. Since the loss of my mother I've been writing her eulogy. And of course because I'm a novelist, I got to write Amelia's, at least the one I thought her sister might give under the circumstances. I also got to put in Amelia's reaction to it. So what would it be like to hear your own eulogy? I don't think we often get to, unless we're characters in movies where for some reason there's been a terrible mix up and we show up at our own wake, or memorial service. And that just doesn't seem to happen all that much in real life, of course, tell me if I'm wrong on this one.

Amelia is pleasantly surprised, after all she's spent the novel wondering what on earth her sister will say. She's been more than a little surprised at what the rest of the world has been saying. For Amelia finds that in her absence there's been plenty of supposition without substantiation. Was she a spy? Was she captured and shot? Did she survive or die, plunging into the ocean? Was she a good enough pilot? Was her death her own fault? She finds all of this irritating to the extreme. But also comical. How could everyone get it so wrong? Because we all love a narrative, that's who we are. We're only human.

And eulogies are all about point of view. The one I'm writing will be different from the ones my siblings give. Writing mine for my own mother I focus on the personal, because that's what I most enjoy hearing. I want to know who that person was and what they did, what made them tick. I want to take scenes from their life away with me. That's what Muriel does for Amelia. And I suppose that because she was such a public figure the rest of the world got to do the same.

Amelia via my mother-in-law; Amelia Earhart statue