Tina Leonard | If I Were A Tree

Leonard Light
Tales From A Writer's Life

I don't do change well. I like stability and loyalty, avoid dysfunction and distraction. If I were a tree, I guess I'd be some kind of Japanese bonsai, slow-growing, evergreen. I've always dreamed of having a bonsai collection. They are lovely plants in many variations, but I prefer the ones that look like small juniper trees. The angled, stretched-out branches always look so peaceful. Having caught the tail end of the sixties, I suppose peace feels good to me. Or maybe I am just a stream that doesn't care for rocks to disturb my glass-smooth serenity.

But despite this love of tranquility, I found myself putting my house on the market not once but twice this year. The first time was a misery. It was February, and we'd just gotten the toilet paper out of the lawn from a vigorous, enthusiastic rolling that had been performed in our live oak trees. Unfortunately, it rained violently right after the fabulous papering job, and the tissue paper glued to the rough live oak bark like white mold. Sodden clumps stuck to the pebbled sidewalk, a papier mache that was impossible to remove. It looked as if a sewer had blown up in our yard. So we waited out the paper snowstorm, picking bits of tissue daily from the lawn, sidewalk and trees, and three weeks later put the For Sale sign in the yard.

It rained a lot and was very cold during most of the showings. We had an offer a few weeks later, but couldn't find a house for our family to move into quickly as no one was selling a house in a down housing market if they didn't have to. The buyer wanted our house in two weeks and that was a deadline we couldn't meet, so we took the house off the market.

The family was devastated by this near-miss, with the exception of my husband. Secretly, he was thrilled. We are parsimonious by nature and had paid very little for our house sixteen years ago, and my husband knew he was within ten years of being mortgage-free. With one child in college, one in a private high school, and having purchased three cars in one year, the man of the house was feeling pretty good about leaving his armchair just where it was.

For years I'd been thinking about writing in a different genre, so I resumed tackling that. In September, I began looking for a new agent. None of these were easy decisions, but they were changes that had to be made. Yet I thought I could catch a whiff of change still in the air, so I began working forward. It takes me about a month to write a column, so I stored up a few, just in case.

Then I learned that the convict who had been living behind us had a shot at getting out of jail. I was not happy with this news. The summer morning he'd been arrested, the police had come with firearms drawn between the houses to arrest him. At that moment, my son had been outside on the patio stomping on bugs, and the realization that there had been only a thin wooden fence between him and drawn firearms kickstarted the panic I'd only recently begun to forget.

I felt I had no choice, and on the second day of October, put the house back on the market. My kids were happy, my husband very sad to realize that he just might end up with a tax-credit buyer--and this time, I'd found a house I wanted which would, in fact, mean an increase in his mortgage payments, though not by much. He looked like a man on the way to a shopping mall—hung-dog and dreary. My last words to my real estate agent as the listing went live were, "If we don't have a buyer by December 1st, we'll probably take the house off the market for the holidays."

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Tina Leonard | This Is Good

Leonard Light
Tales From A Writer's Life

Christmas is a time for happy memories. I have a lot of memories from different Christmases, most of them wonderful. My grandmother loved all the holidays. She always wanted decorations out for every occasion. For Christmas, Mimi had little red velvet reindeer she'd put on her fireplace mantel. There would be a turkey for dinner, homemade chocolate chip cookies, and a chocolate chip cake. I've tried many times unsuccessfully to make the chocolate chip cake. My kids have encouraged me to try again. We think the secret may lie in the heaviness of the bundt pan, but I am not so sure. Maybe it was the hands that mixed the cake. Mine hasn't come close, not yet.

Mimi made beautiful Christmas ornaments; she must have made hundreds. Years after she'd made them, and even after a fire in my childhood home destroyed our collection of them, the family is still swamped with ornaments. They are jeweled and tasseled, well over forty years old now. She made them in her basement, which must have taken months. She also needlepointed eight chair cushions for her dining room table, a floral pattern with a beige background that would have had me crying with boredom, times eight. Mimi was a wonderful needlepointer, but what she was more than anything was gifted in entertaining herself during long winters in Tennessee.

Mimi could definitely entertain herself, and sometimes at your expense. One sunny afternoon three bees flew up my grandfather's Bermuda shorts as we sat on the patio. Grandpa hopped around in agony, slapping at his shorts, trying desperately to get the bees to quit stinging him, while Mimi sat laughing hysterically. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't exactly help him, considering where the bees were located, but I remember being amazed that my grandmother seemed to find the whole incident such a knee-slapper.

