33. Dedicated with Love (Part One)

I could never express how deeply I love my mother — could any of us, really? I attempted to scratch the surface by dedicating my work to her — all of my works. I wanted my dear mother to see words from me to her when she first opened one of my books.

The very first dedication names her and gives a nod to her ability to keep her thoughts — suggestions — criticisms — and complaints to herself. I’m her daughter, so I know full-well that she has them, probably lots of them.

After that, the dedication there is a two-word rhyme thing she always says. Ridiculous words that slip from her tongue — probably because she’s busy biting it, so she keeps her thoughts — suggestions — criticisms — and complaints to herself.

Bullet Bungalow

To my mother, Ruth Shirley Bodreau.

Thank you for not saying — to my face — everything you surely must be thinking.

I love you mieces to pieces — whatever the hell that means.

On February 1, 2018, I called my mother and read these words. They are from a book I would eventually title, Bullet Bungalow. (modified excerpt).

Chapter One

One giant hopscotch jump.

Kitt Mahoney is doing the two best things in the world—her world anyway. She is watching her daughters enjoy the last rays and days of summer, and she is taking in the sights and sounds of her ocean—the one at Laurel Falls, Massachusetts. The Atlantic doesn’t belong to Kitt, of course, but it does play with the shoreline she now owns. From as far back as she can remember, Kitt has loved the ocean at Laurel Falls. Having grown up in neighboring Mayflower, the native New Englander has always had sand and sea in her life, but she swears the ocean in Mayflower is different than the ocean in Laurel Falls.

Mom asked what book I was reading and I told her those were the opening lines of a story I would publish one day. She told me to hurry up and write it so she could read it. God bless my mother — she read that manuscript four times before I had the nerve to send it to an editor.

As I should have expected, Mom became my most devoted fan.

A little background. After my head surgery to remove the big-ass acoustic neuroma that threatened my life, a couple things happened. I spent a week in intensive care before being sent to a rehab facility where it was expected I’d stay a month or so. I was at the facility for less than twelve hours. After I was moved from an ambulance gurney to my hospital bed and had settled in, Tim sat near, as he had the entire time I was in ICU. He resumed his ritual of running his hand across my hair and welcoming me back whenever I woke.

And. Then. This. Happened.

The following is how Tim has told the event.

When I woke after a catnap, he noticed a bit of a faraway look in my eyes, and a slurring of words during our exchange, and then he noticed a wet stain on my pillow, on the side where my skull had been opened and supposedly closed. He rang for a nurse, but an aide answered the call. He pointed to the wet pillowcase — she thought he wanted her to give me a fresh one and moved her hands in my direction. He grabbed her wrist and demanded that she get a medical team in my room STAT. He thinks he actually said that word.

The responding medical team knew what Tim already knew — I was leaking brain fluid. Within seconds an emergency page went out with my room number and countless people descended and began moving this and that, and getting my hospital bed to the corridor where it was met by an arriving ambulance team. I was whisked off to UMass, evaluated in the ER and scheduled for a second opening and closing of my cranium.

While I was being prepped, the waiting room filled with many of the same people who’d sat with Tim during my first 24-hour surgery. While they paced the halls, I was in some shiny chrome chamber with some big-ass light shining in my eyes and medical people doing this and that, and monitoring my level of awareness. During the entire time, I heard myself mumble that I needed to see Ann Leary. Back then, Ann was an ICU nurse at UMass — she was also a friend of mine — the person who was caring for my ten-year-old daughter, Jessica, who was best friends with Ann’s daughter, Megan.

I don’t know if Ann left her home or her hospital floor in the middle of that night, but she arrived at my bedside just before I was wheeled in for surgery. I remember making her promise that I wouldn’t die. She said things I imagine nurses are taught to say, or feel safer saying, things like, “You’re going to be fine, Sheryll. You’re in good hands, Sheryll. I’ll be waiting for you, Sheryll.”

