DONIS CASEY: Write Errant

For the past 25 years, my brother and his wife have lived in the house our parents bought in 1963. Not so long ago I asked him what happened to a dresser-drawer full of photos our mother had left in the house after she moved and my brother’s family moved in. He told me he had posted a bunch of them on Facebook years earlier, and I finally found them on his page. The above photo of my parents was taken in 1946, not long after they were married and before their eldest (me) was born. My dad was barely 23. My mother had just turned 18. (click on the photo to make it bigger)

My father was 19 years old in 1942, a gung-ho small town boy from Boynton, Oklahoma, who enlisted as a Marine after Pearl Harbor. He was an anti-aircraft gunner, present at some of the more infamous battles of the Pacific – Saipan, Tinian, the Marianas. He never talked about it much, but my sibs and I all played with his kit as children and learned the Marine hymn as soon as we could form words and carry a tune. He was a great, fun, hands-on dad, who died too early at age 44, when I was 19 and my youngest sibling was 18 months old.

I’m like many people in that my mother drove me crazy but I loved her to distraction. She was widowed at 39 and raised her younger kids all by herself. She’s the source of many of the tales I use in my books. Her help with my first Alafair Tucker novel, The Old Buzzard Had it Coming, was invaluable and I dedicated the book to her. She did read the book in manuscript, but she died a few month before it came out, which really took the shine off.

My parents were very young when I came along, and I believe that I was something of a practice child for them. But they seemed to enjoy themselves with me and decided to carry on (you’re welcome, siblings). As the years went by and the family grew, they both became expert child wranglers, especially my mother. Her attitude toward her little kids informs the character of Alafair, who is the mother of ten children. It’s a good thing I had such an example to draw on when I wrote my Alafair books, because I have no children of my own.

However, here is an experience to which all can relate. Once upon a time, while in a grocery store, I saw a woman being terrorized by her small child. “Johnny,” she kept pleading, “don’t do that. Don’t touch that. Be quiet.” And did little Johnny listen to his mother? He did not. My thought on observing this pitiful scene was this – my mother would have jerked my arm out of its socket if I had behaved like that in public.

It used to be that people learned to parent by observing their own parents and grandparents and practising on their many younger siblings, nieces, and nephews. By the time a person grew up, he or she was already a skilled child caregiver. It’s not as easy for young parents any more. People don’t grow up in big family groups like they did in Alafair’s day. As for me, I have younger siblings and observed expert parenting first hand. I was also an elementary school teacher for while, which enlightened me, as well.

It’s true, though, that it’s easier for me to romanticize parenting, having never had to do it day in and day out – forever. (I was going to say ‘for eighteen years’, but even I know better than that.) Someone asked C.S.Lewis how he could write so well for children, not having any himself. “I was a child, once,” he replied. So was I. I have also witnessed first hand some pretty skilled parenting in my day.