Book Birthday Blitz -Tilting, A Memoir - 22/6/18
Book Spotlight
In this candid and compassionate memoir which recently won a Gold Award in The Wishing Shelf Book Award, Nicole Harkin describes with an Impressionist's fine eye the evolution of a family that is quirky, independent, uniquely supportive, peculiarly loving and, most of all, marvelously human.
Book Trailer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZO1niSUWsuA
Tilting, A Memoir
by Nicole Harkin
Today on my blog I have the pleasure of sharing with you a Book Birthday Celebration for fabulous book.......
Tilting, A Memoir
I would like to thank Rachel Random Resources and Nicole Harkin for inviting me on the blog tour.
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Book Information
We only learned about our father's girlfriend after he became deathly ill and lay in a coma 120 miles from our home.
Overhearing the nurse tell Linda--since I was nine I had called my mom by her first name--about the girlfriend who came in almost every day to visit him when we weren't there confirmed that the last moment of normal had passed us by without our realizing it. Up to then our family had unhappily coexisted with Dad flying jumbo jets to Asia while we lived in Montana. We finally came together to see Dad through his illness, but he was once again absent from a major family event--unable to join us from his comatose state. This is the moment when our normal existence tilted.
Dad recovered, but the marriage ailed, as did Linda, with cancer. Our family began to move down an entirely different path with silver linings we wouldn't see for many years.
Overhearing the nurse tell Linda--since I was nine I had called my mom by her first name--about the girlfriend who came in almost every day to visit him when we weren't there confirmed that the last moment of normal had passed us by without our realizing it. Up to then our family had unhappily coexisted with Dad flying jumbo jets to Asia while we lived in Montana. We finally came together to see Dad through his illness, but he was once again absent from a major family event--unable to join us from his comatose state. This is the moment when our normal existence tilted.
Dad recovered, but the marriage ailed, as did Linda, with cancer. Our family began to move down an entirely different path with silver linings we wouldn't see for many years.
In this candid and compassionate memoir which recently won a Gold Award in The Wishing Shelf Book Award, Nicole Harkin describes with an Impressionist's fine eye the evolution of a family that is quirky, independent, uniquely supportive, peculiarly loving and, most of all, marvelously human.
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Book Trailer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZO1niSUWsuA
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Guest Post
1983, Georgia
YEARS earlier my little eight-year-old self walked down the linoleum-lined grocery aisle behind my mother. Everyone always noticed my mother. She stood almost six feet tall, a skinny, post-war child. She was “born blonde” once a month and had blue eyes the color of sweet pea flowers. Her fingernails were always done to perfection: chip-less red.
As we walked, a red spot grew on the back of her blue-striped dropped-waist summer dress. At first, I thought she had been hurt, had somehow been stabbed and was bleeding to death. But she seemed fine.
“Mom?”
No response.
“Mom.”
Still no response.
“MOM!” I said in a loud whisper.
“Mother, please look at me?”
“Mom, come on. Please?”
Frustrated, I changed tactics. “Lin, Linda!”
She responded. I’d recently discovered that if I used her given name she responded faster. I pretended to be someone other than her daughter, another adult for her to chat with.
From then on I frequently called Linda by her first name instead of mom. I related to her as a fellow adult. My younger siblings were collectively, “the kids.” This change in how I referred to her framed our entire relationship. I saw her as my equal. I felt we were both “parents.” Most of the time, this helped Linda. But sometimes it drove her batty.
“There’s something on the back of your dress.”
“What is it, Nicole? Why are you whispering?”
“Because look at what it is,” I said.
Linda twisted around to look at the back of her dress. With a shrug, she scooped up the spot on her dress in one hand and walked on clutching the blue-striped cloth.
I thought we needed to abandon the cart, go directly home. My embarrassment for her grew by the second. We needed to leave.
“Don’t we have to go home?” I asked.
She looked at me and said, “Nicole, press on. We need to get the shopping done and go to dance class.”
Not too long after this incident, we were driving in the car and I asked, “Linda will you be The Wicked Witch?”
She did an amazing impression of the mean witch from The Wizard of Oz.
“No. Not today,” she replied.
A different day we all sat in the back as we drove up Buford Highway, heading to dancing classes. John was four and Erica was three.
“Oh, come on, Mom. You do it so well.”
In character she said, “I’ll get you, my pretties.”
Giggle, giggle, giggle from the back seat.
“You aren’t long for this world.”
Giggle, giggle.
“Your mother is never coming back, hehehehe.”
Giggle.
“Have you seen my slippers? I’m looking for ruby red slippers. And my monkeys.”
“We’re just little kids. We haven’t seen anything.”
“Well, I have no need for little urchins. Be gone.”
“We want our mom back.”
“I’m not your mom. I should just put you in a stew and eat you.”
“Come on Mom, stop. That’s enough,” I said.
“Who are you calling mother? Tee hee,” she cackled.
“We’re scared. Please stop. Mom, come on.”
“You’re just little gnats. Stop whining. I’m not your mother.”
“Stop. Please. Bring her back.”
“But I’m not your mother. I’m The Wicked Witch, tee hee hee. Your mother’s never coming back.”
“Mom, stop, this is enough. Linda, come on,” I said.
“What ever do you mean little girl?”
Through tears, “Please, please stop. Bring my mom back. Please.”
“I’m going to get you my pretty.”
“I want my mom. Why won’t you stop?”
“Because I’m not your mother.”
Now hysterical, the three of us were screaming, “Bring our mom back.”
As we pulled into the dance studio parking lot, Linda returned.
“Grab your dance shoes, Nicole.”
I ran away from the car with tears streaming down my cheeks, still scared.
Linda did a lot of pressing on. No matter how bad things were, no matter how horrible her children were, no matter that she used to be a glamorous flight attendant flying to Paris monthly to get her hair colored and now a mere four years later she was walking down the aisle at the Winn-Dixie with blood on the back of her dress: press on. And sometimes pressing on meant scaring the shit out of your children.
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Author Bio
Nicole Harkin currently resides in Washington, DC with her husband and two small children. She works as a writer and family photographer.
As a Fulbright Scholar during law school, Nicole lived in Berlin, Germany where she studied German environmentalism.
Her work can be found in Thought Collection and you are here: The Journal of Creative Geography. She is currently working on mystery set in Berlin. Her photography can be seen at www.nicoleharkin.com.
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