Misty Watercolored MEM'REEES...

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Last week, as I was walking the dogs across the frozen, barren landscape that is Maine in February, I thought, I miss southern springs. I lived in DC as a young woman, and visited my family in Alabama over the years, and I have a visceral memory of the perfect, soft air in Tuscaloosa this time of year, with the greenery and flowers already growing. Despite being born in about as northerly spot as you can get in the US (the then-Air Force base at Plattsburgh, NY,) I spent my first seven years in much warmer climates - Alabama, Rome, Baltimore and then back to Alabama before heading to Germany.

Then I thought, what do I remember about the springs of my childhood? And the answer is… not much. Which turned my mind to the question of my earliest memories. Yes, this is the surprise topic twist! I have to think very hard in order to ignore the icy winds on my chilled cheeks during the dog walks. 

Julie, Barbie and Mom (who sewed the dresses.)

Ross used to tell me he could remember events from when he was eighteen months old, but I’m much more typical. My very first memory is meeting my new sister when I was three and a half. It’s astonishingly complete - the white woven bassinet, the light filtering through the gold-colored woven curtains in my parent’s bedroom, the slick feel of their coverlet (I got to hold Barb very carefully while sitting on the bed.) Then she disappears for a few years until popping up again in one of my few Baltimore memories: we were taking our nightly bath together and she had a tick on her back!

(A side note for our younger readers: yes, believe it or not, in the mid-sixties a tick in Maryland was a rare thing. Also, she got it because we were allowed to free-range roam all over the neighborhood, and we had spent the afternoon in a local swamp. Which was probably also a toxic waste dump, this being the mid-sixties)

Other than Barb’s arrival, I have nothing from my first years in Alabama. Nothing from Rome. My only other memories of Baltimore are of sitting in circle with my “boyfriend” Alan and the teacher telling me to stop hugging him. But I can recall the exact page, typography and all, that I first read by myself in her classroom: THE FAT CAT SAT ON THE MAT. (No pictures! This was a serious reading book, designed to make us proficient early readers and grow up to beat the commies in the space race.)

 

How about you, Reds? What are your earliest memories? And does everyone have an earworm from the song I referenced in today’s title?

RHYS BOWEN: I have very clear memories from an early age. Maybe this was because I was born in the middle of WWII and there was an atmosphere of tension in the air. I remember the sound of the air raid siren, in fact it still quickens my heart rate today. And searchlights in the sky still freak me out. I was only once taken down to the backyard shelter and had such an awful panic attack I was never taken there again. (But I’ve had claustrophobic dreams since). I remember clearly my grandmother’s living room, sometimes cooking a meal over the open fire because the gas had been turned off. And the blackout curtains. And the drone of planes coming nearer.  I also remember playing endless games of pretend with my blind great aunt. I was the good fairy and she was the bad witch. I was the good princess and she was the evil queen.  It took me a while to realize that in life one can’t always be the heroine!

 

I can remember making potions from flowers in the garden–the unpleasant smell of marigold petals and once I picked up our new puppy and he peed all over my dress. And we looked after a cousin’s cat and it escaped. And I had a doll in green velvet called Kathleen. And a baby doll I called La Baby (and I fed her puffed wheat into her china head). 

 

I had imaginary friends called The Gott Family: Gorna Gott, Leur Gott, Goo Goo Gott and Perambulator Gott. They did everything with us. (You can tell I had no real children to play with!

Life changed when my father came home from the war when I was three, so this all happened very early in my life. I still have a book of drawings I did at that time– I recorded all the exciting events–a visit to the zoo, a fairground, my first movie, Christmas, the street party when the war ended. They are all there in childish rendition but quite recognizable.

Hallie, plotting against an oblivious Amy

HALLIE EPHRON: So fascinating, Rhys and Julia! As for me, I have one very early memory of looking out through the bars of a crib in my childhood bedroom. Next up I remember my mother asking me to watch my infant sister for two minutes while she went to the bathroom. I was sitting on the couch and I think Amy was lying on the couch beside me. I must have been four. Before my mother returned, Amy had rolled onto the floor. Just the first of many times when I tried (unsuccessfully) to kill her.