Another time, Mimi pulled a little piece of paper from her recipe box and handed it to me. In her scrawling stick-printing, it read,

Retirement
My nookie days are over,
My pilot light is out,
What used to be my sex appeal,
Is now my water spout.
Time was when of its own accord
From my trousers it would spring.
But now I've got a full time job
To find the blasted thing!
It used to be embarrassing
The way it would behave;
And every single morning
It would stand and watch me shave.
As my old age approaches
It sure gives me the blues,
To see it hang its little head
And watch me tie my shoes!

Mimi thought this was a howler. Since this ditty was tucked into her treasured recipe box, it merited "keeper" status. Maybe when she was baking those Christmas goodies we so enjoyed, she pulled the poem out every once in a while for a giggle over her cigarette and floured pans. I don't know who the author was, and can't recall from where she received the poem. I do know that she carefully scratched out the word "with" and replaced it with "of," certifying that she copied the poem down with care. It clearly had resonated with her.

Mimi wanted me to write, so I did. She was my first fan. She had no computer of course, so I mailed my writings to her. She'd call me up on the phone; we often spoke about five-thirty or six in the morning. She was an early riser, a farm girl, and I was up with my baby. "This is good," Mimi would say of my first writings, though looking back over them now I realize they were anything but. "Very good, really," she'd muse, and I could hear her drawing on her cigarette as she pondered my story.

My grandmother was an inveterate, enthusiastic reader, so she knew the difference between good and lacking material. But she never said, "You can do better," or "Maybe try again." Her consistent response was always, "This is good."

I believed her. So I kept writing. After four years, I was published. Mimi wasn't surprised. "I always knew you would be," she said, and she was being totally honest. She always had been. My cheering section of one had pushed me into going exactly where she wanted me to go, by never saying a single negative, doubtful word.

So when I think about holidays and happy memories, a lot of times I remember great food, beautiful ornaments, and wonderful laughter with family. And then after the presents have been enjoyed and the ornaments are tucked away for the season, I remember quiet encouragement and steadfast belief, perhaps the best, most lasting gifts of all.

~*~

Comment any time during the month of December to be eligible for the drawing of three five dollar Amazon e-certs, chosen by Fresh Fiction! Happy holidays to all!

Until next time,
Tina Leonard

Tina Leonard has a publishing history of more than forty projects. With sales of over a million books, she is also a Bookscan and Borders bestselling author. Tina enjoys family, friends, researching projects, and a good glass of wine when she's not on deadline. Right now she is hoping to get boxes unpacked and find the Christmas tree in time to celebrate the holidays in the new family dwelling. A COWBOY FROM CHRISTMAS PAST is her latest release. You can find out more about Tina at www.tinaleonard.com.

Tina Leonard | MAKING LISTS

I love lists. I am a list-maker, a list-keeper, a doodling scribe of anything on any surface. My kids have picked up a dinner napkin as we left a restaurant because I had jotted a few ideas down on the paper. Bless their hearts, they were afraid to leave behind one of Mom's Big Ideas. Lists keep me organized, make me aware of how much I get done in a day or not done as life may have it.

I also love bestseller lists, especially when one of my books or a friend's book makes its way onto the hallowed spaces. Recently, my four-book series, The Morgan Men, was fortunate enough to make a few lists, one book being first on the eharlequin.com list, and another staying on same list for about eighteen days in various spots. Throw in a Waldenbooks/Borders list for three weeks in a row for my March book—culminating in the #2 spot in the third week!--and I began to ponder the scattered good fortune in the universe. (Remember, I am a student of listing—I try to figure out these random occurrences, whether or not I can find an answer being irrelevant). Greater minds than mine have written about the quirky fate in making bestseller lists, but my house is on the market so I have time to scattershoot while I'm scrubbing floors and cleaning out shrub beds.

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Tina Leonard | Fail-And-Succeed Success

I love writing. I feel fortunate that I get to make my living at putting words to paper. It means that I get to indulge my love of doing what I enjoyed when I was a child, which was read every single word I could get my hands on. Now I get to read wonderful works by other authors and friends, and sometimes I feel like I have a front-row seat to the ever-changing publishing world. I see a book make a bestseller list and I think, "Wow! I met that author!" Call me perpetually star-struck because I suppose I am. I root for everybody's careers and the state of the publishing industry because this is my team, the team that allows me to stay at home and do what I love to do most: Write, read, be a mom, a wife, a good neighbor and friend.

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