At that time, I missed a lot because I was still faking passing eye tests at school. Todd was one of the last names called. I simply listened to the other kids reciting the bottom line and recited it. I had a lot more tricks to make sure I did not get glasses. It would be in the seventh grade that I was caught. I had changed schools and they used the point the direction of the Es. I could not see the big E. They sent with me a note that I needed glasses. I threw it away. I came home from school one day and Ma was furious. She had received a letter saying the Lion’s club could buy me glasses if they could not afford to buy them. I got my first set of glasses on Christmas Eve in the seventh grade, and I will say they were ugly cat-eyed glasses that my mother picked out. The first set of glasses I liked was when I picked out wire-rimmed glasses. I was the first to wear them at my school, but I was not a cool kid. No one noticed.
But that game my father gave to me, taught me to observe. Saturday mornings I would tell him that one of our neighbors got a new mailbox, a neon sign had lost the l, and we got new books in school. I did not see well, but I learned to observe. My father did not know it but his teaching this to me saved my life. I still observe things around me, well, at least when my iron levels are at a good level.
I was in Cincinnati visiting my brother Joe. Jason was small and my sister-in-law had hurt her back. I went to stay with them to care for Jason until Betsy got well. This was during what I call my bum years. After a couple of months, I was to return to South Carolina. I decided to take a walk to look at these beautiful old houses again. It was around four-thirty in the evening, and the next day I would be flying home. As I stepped outside, I noted a beige van at the end of the street. It was driving slowly down the street, but it pulled over in front of a house. As I got closer, I thought it was odd that no one got out of the van, and nobody got into it. When I was in front of it, I looked at the driver. He had dark hair, and almost black eyes, cold freezing eyes, and I remember he was smiling to himself. The van was odd also, it was hand painted because I saw the ridges in the paint job. The windows in the back of the van were painted over. He turned and watched me as I walked by the side of the van. He then drove off. I got to another street and there he was waiting and watching. It was the same at the next street. I knew eyes like his, they were the eyes of the babysitter before he assaulted me except this man’s eyes were black as coal. I have never seen eyes that black before or since. I got to the big houses and there he was down the block waiting for me, and as I crossed the street, he crossed to drive on the wrong side of the road. I was frozen watching him come for me, but just before he got to me, I ran up to a house and rang the doorbell. He rushed off to go back the way I came. No one came to the door. I decided to walk a street I barely knew but I heard heavy end of the workday traffic. I ran in that direction, and when I got on the main road, I walked fast back to my brother’s home. I told Betsy what had happened, and she told me that he probably didn’t mean anything. This was before the nightmare of Ted Bundy woke up everyone to the fact that there are serial killers. I am sure if this had happened a year later, she would have reacted differently. I wanted to make a report to the police. She said there was no need. I have always regretted that I did not make that report. My father teaching me to observe the world around me taught me that things change but also taught me to be aware. It saved my life that day. It would serve me well in my profession as a foster care caseworker.
The same is about writing. Things change. Ideas don’t work. Listen to those changes. This is the story about how my novel went from being one novel to a novel series.
Sometime in 2004 I wrote the first paragraph of my novel series. Then I wrote a page. I had a name- The Soupmaker’s Tales. It would be a story about a woman who lost her only love to her best friend. It would be about a woman who had led a successful life but was lonely. She did not want to remember her past, but it came back to her in the way of a scrapbook. I got 70,000 words and it stopped.
In a way to develop the characters in the story, I wrote up incident reports based on interviews. Probably, these were not done in 1936, but it was a way for me to know the difference in each of the characters. One of my friends read those incident reports and told me that should be part of my book. In August 2019, I took a look at my novel and those reports and decided my friend Doreen was correct that they did need to be in the book. It was still one book.
In August 2019, I reworked the book adding these reports. I thought I was close to ending this first book which was longer than I planned. Sardis had traveled to New York City after her love married their best friend. Her life had expanded, but she was still alone.
This character had nudged me and said, “I have had a life with love. Write about it.”
In October 2019, I broke down the one book into three. I began writing an hour on each every day, and then I added my memoirs to the equation. But there was a problem… the original named I chose for Renald was Garvis. I liked that name. It was different but say it with Sardis… you get the picture. I have a plan to eventually use Garvis, but for now I was on a search for a new first name.
I looked to Louisiana and French names. It was looking at those names I found Renald Andre Doucet as the name of the jazz saxophone player. I called him the Jazzman, but recently I realized I needed to change that nickname because Tyler Perry’s movie Jazzman’s Blues. His nickname is now Saxxman.
From choosing his name I had to create his family. This is as it turns out a family saga from the thirties to the present (This would change also). Then the story changed directions from the Soupmaker’s Tales to Sardis’s Journey. It is a journey to her coming to a place of forgiving those who harmed her. She was 82 years old and was restless because she needed to forgive and let go. As long as she remained a survivor, she was attached to harm done to her life. Meeting Renald was the beginning of the journey to forgiving.
This part is a mirror of my own life in forgiving those that harmed me. They no longer had control over my life. I was not a victim. That ended when the abuse was completed. Being a survivor kept me attached to the abusers. I survived their abuse. Forgiving them made me into a victor. I can talk about their abuse without having nightmares for nights. In 2018, I forgave them all, but writing this story let me see that I had been holding onto bits and pieces that I had not forgiven. Forgiveness is a process. It takes a long time. The first time I said, “I forgive,” was simply the first time I said it. I clung to the abuse as a badge of honor… look I survived, but I wanted more…I wanted freedom, and now when I talk about the abuse… I am sad that it happened, but also thankful that the children who came through my caseload had me who understood what abuse does to a child. Mine was not their abuse but I understood how it affected them. I am thankful that those events could be used to help instead destroy.
Suddenly the story was on fire, and I was writing every day, and on January 21, 2020, I finished “A Time to Remember”. I was euphoric. I got back to writing the second and third novels. In mid-March 2020, I finished “Healing”. Then Gus died. The cat who was my constant companion was gone.
Everything stopped. It took a long while to get back to finishing the third book. It took unexplained changes meaning I had not planned them at all. The third book morphed into two books. I finished the third book “Into the Fray” in March of this year. I am working on “The Dark Storm Has Arrived”.
But that timeline changed also, it would go thru the 70s, but that is changing but there would be bits of the future made into the story. The time they would become foster parents, and the loss that led to them stopping. A grandchild murdered by the police in 2000. This is a family’s journey dealing with people who were racist and unwilling to view things differently.
At this point, I am writing, and I am knowing the length of each of these books may cause it to be discarded, but this is not a light romance. This is a story of a woman who loved a man, and that man loved her, when it was impossible and illegal for them to love. I want to give people a story that will help them to see things in a new light.
I hope one day you will get to read my stories. They will not be an easy read, but I do believe they will have enough to make you smile also. Because Sardis is a sassy woman and Renald likes to tease her to make her blush.
I wrote this poem before I finished the first novel.
Sardis sings
Give me some Jazz
Played into the sultry air
Of a summer night
Filled with the smell of
Honeysuckle and gardenias,
And I might tell you
A song of love
Lost within the molecules
Of air and water
And the salt on my skin.
Mary Elizabeth Todd
January 9, 2020
Ever in Christ’s Love,
Mary Elizabeth Todd
October 20 &21, 2022