 

JULIA: Hallie, same here. I don't remember it, but my mom liked to tell of the time she was cooking in the kitchen and I came in and said, "The baby's crying." She turned around, and I had brought Barb with me...by wrapping my arm around her neck and dragging her across the floor.  I sometimes think its a miracle we're such great friends now. 

 

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I do remember…looking through the bars of my crib at a huge giraffe (life size? Or at least wall-size) my artist mother had painted on the wall. The giraffe’s name was Jih. (You can imagine how that came about.) I can still see it. I also had a pink music box that was shaped like a radio, a big boxy thing on the dresser. And a music box with  a spinning ballerina, which, thinking back now, may have played The Dance of  the Sugar Plum Fairy.

Tiny Hank, reporting from the beach.

I also remember walking on the shore of Lake Michigan with my father, I was just so little, toddling, maybe three? And there was a carpet of dead alewives in front of us. I mean, I remember it as billions of dead fish. I can honestly see it now. I burst into tears, and leaped into my father’s arms–I was NOT going to walk through the dead fish.

He made me do it, saying they were dead and could not hurt me. (Let me tell you instantly, there was no one more gentle and loving than my dad.) I was hysterical, but he made me do it. (My stomach is hurting, telling you this.)

 

Years later, SO many years later, he asked me if I remembered that. I said I did, although I toned down how terrified I’d been.

He told me that it had haunted him ever since, and he apologized, saying it was the worst decision he’d ever made as a parent, and that he was only trying to keep me from being afraid.

 

JULIA: Oh, Hank. What a sweet confession to make. Everyone who's a parent makes one or two dreadful mistakes, but it takes real guts to admit it and apologize. 

Lucy and sister Susan, looking v. stylish

LUCY BURDETTE: The trouble is, it’s hard to sort out what I really remember from the stories I was told or the photos I’ve seen. When I was born, my family lived in a little white cape home up on a hill. It was only one bedroom and my sister’s crib (11 months old when I was born!) was out in the hall, so mine joined hers. (Could I really remember that?) We used to watch my father shovel coal from where it was delivered into the basement to heat the house. One day my sister and cousin convinced me to take a drink out of a pipe up the hill. It turned out to be kerosene–I remember being fed Ipecac so I’d throw up. (Of course, that’s the wrong thing to do…). Is it possible I remember that, or was it what shrinks call a ‘screen memory’? I have no idea!

JENN McKINLAY: I don’t know if it’s my earliest memory, but it’s certainly vivid. I was in my crib and my brother helped me escape by showing me how to climb out. I have no doubt shenanigans were involved. They were always involved when we were on the loose. 

The original Hooligans!

We had a gloriously free range childhood in the seventies and spent most of it outdoors running wild. I think that’s why I value my daily walks with my dogs so much. It reminds me of what it felt like to be free from obligations and to go wherever the mood led us, whether it was along the banks of the river, up the mountain, or into the village to buy candy. I try to walk different paths every day with the dogs so that it feels more like those childhood adventures and I’ve discovered so many wonderful things like the neighbor who gives out lemons, a little free library, massive grass carp sunning themselves in the canal, and all sorts of birds in the nearby pond. I feel like my brother would approve. 

Nice nod to CATS, but I hear Barbra Streisand singing it in my head – where it will replay all day, thank you very much.

Don't eat anything bigger than your upper body, Debs!

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Thanks for the earworm, Julia! My very earliest memory–I think–is of playing with my stuffed animals in my crib when I was supposed to be taking a nap. My crib was in the room I shared with my grandmother, which became my bedroom until I was grown up and moved away from home. I can see it perfectly, the crib on the west wall, where I could see the tops of the trees that surrounded our backyard. 

In the next memory, I’m in our den and it’s cold. There’s a fire in the fireplace and I’m coloring next to the hearth. I’m wearing my favorite green corduroy overalls and my grandmother is there. Another time, I think I remember being put on my dad’s big horse, Midnight, but that may be one of those “photo transfer” memories.  

