Gosh, we’re barreling into the end of the month and that means deadlines! So perhaps we should start with today’s deadline.

Simmer down, now, you don’t have to write anything for this deadline. But you do have to hustle over to Amazon (and yes, I know some of us are all in a snit about Amazon, but this is a FREE book so it’s not like we’re helping Amazon, right?)

Anyway, the book. It’s called Getting Published:How To Access Editors and it’s by Laura Purdie Salas who’s a poet, educator, and writer for children. And she also works as a mentor (Mentors for Rent) and writes books about the writing business. (See Getting Published: How to Access Editors). To be honest, we don’t have time to go on and on about how wonderful Laura is because that book’s only free TODAY.

Now the next deadline, I’m afraid, is coming up at the end of the month. But the topic is Potty Training (And Other Bathroom Mishaps). I mean, who doesn’t have a couple potty training/bathroom mishaps? I’m sure you can flush something out in no time at all. All you need is a can-do attitude. (Okay, I’ll stop now. But you have to admit I was on a roll. Um…yeah. Stopping now for reals.)

And now you have a bit of a breather because you have almost a month (Yay! A whole month!) to get your story for the latest call out from Mozark Press. This time around, the Shaker of Margaritas editors are looking for stories about That Mysterious Woman. And I’m not going to lie. I have quite the story for this anthology. Bwahahahahaaa.

You, however, are probably going to have to write something. So maybe you should get busy.

I thought the time had come for me to let you know about Mom’s passing a month ago.

In my head, I’ve written a thousand lines about her, but now, nothing very eloquent seems to come to me. Which is probably very fitting because Mom was never much of a fancy-pants.

She was hilarious in that natural way that some people have. She never realized when she was being funny. Like the time when a car ran into the window at a restaurant, just a couple yards from where she was eating lunch. “Oh my Lord, Mom. What did you do?” I asked.

“Well, I finished my peach cobbler,” she said. “It came with the lunch, you know.”

She was very smart, too, an English major who graduated magna cum laude from Vanderbilt University. But she didn’t go around quoting Shakespeare.

Um…you know what? She actually did quote Shakespeare and other literary luminaries like Sir Walter Scott. But not because she’d studied them at Vanderbilt. She shared her mother’s quotes, and so I do, too. And I suspect that someday my daughter will tell her kids, when caught in a lie, “Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.”

And so Mom lives on. And life goes on, and these days, I often find myself remembering a line from a Christina Rossetti poem, Remember: “Better by far that you should forget and smile, Than that you should remember and be sad.”

Thank you for all the prayers and kind thoughts sent her way and mine. And finally, when I was looking for that Rossetti line, just to make sure I had it right, I saw a lovely sonnet, directly above Remember. I’d never seen the title and began to read. I hope Mom won’t mind me ending with a bit of fancy pants poetry, but it seemed heaven-sent today:

[Sonnets are full of love…]

Christina Rossetti, 1830 – 1894

Sonnets are full of love, and this my tome
Has many sonnets: so here now shall be
One sonnet more, a love sonnet, from me
To her whose heart is my heart’s quiet home,
To my first Love, my Mother, on whose knee
I learnt love-lore that is not troublesome;
Whose service is my special dignity,
And she my loadstar while I go and come
And so because you love me, and because
I love you, Mother, I have woven a wreath
Of rhymes wherewith to crown your honored name:
In you not fourscore years can dim the flame
Of love, whose blessed glow transcends the laws
Of time and change and mortal life and death.