Going Down Memory Lane

I got the copy edit of MURDER INK.   I think I’ve had a different copy editor for every book I’ve done.  Some of them seemed to want to change every word and some of them just offer a few tweaks.  It is mostly my choice whether to accept their changes.  I think only once did an editor talk me into a accepting a change that I’d rejected.

The extreme was that one copy editor I had a long time ago objected to how my characters were driving, saying it was unsafe.  Really?

At the same time I’m working on WRITING A WRONG, the second book in the Writer for Hire series.  I have to make sure to keep the two plots straight.

I am still working on making space for my sewing machine.  It requires me to go through a room that I was always too busy in there doing something to clear it  out. I have gone through all the yarn and have a bag to give away.  With the rest, at least I know what I have now.  I keep uncovering things I didn’t know I had.  Last night I found a boxed set of scissors that I have no memory of getting.  But I’m certainly going to keep.  They will come in handy when I start using the sewing machine again.

I was kind of sad to find some red rubber boots that had been my son’s.  I was kind of hoping his son might be able to wear them, but they have gotten brittle and are starting to crack.  I remember them as being part of my son’s Halloween costume one year when it was raining.  I think he was a fireman in his yellow slicker and the red boots.  Our street had no sidewalks so we went trick or treating with his best friend and his mother in their neighborhood.  It seemed like we were the only ones out there that year and everywhere we went, people gave them extra candy.

Going through the stuff is a slow job, because I there is so much to look at and remember.  I found a little teddy bear that was left from when I was a kid and the small wooden room complete with furniture I got at a private school rummage sale in my Chicago neighborhood.  It stirred a lot of memories.  I think most of my clothes came from their twice a year sales.

We had a family friend whose kids went to the private school.  Somehow she was able to get my brother and me into the sale the day before.  We couldn’t buy anything, but we could stake out things we wanted. I don’t remember what my brother had his eye on, but I saw a blue doll trunk that I wanted.

People lined up before the sale opened so as to get the best stuff.  The morning of the sale my mother said she decided not to wake us up so we wouldn’t have to deal with the crowd and commotion.  She went on her own to wait in line for the opening of the sale.  I think we awoke on our own as she was closing the front door.  We got dressed and went to the gymnasium where the sale was held and right to the special line for kids.  My mother said she was congratulating herself for not waking us when she saw the crowd, but then when she got inside, she looked one way and saw me pulling the trunk and the othe way and saw my brother with whatever it was that he wanted.  She said right then she realized that we’d find a way to get what we wanted on our own. I still have the trunk.  It’s empty except for the last doll my mother gave me.  She is a perfectly dressed Madame Alexander doll, only her head fell off.

There are books left my childhood in that room, too.  I read them to my son and now will read them to Jakey.  My favorite one is called Bear Party and is about a bunch of koala bears that dress up in costumes.  It was given to me on my fifth birthday.  I couldn’t really celebrate as I had scarlet fever and I remember the neighbors who gave me the book peeking in my room.  I remember everything about having scarlet fever except the part when I was delirious.

I wanted to use the sewing machine to make masks, but at the rate I’m going the virus will be gone before I get the machine set up.  But in the meantime I’m enjoying the trips down memory lane.