 

JULIA: Now it's your turn, dear readers. What are your earliest childhood memories? And for those of you too young to recall the song from the title, please enjoy Barbra Streisand in all her 1973 glory, singing The Way We Were:

 

 

 

What Happened to the Quicksand? by Jenn McKinlay

 JENN McKINLAY: Recently, I saw what was to me a fantastically  hilarious meme...

Why was this so funny? Because as a child of the seventies and eighties, the Bermuda Triangle was a very big deal. It was an urban legend before we knew what urban legends were. 

I mean the potential to inadvertently fly over or sail through the 

B-Triangle, disappear, and never be seen again captured our imaginations and by that I mean it completely freaked us out in the best possible way. And then, it just sort of fizzled. You didn't hear about people disappearing anymore. 

Of course, quicksand was a major concern in my childhood, too. It seemed that on every television show, the heroes inevitably ended up in quicksand and someone had to throw them a rope and drag them out. My brother and I spent hours "rescuing" each other from make believe quicksand pits just so that we were prepared for that eventuality which never manifested.

Others childhood fears that turned out to be a bit of a let down:

•  swallowing my gum
• spontaneous human combustion
• being kidnapped
• amnesia
• my permanent record.

So, how about you, Reds and Readers, what were the urban legends the saturated your childhood in baseless fear and worry?

Stuffies, Blankies, Lovies: the ride or die pals of childhood

JENN McKINLAY: Recently, my mom unearthed an ancient photograph of my brother’s best stuffie, Teddy, and my best stuffie, Spotty, lined up against a wall, looking rather like they were trying to stage a prison break. Can’t say that I blame them given that my brother and I took them on all of our misadventures and they certainly suffered for it. Tree climbing, camping, swimming in the Housatonic River, ice skating, you name it, our ride or die pals were always at our sides. My poor Spotty got so worn out - it might have been that fateful day we tied him to a skateboard and sent him down a hill into a pond that did it - I finally had to swaddle him in my pink blanket to hold all of his bits together. Yes, I doubled up as a blankie and a stuffie kid.

My hooligans carried on the tradition with H1 carrying Hair Bear everywhere he went and H2 soon joining the ranks with his wing man Woobie Dog. We frequently threw birthday parties for them, mostly so Mom (me) had an excuse to have cake for lunch. Quite a sacrifice there! Hair Bear and Woobie Dog traveled everywhere with us when the Hooligans were young. One of my biggest parental fears was that we might lose one of them en route to or from our summer house in Nova Scotia. Thankfully, this never happened. Also, I can not tell you how endearing it is to check on your teenage son when he’s going through a particularly tough time and find his stuffie back on his pillow keeping watch over his boy. (Sob). Believe me, there are days I wish I could drag Spotty and my pink blanket out of my Mom’s attic and have them watch over me. 

So, tell me, Reds , who was your companion as a child? Stuffie? Blankie? Imaginary friend? What was your source of comfort and companionship? Do you still have them?

RHYS BOWEN: I don’t remember stuffed animals as a toddler. I had a family of imaginary friends called the Gott family. Four sisters: Gorna Gott, Leur Gott, Googoo Gott and Perambulator Gott. They had to do everything with us. You can tell I was a weird and lonely child living only surrounded by adults.  I didn’t get my first teddy bear until my 21st birthday. I complained I’d never had one so my mum went to Hamleys on Regent Street to choose one. After about 24 bears were discarded the salesman said “ Madam, just what is wrong with these bears?”

Mummy looked surprised and said “we want a bear with a nice smile’”. So Henry Bear has a suitably bemused expression and I still have him! 

HALLIE EPHRON: I didn’t have a stuffie or a blankie. Closest thing was my Susie doll, a baby doll with a rubber head, arms, and legs, and a stuffed body. I pretty much wore her out.

