My mama raised a storyteller… 

A small girl who grew up imagining tales of mice living in walls, gathering for dinner on spools of thread, sipping water from thimbles, and dining on chunks of cheese and scraps of bread. 

For a long time, after life got rough, I gave up on stories. I turned to poetry fixated on darkness, broken hearts, longing, my shortcomings, and extreme sadness. 

Then, one day in my late twenties, my mom made a joke about the way I referred to my husband in our emails by his initials. Since we lived 2000+ miles away from one another, I took her joke and turned it into a series of short stories about cows. They were so much fun. Every once in a while she’d log on to her computer to find a new installment in the tales of the cows. 

To clarify, I did not have cows. This was simply made-up nonsense, at a children’s level, inspired by a joke she made. 

When she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and placed in a facility, my husband began sorting through things in her apartment. Among the most random stuff she had stored in her safe, were printed-out copies of those old cow stories from fourteen years before. He looked at me and said “she loves you. She always has. It’s just complicated.” 

It took writing Girls, Assassins & Other Bad Ideas to really see that he was right. 

My mama raised a storyteller, or more accurately I guess she birthed one. She had very little to do with it. Her favorite may have been my story about the day I was born, which I adamantly swore I remembered… She would laugh til she cried and say “You are so full of shit”, but I’d just shake my head at her and tell her I remembered… (I don’t think I actually remembered, though those stories have been told so often they are cemented in my mind as truth.)

 My own stories are where my journey has me now. I am passionate about the lessons in lives lived and connections with people I’ve known. Even so, there are hundreds of other fictional stories out there that I’ve written or things I dream of writing… 

And more recently there were the Neighborhood Tales… Real-life stories, humanized because it was fun. In truth, Tom, Tim, the lady (Bea), and the son (Baby Bee) are cats. Strays, ferals, dumped… Until her last litter was taken, Baby Bee is the only kitten to have survived their terrible mother. (Well and our Darcy, but that’s 100% because of us.) 

Are we cat people? No. 

But we are kind people. We offer food and a safe, warm place for these cats to be because we don’t want them to suffer. The number of dead kittens we’ve endured is the stuff of horror movies. We have some neighbors who HATE US because they believe these cats are ours. They blame us for cats coming to the neighborhood. In truth, the only “growth” this cat neighborhood has seen is Baby Bee when he was born last summer. Otherwise, it’s been the same cats for almost 5 years. 

And also… The reason they were picked up was to be spayed/neutered. Tom managed to escape. (of course, he did. Also, we don’t know why he is only around on weekends and holidays. It’s weird AF) So no more babies! (the last litter will be adopted out through the shelter, and mom may be as well if they can get her to be much less spicy! (they also mentioned that they have never seen a cat LOATHE her babies as much as she does. It’s so true!) 

Thanks for reading along. I make up stories about them for Chris all the time, and tell them to my mom, who I believe is still with me. She would have loved the stories… but not the cats… 

Full disclosure: In the stories I tell, I do not call her “lady”. She’s the town whore. I’m sorry.