That wasn’t good enough.

Even in my weakened state, and in my messed up head — which was probably messed up because of the whole brain-drain and all — I pressed for more. “I need you to promise me that I will live.”

Ann Leary, the trained ICU nurse who knew how critical the situation was — Ann Leary, the woman I entrusted my young daughter to while I faced a medical crisis — Ann Leary, the woman I needed most in the world at that moment, gave me the greatest gift. She held my hand as they moved me toward the operating room, and told me over and over that I would survive and that she’d be waiting in recovery for me.

I did.

She was.

It took me a very long time (years) to get back to a modified version of who I was before surgery. I had some post-operative things to work through and to compensate for. To look at me, I mostly looked the same, although there was some facial paralysis on my left side and I was deaf in that ear and, since my equilibrium was removed, I had balance issues and lived in a constant state of vertigo.

The biggest thing I needed to learn to deal with was some sort of spatial-distance malfunction. I am 5’4” tall, but the folks at rehab determined that when I looked down, the ground measured triple that distance. What that means is this: when I walk toward a curb or a pothole, I can’t tell if it is directly in front of me or 15’ away from me. I was told by the lovely whitecoats at rehab that I wasn’t allowed to walk anywhere alone. They assured me that once I learned how to traverse a space, I would remember it, sort of like muscle-memory, and I’d be able to move freely in that space.

All of that was true. But it left me feeling vulnerable.

I had another problem — one I kept secret.

I had this weird belief that I died during surgery, and the world around me was my form of Heaven — that I wasn’t really a part of the whirl and swirl of the day to day. I sat long hours perched on a club chair with my feet on an ottoman watching Tim and the girls come and go to work and school. I listened to the stories of their days, and smiled when they did, and frowned when they did. There was very little interaction between us because when I tried to connect with them, it felt as though I was looking at the world from inside a fishbowl filled with oil. Nothing seemed clear — nothing felt real. During daylong periods of silence, when everyone was gone doing their things, I honestly thought I was a spiritual visitor.

I mentioned this to the neurosurgeon during a follow-up visit and he kindly reminded me that I underwent a 24-hour surgical procedure on my brain, that I was under anesthesia for that whole time, and I had a second brain surgery a week later. He said it was a miracle that I lived through any of it — let alone all of it. And then he reassured me that I was indeed still alive.

It took many years for my head to catch up with my body. When I was physically better, I started being a wife and mom again. I practiced driving our RAV4 on the side streets in the neighborhood so I could get back to schlepping the girls to their high school. I dipped back into friendships, mostly by phone because I was feeling very insecure and preferred staying inside my house. It was a rarity for me to accept an invitation and an even bigger rarity if I actually ended up going.

I’d send Tim and the girls off to Donna’s and Clark’s for a day of fun, and to the many O’Brien activities and celebrations while I stayed home — because I was just too insecure to leave the house. I became reclusive.

Everything at that time was a challenge. The occupational therapists at rehab did their best to prepare me by bringing me to a mini-simulated-home at the center. I practiced opening and closing cupboards and drawers, and getting bowls and utensils and putting them onto tables and counters. And when I was ready, they had me open a stocked refrigerator and identify the things on the shelves and in the drawers. On graduation day, they had me do it all and cook something for myself. My first culinary delight was a scrambled egg and a glass of juice — most of which was poured onto the table before I finally got some into a glass.

After mastering the kitchen, I headed to the bedroom. They had me get onto and off a bed, and they threw pillows onto the floor and made me learn to balance myself while I picked them up. Eventually, I learned how to put pocket and flat sheets onto a mattress, and was allowed to nap there before heading to the bathroom to learn how to step up into a shower or tub — and that hot faucets were on the left and cold ones were on the right.

When I finally arrived home, the simplest of tasks were challenges. I remember watching my kids use the toaster, or the microwave, or the blender, and mimicked them. I NEVER discussed any of this with anyone other than Tim because it made me sad — and it felt like an out-of-body experience.