My kids both had stuffies AND blankies. Naomi had a stuffed pig named Piggie. Molly a stuffed leopard name Spotty Leopard. And there was a little pillow (named Pillie) that went everywhere with one of them -- when we left on an airplane, it triggered a collective nervous breakdown. My daughter is so smart with her kids -- they’re both attached to blankies. Naomi has a cache of identical blankets and when one devolves into tatters (or gets left on a plane) she hauls out a replacement.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I was a stuffie kid. No dolls, only stuffed animals. (I thought dolls were creepy.) My earliest memory is of being put down in my crib for a nap and playing with all my stuffed animals instead. The one that survived into my adolescence was Tigger. Not the Disney/Winnie the Pooh Tigger, just a stuffed tiger. 

My daughter had Horsey (a pale blue stuffed carousel horse) and a blankie, which was one of her baby quilts. I think she still has Horsey somewhere. He's very worn out! 

Deb's Bob

And I have Bob (which I've also given to Charlotte, the little girl in my books.) He's a floppy pale green elephant. I saw him in the window of a children's shop quite a few years ago and it was love at first sight. I have even stuffed him into my suitcase a few times for long trips, so he's an international elephant. (Who needs a wash, I think, but I always feel a bit cruel putting him through the washing machine. What can he be thinking?)

LUCY BURDETTE: the names of all these creatures crack me up!

I had a whole cast of stuffed animals, mostly cats, all covered in colored rabbit skin and fur. The original and most beloved was FUZZY WUZZY. After that Wuzzy Fuzzy, Tangerine, Mothball, Licorice and some others were added. I played with them with my sister Susan for hours--dolls too. I finally had to throw the entire lot out when I was living in Florida and roaches ate the fur leaving every one of them bald.

Hallie, your daughter is so smart. Our grandkids both have stuffies and there’s no sleeping without them. At the end of their visit in February, Henry’s stuffie disappeared. They spent 2 hours searching and finally had to leave for the airport. It was a rough two days and we still suspect that Dorothea threw it in the bushes...

One more thing I forgot to say--Lottie puppy has a stuffie now too. It has a little heart with a battery inside that beats like her mother’s did:). We give it to her at night, and when she’s done with it, I’m going to take it over...

Lottie's Snuggle Puppy

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I’d never even heard the word “stuffie” until recently. Such a strange word. I apparently had a blue blankie, which according to Mom, eventually just disintegrated and vanished into the ether--I wound up carrying a scrap of it. I had a Stieff horse, a fuzzy one called Cinnamon (guess what  color) and I was quite fond of him. Dolls, no. Agreed, Debs, I thought they were creepy. Weird eyes, just looking at you, expecting you to DO something, and I never understood what.  Mom says my passion was a white felt cowboy hat, which I insisted on wearing all the time, and would only take off in the summer when I got a straw one. 

A look alike for Hank's Horse

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: My stuffie story is rather bland - I had Susan Bear, who traveled round the world with me, managed to survive the somewhat ruthless weeding out of old toys my mother did whenever we moved (military transport allowances aren’t generous) and ended up in the possession of Youngest. 

She is the true stuffie connoisseur - she has dozens, and I have so far been unable to persuade her to part with any of them. One is supremely special: Mr. Froggie, who was a gift from my brother and sister in law when Youngest was born. As near as I can tell, they have not spent a night apart since then - even when Youngest was in hospital for five days after her mandibular surgery last summer, Mr. Froggy sat guard on the windowsill. I have no doubt that if she's elected to the presidency of the United States (her current ambition) Mr. Froggy will take up residence in the White House as the First Stuffie.

What about you, Readers, what was your ride or die comfort object as a kid?

My Heart Place

JENN McKINLAY: The summers of my childhood were magical. There were no cell phones or Internet, and video games were mostly still found in arcades. My parents kicked us out the door after breakfast and we were not to be seen again until we heard my dad’s piercing whistle sound off the back porch at supper time. My brother and I ran wild, eating blueberries and raspberries from wherever we found them, jumping feet first into swimming holes, making daisy chains, trying to ride the neighbor's horses bareback and, yes, starting some illicit fires on the banks of the river with a lighter we found who knows where. We were dirty and sweaty, covered in scabs and bug bites, and spent our evenings sucking on popsicles which melted down our hands and arms while we caught fireflies in old pickle jars before taking our baths and passing out.  

