Female Rebels

When I think about famous women throughout history, a few names stand out: Mary, the mother of Jesus, Cleopatra, Marie Currie, Anne Frank, Rosa Parks, Eleanor Roosevelt, Susan B. Anthony, Helen Keller and Maya Angelou. Unlike the Kardashians, Hiltons, and Waltons who have done little more than amass wealth and live privileged lifestyles, these women changed the world and made it better.

I started to wonder. What did world-changing women have in common? What qualities resulted in their accomplishment, fame, and international regard? I concluded that they were rebels. They took risks for the greater good. Despite their second-class status, they were courageous enough, rebellious enough to buck the system, upset the status quo, and achieve their life’s purposes, whether intentional or inadvertent. Their behavior was radical for their times. They risked rejection, social stigma, and in some cases, arrest and even death.

I doubt that Saint Mary, Helen Keller or Rosa Parks set out to be famous. Their renown occurred through living with courage and purpose, taking a stand against oppression and injustice, and using their particular walks of life to improve the lives of others. They exhibited strength and commitment when women were expected to keep their mouths shut and obey their husbands. These rebels paved the way for the rest of us who glibly go about our lives, forgetting that women weren’t always allowed to vote, forgetting that most of us have never had to fight to sit wherever we wanted to sit on the bus, and taking for granted things like sight and hearing and proper medical care for ourselves and our families.

Dr. Maya Angelou is one of my greatest heroes, not only because of what she accomplished in her life—which was remarkable—but because of who she was at her core. She suffered every possible oppression, including race, gender, poverty, and sexual assault. Despite the world’s efforts to keep her subjugated, she not only survived but soared. She worked as a cable car conductor, cook, waitress, sex-worker, dancer, actor, playwright, author, poet, editor, Calypso singer, and cast member of the opera Porgy and Bess. She was the author of more than 30 books and the recipient of more than 50 honorary degrees. She even won a Grammy and a Tony. She didn’t set out to become famous. Rather she rebelled to be heard. Her voice was not hers alone. She spoke for all “caged birds” giving them a voice and the freedom to sing their songs.

Dr. Angelou used her fame as a platform for spreading a message of love and respect for all human beings. Her life’s purpose may be summed up in her quote: “If you don't like something, change it. Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud. My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style. We may encounter many defeats, but we must not be defeated.” That’s how she lived her life, and that’s how I want to live whatever time remains of my earthly life.

Cindy L. Freeman is the author of two award-winning short stories and three published novels: Diary in the Attic, Unrevealed and The Dark Room. Coming soon from High Tide Publications: I Want to Go Home. Website: www.cindylfreeman.com; Facebook page: Cindy Loomis Freeman. Her books are available through amazon.com or hightidepublications.com

Wisdom

Oscar Wilde once said, “With age comes wisdom.” Well, I’d like to know why we can’t have wisdom when we’re young, when we can put it to good use—like when we’re raising our children.

I’m a much better parent to my grandchildren than I was to my children. Of course, I loved them dearly, but I was still trying to figure out adult-ing when I became a mother at the age of 26. Back then, I had no idea what I was doing.

Fortunately, instinct kept me from placing my children in danger. Well, except for the time I securely strapped my three-month-old daughter in her carrier and set it on the kitchen table, so I could prepare supper. As soon as I turned away, she leaned forward and went crashing to the floor. I grabbed her, seat and all, held her to my chest and walked around and around the apartment crying, afraid to look at her. Despite the healthy volume of her screaming, I was sure she had a cracked skull and was bleeding to death.

Then there was the time my son at nine months old managed to pick up a penny from the floor without my noticing. As soon as I laid him on the changing table, he slipped the coin into his mouth and began choking. Like any mother, filled with common sense and wisdom, I panicked and started yelling, “He’s choking, he’s choking!” I shudder to think what would have happened if my husband hadn’t come running and performed the Heimlich on our son.

Miraculously both of our children survived my parenting and turned out to be amazing, wonderful people and excellent parents to our grandchildren. But, I digress.