Years later, Jessica gave me her used iPad and taught me how to surf the internet and create documents, and a few other things. I became hooked. The iPad helped me feel connected to the world, and it sort of helped me master technology.

Guru Jessica just spit her coffee across the room because she knows I suck at technology.

Anyway, when I decided to write my first book, I used what I had, and what I had was an iPad. With one finger, I pecked my first and second book — chapter by chapter — in an email — on the iPad. Hannah cautioned me over and over and over that my way of doing things was an accident waiting to happen — and she was right. Halfway through my second novella, I lost the damned thing when I was trying to put the chapters onto one email. I don’t know how she managed to retrieve my work, but when she did she insisted that I begin teaching myself how to use a computer again.

That’s the year Tim and the girls bought me my HP.

Hannah set passwords and IDs, and got Bullet Bungalow, and the work I’d done on the second, still unnamed novella, moved from the iPad to the computer. Then it was my turn — I spent several weeks learning how to create new documents, and do all the layout and margin stuff, and even more weeks trying to understand where to file my documents and get them back again. I learned how awesome wireless printers were and I learned I had stories to tell. So, I began telling them — on a computer — like real writers do. And when I finished my second novella, I dedicated it to my mother.

Netti Barn

Mom,

I appreciate how hard you always worked —

I am amazed at how unaware I was about how hard you always worked.

Mom could barely wait for the second story of what was originally planned as a standalone novella and then changed to a trilogy. When all was said and done, it took 17 books to tell the complete Pulling Threads saga. As soon as I started pulling Mahoney, Maxwell, Watts, and Serpico threads, I realized my characters had rich backstories that pushed the series forward, and forward, and forward.

As I suspected she would, Mom fell in love with Fred Serpico in Bullet Bungalow and her affection for him has never wavered — but she always had a soft-spot for John Maxwell — so I made him the central character in Netti Barn: (modified excerpt).

Chapter One

Where are you?.

John Maxwell was passed out cold. His inert body slumped in a seat in the first-class section of a plane, “…traveling at some godforsaken Mach-speed across the Atlantic Ocean.” Those choice words were uttered during the last seconds of his lucidity. Unfortunately for John, and for his fellow passengers, this was the second trip, “across the fucking pond,” he’d made in a handful of days.

Despite his aversion to flying, on the first of every August he boards a plane, lashes himself to his seat, and sets about taking the edge off with as many whiskeys as is allowed during flight time.

When he’s sufficiently liquored up, he suggests to everyone within listening distance, to not wake him, “should this fucking plane begin hurtling toward Earth.”

John hadn’t expected to be returning stateside so soon, in fact, he planned on putting at least 30 days between the torture trips, but there was no reason for him to stay in Madrid—without her.

Where are you?

His message went unanswered each of the dozen times he sent it. After spending five miserable days alone—confirming what he knew the minute he landed—that she wasn’t going to meet him in Madrid, he packed up and booked a flight home, the one he was mercifully sleeping through. John Maxwell was about to find out that mercy sometimes comes with a price.

Mom fell more deeply in love with John Maxwell during this story and, no matter what I did to that character or what I had him do to others, she always jumped to his defense. As a writer, I took great pleasure from that.

For those of you currently reading the Pulling Threads series, I won’t ruin your fun with additional excerpts. I will, however, give you the dedication for what was intended to be the final story of the series.

Cutters Cove

Mom,

I know you think of me every day of your life —

I want you to know how wonderfully comforting that is.

The first three stories of PT are set in the fictional seaside towns of Mayflower and Laurel Falls, along the North Shore of Massachusetts. I could say that after the happenings in Cutters Cove, I took my characters on the ride of their lives — but the truth is this: Fred, Kitt, John, Joy, Mike, and Annie decided where their lives were headed — I just went along for the ride.

And what a ride it was!

Please enjoy Part Two of this blog.