The Hooligans 4: aka my sons and nephews

Summer was our time for mischief and shenanigans, you know, like climbing hand over hand on the underbelly of the steel bridge that spans the third largest river in Connecticut. Yeah, that story still makes my mom’s hair turn gray. You can watch it happening while telling the story. Heh heh. Or the time we threw all of the squash blossoms in my dad’s garden into the river because we were so over the deluge of zucchini from the year before. Turns out Dad had planted melon the next year. Oops!

We got into loads of trouble, sure, but we also learned how to get ourselves out of it -- because having Mom find out we were climbing under the bridge was way scarier than falling to our deaths!

The Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia

Because I loved my childhood summers so much, I always wanted my hooligans to have the same. One problem, we live in Arizona. It’s 115 at the peak of summer so the free range thing, throwing them out the door and I’ll see you at supper is mostly a winter thing here and, yes, I did do that and, oh, the stories I could tell of their mischief but that's another post. Luckily, my family has a small cabin on the shore of the Bay of Fundy in Canada with a trout stream running through the property and a beach just beyond the cabin door that goes as far as the eye can see. It's so rural you can’t even get a cell phone signal. This place has been my mother's sanctuary for thirty-two years and this is where the hooligans learned how to summer properly.

Wowa and her boys!

When we're there, our time is spent hiking, fishing, reading, building bonfires, experimenting by making rockets out of toilet paper tubes, vinegar, and baking soda, or baking chocolate cakes cooked in orange rinds on the grill (really, really good)!   

At the cabin, the entire world falls away and I get to watch the hooligans and their cousins run free, causing mayhem and shenanigans just like my brother and I did. It’s still pretty magical!

I love everything about this place from the red clay of the ground to the overgrown bushes of pink summer roses to the bald eagles who live in the surrounding pines. When I am in this space, I find the better version of myself, as if I arrive a jagged piece of glass to be rolled over and over by the waves, polished against the sand, and spit out onto the shore with smoother edges. It heals me, which I suppose is the whole point of heart places, isn't it?

As you read this, I am likely walking that beach right now. So, I send you warm greetings from Canada!

So, tell me, Reds and Readers, what is your heart place?

Cape Split, N.S.

Memories of Summer

RHYS BOWEN:

I remember summer well. It was a time with no structure and no commitments. I played alone in our orchard, building a tree house, making a trapeze on a big apple tree and pretending I was Patsy of the Circus (my current favorite heroine). I remember that I used to do some pretty amazing stunts on that trapeze. I never fell off either, because Patsy never fell off.

On other days I'd go with my friends into the woods and we'd play exciting cops and robbers type of games. Sometimes I'd go off on my bike, find a stream and catch tiddlers and minnows in a jar. Summer days seemed to stretch on with no end. Sitting on the bank of the stream, warm sun on my back, eating a cheese and pickle sandwich and fruit from out trees was just perfect.

It still sounds perfect now. Every summer I say to myself that I'm going to take time off to chill out, to sit in the shade with a book and a cool drink. And what happens--I look up one day and it is September and the summer has slipped away.

Of course I know the world has changed. My daughters can't let their children go off for the day on their bikes. You'd never let ten year olds play in the woods without adult supervision. But I deeply regret it. We've taken from our children the time of wonder and creativity and imagination. Instead we've filled their summers with structure. They go to tennis camp and swim camp and computer camp, and play dates are arranged. But they rarely have the luxury of planning their own time, going where they please, stopping when they feel like it and coming home when they are tired.

I was delighted when we visited relatives in England that the six year old boy spent the afternoon making potions with various flowers and ferns from around the garden. I used to do that, and try to make perfume with squished rose petals.

