Join Carol D. O'Dell at the Ponte Vedra Library on Saturdy, 11/18/06 10a.m. to discuss the five secrets that will make your memoir sizzle and sell.
Excerpt from Mothering Mother by Carol D. O'Dell, Kunati Publishng, April 2007.
Color My World
I’ve got to strip this wallpaper. The whole kitchen is covered with apples. Not that apples are bad, there are just so many of them. A friend sent me a huge bouquet of sunflowers as a housewarming gift. I put them in a large, two-foot glass vase the girls gave me for Mother’s Day last year, and the flowers transform the room. I know I have to paint the walls a Van Gogh yellow and contrast it with Starry Night blue. Van Gogh’s vivid palette calls to me. Whatever joy eluded him in life, he found in art. Freed of his demons, he found his voice, and for those few hours when brush and man merged, all was right with his world. Maybe that’s why I’m drawn to him. He found a way to survive the madness. I paint the walls and hope to find my own voice.
“You gonna leave this color?” Mother says, eating some chocolate chips cookies I left on the counter.
“Yes, I am.”
“We-ll. . .” She turns and walks into her room.
Color must be subjective.
For a time, I perched myself on a flat rock, comparing my life with the Guyandotte River. Just as its tributaries replenish it daily, changing it in some small—sometimes great—degree, so have the day-to-day occurrences of life changed me. Like the ri
For a time, I perched myself on a flat rock, comparing my life with the Guyandotte River. Just as its tributaries replenish it daily, changing it in some small—sometimes great—degree, so have the day-to-day occurrences of life changed me. Like the ri
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