Imagine a seventeen-year-old girl trying to raise her younger brothers, ages six and eight. Abby, the protagonist of my latest novel, I Want to Go Home, struggles with unexpected poverty and her mother’s alcoholism. Determined to keep her brothers out of foster care, she runs away with them, making decisions that, in her teenage mind, she thinks are wise. She places them and herself in danger and causes them to end up homeless.

I Want to Go Home is scheduled for publication in September. In the meantime, I’m working on a memoir about my childhood growing up on a dairy farm. It doesn’t have a title yet, but each of its short stories focuses on a specific memory from those early years during the 1950s. I think the stories will resonate with my contemporaries, but I hope people of all ages will enjoy reading them. 

        

Cindy L. Freeman is the author of two award-winning short stories and three published novels: Diary in the Attic, Unrevealed and The Dark Room. Coming soon from High Tide Publications: I Want to Go Home. Website: www.cindylfreeman.com; Facebook page: Cindy Loomis Freeman. Her books are available through amazon.com or hightidepublications.com

Survival

I like books and movies about survival. The Journey of Natty Gann is a movie I could watch again and again, and I’ve always enjoyed books like Swiss Family Robinson and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Each of these stories is about surviving in a harsh world against challenging odds. There are many recent survival stories of the post-apocalyptic or zombie genre, but I prefer the classics. I can more easily relate to characters who are realistic and situations that are plausible. That’s why I wanted to write a survival story. My publisher expects to launch my latest novel, I Want to Go Home, in September.

I Want to Go Home follows the Jordan family of James City County, Virginia on their journey from middle-class comfort to homelessness. Twenty-eight-year-old Abigail (Abby) Jordan tells the story as a memoir. Her journey begins when she is fifteen and learns that her father, Terry Jordan, is dying. She assumes her family is financially solid, that her mother, Elizabeth, will keep her and her two younger brothers, Pete and Joey, safe and secure after their father’s death. But that’s not what happens.

Abby plans to go to college and become a documentary film maker. Instead, she must spend the summer before her senior year, taking care of her brothers while her mother works at a minimum-wage job. A series of unfortunate events plunges the family further into debt. They end up losing their house and living in a run-down motel near Colonial Williamsburg.

As Elizabeth turns to alcohol to numb the pain of grief and overwhelming responsibility, her family becomes increasingly isolated and fearful. Abby is forced to take charge of her brothers and to “parent” her mother. Eventually, Elizabeth overdoses and ends up in a coma, and social services finds out that Abby and her brothers are living on their own.

When two social services agents show up at the low-rent motel, they threaten to take the Jordan kids into custody. While their mother is still hospitalized and unresponsive, Abby and her brothers run away in the middle of the night during an especially cold Williamsburg winter. Abby takes her mother’s social security card and driver's license and, assuming Elizabeth’s identity, withdraws a few hundred dollars from her checking account.

After living in their car for a couple of days, the Jordan kids board a train for Washington DC in hopes of finding a shelter. When they arrive at Union Station, they experience true homelessness. I Want to Go Home is a coming-of-age story. It is a journey of hardship, fear, and isolation. Most importantly, it is a journey of life-affirming survival as Abby is compelled to make adult decisions, and through hardship, awakens to an awareness of God’s grace and mercy.

Cindy L. Freeman is the author of two award-winning short stories and three published novels: Diary in the Attic, Unrevealed and The Dark Room. Coming soon from High Tide Publications: I Want to Go Home. Website: www.cindylfreeman.com; Facebook page: Cindy Loomis Freeman. Her books are available through amazon.com or hightidepublications.com

How Did I Get Here?

Another birthday? I thought I had made it clear I wouldn’t be acknowledging any more birthdays. Forty was fine, fifty was nifty, sixty was sexy, but with only one more year until I join the septuagenarian set, I’m ready to stop the clock.

How did I get here? Just yesterday I was graduating from college, eagerly anticipating a career, plus marriage and a family. It was an exciting time with most of life still ahead. Then, suddenly, I was retired with grown children and grandchildren. What happened? Maybe our new condo is in fact, a time-travel machine or perhaps an alien abduction has compressed the years known as middle-age. Senior citizen? Medicare? Golden years? “Bah, humbug!”

Last summer I attended my fiftieth high school reunion only to be greeted by a bunch of old people. How could these gray-haired, slightly chubby, unrecognizable strangers be my classmates from high school? Then I passed a mirrored wall and realized I fit right in. How was it possible?