I think my summers helped make me the writer I am today. I lived a lot of that time in the world of my imagination. I became observant of tiny details as i watched nature around me. I became resilient as I fell from a tree, trying to hammer a plank for my tree house, scratched my knees, cleaned myself up and climbed back up. Now that I'm a grown up I'm hardly ever bored. I can always think of something I'd like to do. I can take myself off and wander a strange city without feeling scared that I'll get lost.

I’ve had a lovely cruise around Spain, France and Italy but there was little down time. What I really want is to sit by a river bank, watching the play of sunlight through leaves and just let my mind wander. Alas there is a new book to start, revisions on a book to do, AND sample chapters for the next contract. All lovely but… what happened to summer?

What are your favorite summer memories?

In Search of Times Past.

RHYS BOWEN: Yesterday I was nostalgic about village festivals and today that nostalgia continues. I don't know, maybe it's advancing age but thinking back to the past seems to happen more often these days.
I was driving with the moon roof of my car open and I passed a small grassy area that had just been mowed. And suddenly I was back in my childhood. New mown grass was such a quintessential smell of summer in England. The English are obsessed with their gardens and every weekend the fathers would get out the old hand-pushed mowers and there would be that lovely smell of cut grass. Also the rhythmic sound of clackity-clack as the mowers were pushed back and forth.

My school had huge fields around it and there a tractor used to pull a giant mower so that the fields always looked pristine. In summer the smell of cut grass wafted in through open windows. Of course I should point out that it rains so much in England that the grass grows quickly!

The other smell that evokes childhood is that of a garden bonfire. In England we are allowed to burn garden waste and the smell of bonfire smoke would always be lingering. I grew up in an old house with an acre of orchard around it so there was always plenty of work to be done to prevent it from going wild. A funny story about bonfires: when we bought our first house in California the garden was horribly overgrown so we worked to clean it up and then.... we started a bonfire. And five minutes later two enormous fire trucks arrived outside the house. The firemen pointed out nicely that fires were not allowed in California but they still handed us a large fine!

It's funny how evocative smells can be. The particular smell of an old English church: damp, old books, but not unpleasant. My grandmother's house that always smelled of lemon furniture polish and cabbage and the lingering smoke of open fires. And my parents house. I can't describe the smell but I know it.

 One of the items I rescued when my mother passed away was her sewing box. My father had it made for her: three tiers that opened out on both sides, beautifully made. It stands in a closet downstairs and still contains anything I might need for sewing. I opened it the other day and instantly put my head down to it and breathed in the smell. And there it was: the house I grew up in. Maybe a hint of my mother's face powder. I closed my eyes and kept breathing, then hastily shut it up again lest the smell escape.

So what smells evoke childhood for you? I wonder what smells will trigger childhood memories for my children and grandchildren? I don't think my house smells of anything particular and I don't wear perfume....

But at the end of the month I'll be heading back to England and I find myself drawn to things that bring back my childhood: the thwack of ball against bat at a cricket match. The sight of children digging sandcastles on a beach. The cry of seagulls as the fishermen bring in their catch. And of course I head for my favorite childhood food items: bangers and mash, fish and chips, Cornish pasties, cream teas, and Cornish clotted cream ice cream--all horribly calorie laden, I'm afraid. But oh so worth those calories. Besides, English houses are so bloody cold (especially the big and drafty manor house where we'll be staying) that one burns off the calories. At least, this is what I'm telling myself.

A Lady and a Princess: a guest blog by Linda Rodriguez

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Linda Rodriguez is one of those honorary Reds who regularly brighten the back blog with their funny, thoughtful and informative comments.

We followed her from aspiring author working hard at her craft, to entrant in the St. Martin's/Malice Domestic writing contest, to winning the award and landing a contract with Minotaur! (I can assure you that winning the Malice Domestic award is the very pinnacle of writerly achievement.) Yes, I did get the Malice Domestic Award myself. Shut up! I'm being totally objective!

Now, Linda's debut is almost here!

Half-Cherokee Marquitta “Skeet” Bannion thought she was leaving her troubles behind when she fled the stress of being the highest-ranking woman in the Kansas City Police Department, a jealous cop ex-husband, and a disgraced alcoholic ex-cop father. Moving to a small town to be chief of a college’s campus police force, she builds a life outside of her work. She might even begin a new relationship with the amiable Brewster police chief.

