Starving Artists

Thankfully one of the few times I can remember being hungry was when my mother used to make noodles and pork chops. Mom didn't use a strainer to drain her noodles. She would stand at the sink, clap a lid on the pot, leaving just a crack for the steaming water to pour out. Often some noodles rushed from the pot along with the water to a sad ending in the drain, and I hated that. I loved my mother's noodles and pork chops. I don't know why Mom didn't use a strainer—probably seemed like a waste of a clean utensil when she could strain them from the pot just as well. It's a funny memory now, because I don't eat pork chops anymore, nor most kinds of meat. We weren't allowed in-between-meal snacks, and you can bet noodles and pork chops were just about heaven to a child's empty tummy.

The next time I can remember being hungry (though not fitting into the category of actually starving) was in college. I was working forty hours a week to pay for my college expenses. This was in the fifth year of my studies after my father had grown weary of supporting what he believed could turn into a professional student. That title actually later went to my thirty-five-year- old "baby" brother, who has gotten his Master's Degree and is currently studying for his C.P.A exam. My husband swears he's only paying for four years of my daughter's college, and I tell him he's paying for every second my daughter will stay in school. I'm always slipping her a five or so, even though I believe my husband is correct in making our daughter responsible for a portion of her education expenses. I actually ended up in the hospital with anemia and mono when I was in college. But I'd been lucky because my roommate would let me eat after her. So if she got a Wendy's baked potato, she gave it to me when she was finished. She said she couldn't stand me not having food. I would have had more money for food if I hadn't spent it all on my phone bill calling my boyfriend who lived several towns away.

So not having done much real starving, I respect artists who have starved, and then parlay that into great success. I can't imagine anything that could affect my creativity more negatively than being hungry. Hunger and I don't exist well together. I tend to be somewhat hypoglycemic, and a grazer. I told my husband when we got married that I didn't care what we had to do without in our marriage as long as I never had to skimp on groceries. He agreed to that and has never complained about the grocery bill. One time when we were newlyweds and struggling a bit financially in Oklahoma, I took the change out of my husband's bureau and bought chicken legs to make for dinner. He howled when I served him those skinny drumsticks, but he howled louder when I cooked a turkey breast for Thanksgiving dinner. I thought it was fiscally smart since there were only two of us, but my husband promptly flew us home so he could have a real Thanksgiving with his family, complete with twenty-some-pound bird and homemade gravy. It was lovely, I must admit. He still tells this story with a great sense of astonishment that I would, on our first Thanksgiving together, serve only a meager turkey breast. I guess I didn't realize how much it meant to him to have an entire bird merrily roasting away for his sense of holiday.

My son likes to call when he's on the way home from school. He knows better than to ask me what's for dinner, so he'll say, "Mom, is there anything for dinner? Because I can pick something up on the way home if you haven't had a chance to cook anything, my good mother!"

My son cozies up like this because he knows it's important not to expect dinner from me, as I believe a mom who cooks is a luxury these days. I started weaning him off the what's-for-dinner routine when he was a high school sophomore. I don't want my son calling up his future wife every day demanding What's for dinner? as if her entire existence is based on his stomach. I also tell my kids it's important not to exaggerate, not to use the word "starving." They can say they are super hungry, but they've never starved, and word choice is important. Clarity is beneficial in aligning thoughts properly. I don't think the kids believe me, but they avoid "starving" by learning to fetch their own meals when necessary.

I thought about hunger and starvation recently when I read ANGELA'S ASHES by the late Frank McCourt. His story is born from growing up in an Irish Catholic household in wretchedly impoverished circumstances, with an alcoholic father and the poverty of the times. It's a touching, often wry memoir that makes me wonder at the ability of the human mind and body to survive such harsh circumstances. In his later years, after he'd retired from teaching in America, Mr. McCourt decided to put together his memoir of struggle and starvation, and lo, he had a bestselling, Pulitzer prize-winning hit on his hands that made him famous and rich beyond anything he could have ever imagined when he and his siblings were picking fleas off themselves and stealing food in Ireland. The happy ending, it seems, in those insanely tough times of losing siblings and starving, is that somehow McCourt was able to etch the memories into his soul and convey it so that we hunger with him. You can smell the food their neighbors are cooking, taste the challah bread he gets from the "Chewish" lady and the bananas he swipes in desperation from the Italian grocer to feed his younger brothers. The emotions he shares are real, compelling, and make us appreciate his story.