Maybe this awareness of approaching old age is what keeps me writing. It seems like I have so many stories to tell and so little time to tell them. I’ve sent my latest novel, I Want to Go Home, to my publisher, and now I’m working on a memoir of my childhood growing up on a dairy farm. I have a desire to preserve these memories for my children and grandchildren. I have a need to process them for myself. 

I always intended to age gracefully, whatever that means. That was before old age hit me over the head with an iron skillet and brought with it all its little aches and twinges. That was when I could diet for a week prior to any impending event and lose ten pounds. That was before I looked in the mirror and saw my mother staring back at me. That was before the AARP magazine started arriving in the mail. Who ordered that, anyway?

Ann Landers, the famous advice columnist, once wrote, “At age 20, we worry about what others think of us; at 40, we don’t care what they think of us; at 60, we discover they haven’t been thinking of us at all.”

So, maybe the seventies will be my decade of freedom. Yes, freedom from doing what others expect of me, freedom to accomplish the goals I didn’t have time to accomplish when I was busy with a career and family, freedom to live my life boldly, to feel and act authentically without worrying what other people think. Oh, that’s right. They’re not thinking of me at all.

Cindy L. Freeman is the author of two award-winning short stories, a novella, Diary in the Attic and two novels, Unrevealed and The Dark Room. Coming soon: I Want to Go Home. Website: www.cindylfreeman.com; Facebook page: Cindy Loomis Freeman. Her books are available through amazon.com or hightidepublications.com

That Flippin' House

Selling a house is not nearly as much fun as buying one. Recently, we moved into a condo. It was time to let someone else worry about the outside maintenance and lawn care. We love our new neighborhood, and our condo is perfect for us.

But now we must sell our 35-year-old house. We’ve taken good care of it, maintaining both the interior and exterior—or so we thought. Since buying it 30 years ago, we replaced the roof, the heat pump, the siding, the deck, the windows, the flooring, and the kitchen and bathroom countertops. We re-faced the kitchen cabinets and added storage cabinets in the pantry and garage. We painted both the interior and the exterior at least twice, added lovely flower beds and shrubs to enhance the curb appeal and installed a new aggregate driveway. We were under the deluded impression that our house was in “turnkey” condition. Once it was empty, we’d give it a thorough cleaning and put it on the market. Ha! We moved into our condo six months ago and have yet to list our house.

First, we discovered a crack in the foundation from the earthquake that hit the Williamsburg area a few years back. Repairing it was not only expensive but caused cracks in some of the walls. Then, we learned that a couple dozen window-pane seals were broken. Yes, they could be repaired, but it would cost more than installing new windows. So, we replaced all the windows.

As we were clearing out the attic, we found a leak in the roof. Fortunately, it could be repaired without replacing the entire roof, but that was another unexpected expense. We had budgeted to replace the upstairs carpeting and to paint the whole interior, but these surprise issues were quickly depleting our fix-it fund.

With all the projects completed, we confidently invited our realtor to walk through the house. “I’d recommend you fix that seam in the rear fascia and power-wash the driveway, deck, and front steps,” she said. “You might consider painting the wood cabinets and hiring a stager. Oh, and you should replace those shrubs that didn’t make it through the winter.”

This whole outlandish process reminds me of writing. My first novel, Unrevealed, went to print after numerous writes, rewrites, edits, re-reads and more rewrites. I was so sure it was “turnkey” that I never even read the published version until a year later. That’s when I found the flaws and typos. How mortifying! Fortunately, my publisher was happy to let me rewrite it until I was satisfied. High Tide released the second edition a few months ago.  

   

As for that “turnkey” house, after five months of phone calls, contractors, inspections, and sweat equity, my husband and I have gained great respect for house flippers. Our house looks new, fresh, and inviting. It was a good home for our family, and now it will be a good home for a new family—if we can ever get it on the market.

Cindy L. Freeman is the author of two award-winning short stories, a novella, Diary in the Attic and two novels, Unrevealed and The Dark Room. Website: www.cindylfreeman.com; Facebook page: Cindy Loomis Freeman. Her books are available through amazon.com or hightidepublications.com