All of this is threatened when the student editor of the school newspaper is found murdered on campus. Skeet must track down the killer, following trails that lead to some of the most powerful people in the university. In the midst of her investigation, Skeet assumes responsibility for a vulnerable teenager when her ex-husband and seriously ailing father wind up back on her hands. Time is running out and college administrators demand she conceal all college involvement in the murder, but Skeet will not stop until she’s unraveled every last secret.

Today, Linda's going to tell us about a very personal inspiration for one of the characters in Every Last Secret.


In Every Last Secret, my mystery novel that will be released on April 24, the protagonist, Skeet Bannion, has a dog, a collie named Lady. Lady plays a quietly important role in the book. By taking Lady into her new home, Skeet is making a statement that her life will be different from what it’s been, more settled, more stable, and as tragedy hits her neighbors, Lady, along with Skeet’s cat, provides a lifeline to a grieving and troubled teenager. The truth, however, is that Lady is in this book and the next two in the series because she was in my life first.

When I was ten years old, we moved to a small town in Oklahoma close to where my father’s family lived on a small farm that went back generations. I didn’t realize it at that time, but my wildly dysfunctional parents were in even more trouble than usual, so those years with my five younger siblings in that tiny town would pile more adult responsibilities on my skinny shoulders than I was already carrying—and my parents had turned to me at age ten to make the decision of where we would settle for the next several years, near my mother’s parents in Oklahoma City or near my father’s family in rural Oklahoma.

Shortly after we moved in, my mother’s parents in Oklahoma City brought me a collie. I was collie-crazy. I’d been reading and re-reading Albert Payson Terhune’s books about Lassie for years. And what a gorgeous collie they brought me! Princess was a former show champion, who’d been bred too early and too often until she could no longer bear living pups. Her owners were going to put her to sleep until my grandparents asked for her. Princess and I took one look at each other and fell deeply in love. She slept at the foot of my bed in the uninsulated attic room where I slept. My own choice, it was the only way I could have a room of my own since no one wanted to share it with me. When it got too cold, Princess would climb in bed with me, and I’d sleep as warmly as anyone could want.

After leaving us in Oklahoma, my Navy father went overseas, and my mother fell apart and often was not in our home or even our town for days at a time. When she was at home, she was often sleeping or hung-over. Fortunately, we lived right across the street from the school (K-12), and I could get younger brothers and sister off to school and go myself, dashing across the street to check on the baby at every class change and recess and lunchtime.

As my baby brother grew more mobile, this balancing act became harder and harder to manage. He began to take off in the afternoons and wander the town in his diaper. The school would get calls for me to leave class and come get him—because Princess would accompany him and guard him. She refused to let him into the street if a car were coming, and no one could touch him with her around, not even the local police officers. So I would leave school, pick the baby up blocks from our house, and carry him home with Princess walking at my side.

Princess loved to eat the apricots that fell from the tree in our backyard and had a constant battle with the wasps who wanted them all for themselves. Several times she alerted me to rattlesnakes in hedges of the yard when one of the kids was heading in that direction. Old as she was, she could at times be as playful as a young pup, and whenever she felt there was danger near, her years fell off her immediately.


Those were scary years and scarier to look back on now, aware of dangers I wasn’t aware of then. We all made it through them safely, in large part because of Princess, my aging collie. I always felt that Princess was an angel in disguise sent down from heaven to help me take care of and protect my little brothers and sisters. Finally, my mother actually moved across the state, and after a couple of weeks alone, my father’s family came and took us to live with them on the farm. We were now safe, and I think it was no coincidence that Princess slipped away in her sleep soon after that.

Princess, the dog I could never forget, morphed into Lady for the Skeet Bannion series. Do you have a childhood pet you will always remember? What was your favorite childhood dog?

You can find out more about Linda and read an excerpt of Every Last Secret at her website. You can friend her on Facebook and follow her on Twitter.