Laura Ingalls Wilder visits this theme in the children's book THE LONG HARD WINTER. Laura recounts the harsh reality of their existence most poignantly when she tells of her future husband Almanzo and his brother braving the cold and deep snow to travel to a distant farm to procure enough seed wheat for the starving town to make it through the winter. Laura's stories are varnished so that young readers never know the harsh reality of just how desperate their circumstances were. Still, we know that the Ingalls family survived treacherous times as Laura's father struggled to put food on the table. Poverty was not a kind friend to the true Ingalls, unlike the fresh-faced Ingalls we saw on the television series. Mrs. Wilder's stories stand the test of time in the simple hope for better days ahead. Yet, she too took the stories of hardship she and her family had known, bringing such a clear, meaningful picture of their lives that readers young and old all over the world still love her Little House books. Laura's daughter, writer Rose Wilder Lane, later said of her parents and specifically her father Almanzo that "It took seven successive years of complete crop failure, with work, weather and sickness that wrecked his health permanently, and interest rates of 36 per cent on money borrowed to buy food, to dislodge us from that land. I was then seven years old." It would be Laura Ingalls Wilder's articles in newspaper columns and later her Little House series that would bring the family their eventual prosperity and Laura herself enduring literary recognition.

Yet when I think of these and other gifted writers turning their personal hardships into unforgettable stories, I wonder if they would have traded the celebrity and the awesome success that their works merited for childhoods with always full stomachs and fathers who were not away for months at a time searching for work, and siblings who survived. I think about fictional Scarlett O'Hara raising her fist to the sky, declaring, "As God is my witness, I'll never go hungry again!"

I count myself an artist . . . but thankfully, I have never starved. I would, however, wear Scarlet's drapes in a heartbeat.

Awesome Books: Fantasy dark and deep for the harvest season, Nalini Singh's gritty, genre-bending ANGEL'S BLOOD is a fabulous paranormal read. For the little ones, CLIFFORD'S HALLOWEEN, LITTLE WITCH'S BIG NIGHT, and CORDUROY'S HALLOWEEN are family faves. For a count-your-blessings book, ANGELA'S ASHES by Frank McCourt, and for more on Laura Ingalls Wilder, A WRITER'S LIFE by Pamela Smith Hill is a well-researched book on her life and writing.

Movies, movies: Fall is football time, so football widows might enjoy the street urchin flower seller Audrey Hepburn in MY FAIR LADY. When Eliza Doolittle sits among polite gentry to test her new, more ladylike speech and appearance, then bawls to the racehorse to "Move yer bloomin' arse!" we understand that the experiment of moving up in society may be more difficult than Professor Higgins (Rex Harrison) first thought. Still, we cheer for Eliza because we understand she is one of us, a dreamer wishing upon a star, a princess born before our eyes. In real life, Audrey Hepburn (Edda Van Heemstra Hepburn-Ruston) knew deprivation and want after the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands. An online biography shares that Ms. Hepburn, 'suffering from starvation, developed numerous health problems associated with malnutrition and the impact of those times would shape her life and values'. Having survived this makes her work in MY FAIR LADY seem all the more transcendent, and earns the movie a spot in the rarefied keeper category.

Most excellent words: All my work, my life, everything I do is about survival, not just bare, awful, plodding survival, but survival with grace and faith. While one may encounter many defeats, one must not be defeated- -Maya Angelou, author of I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS.

Comment any time during the month of October to be eligible for the drawing of three five dollar Amazon e-certs, chosen by Fresh Fiction! Celebrate the harvest season, and happy Halloween to all those who have little ghosties in the house!

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. She is looking forward to her November release, A COWBOY FROM CHRISTMAS PAST. You can find out more about Tina at www.tinaleonard.com.