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Dear Reader,
Today's guest author, Frances Liardet, writes...
I am from the southern English county of Hampshire, a place of chalk hills and beech-woods. I am blessed by a daughter who came to me late in life. This countryside became the setting for my novel We Must Be Brave, and this daughter inspired the fictional child at the heart of my story! Like many older mothers, I have come late and joyfully to children's parties and sleepovers, Calpol--a common fever remedy in England--and inconsolable tears over the loss of cloth bunnies. I read--and write--at the expense of housework and FaceBooking. Although I have to say that social media is growing on me. It's great to connect with readers worldwide!
Connect with FrancesThe Square Toilet
'Oh, Mummy, we had an amazing pudding!'
My second daughter, six years old, is just home from school. Like her mother, she's English. In English-English, all desserts hot or cold, even fruit, can be referred to as puddings.
As in, What's for pudding? Apples.
But this pudding is surely no apple or orange. Her eyes are far too wide and shining.
'It was shaped like a swiss roll....' Cupping her palms, she busily pats her way around an imaginary jelly roll. 'But guess what was inside!'
'Jam?'
She shakes her head. Her voice lowers to a conspiratorial whisper. 'Ice cream!'
'Oh, gosh!' I said to her, for what else can you say. 'That's fantastic!' Only then did we turn to the fascinating question of why the ice cream in the Arctic Roll--a widely-known UK desert--had not melted during the cooking of the cake.
This is one of the blessings of mothering young children. You get to delight in someone else's delight at the world, to be surprised by their astonishment at the fabulousness of what we adults mistakenly call everyday existence. My first daughter, who would have been this joyous child's older sister, was stillborn at full term. During the dark days after this beloved baby died, I happened to visit a local tourist attraction where the rest rooms boasted toilets with pans and seats that were rectangular, rather than the usual curved oval, in shape. As I washed my hands I heard a tiny gleeful voice say from a stall behind me, 'Ooh, Mummy, it's a square toilet!' I was forty-three at this point, and I remember thinking as I dried my hands: This is what I will never have. No surprised little girl will ever say that to me, in that heart-piercing tone of voice.
Never have I envied a woman as I did that little girl's mother.
Now that I have my second, only daughter, I treasure those many moments that I nearly missed altogether. The time when she insisted on wearing a plastic shower cap all day, worn very low on the forehead so that her eyelids were squashed down at the corners. And when I asked her at the end of a shopping trip, 'What shall we do now?' and she replied, 'I know. Let's walk along with our hands in our trousers pockets!' And most cherished, her lively exclamation when at last I took her to those same rest rooms in the city attraction that, years before, I had visited in mourning.
'Ooh Mummy!' she said...
--Frances Liardet
Welcome Frances to the book club.
Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.
Suzanne Beecher
Suzanne@DearReader.com
** AUTHORBUZZ **
THREAD FOR PEARLS: A Story of Resilient Hope (Fiction) by Lauren Speeth
I'm like a one-song bird about hope. Set during one of the most politically divisive eras in American history, my coming-of-age tale follows a young girl's journey toward faith and freedom amidst a turbulent family dynamic. "Thread for Pearls" is a story of resilient hope.
Go to: AUTHORBUZZ click on THREAD FOR PEARLS to read more and to email author Lauren Speeth, you'll get a reply.
* This month's Penguin Classics book is THE WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT, by Sally Roesch Wagner, with an introduction by Gloria Steinem. I have a copy of the book to share with a lucky reader, so start reading today and enter for your chance to win.
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