Everyone thinks it's just love but there's fear, too.

(This is a repost for Mother's Day)

In 1998, at a time when I could least afford the emotional energy to commit to a pair of socks, I decided to look for my mother.  She had disappeared for over twenty years.  She had never met two of her grandchildren.   I hired a private detective, Brian P. McGinnis and four months later he sent me a letter on beautiful business stationary.  The letters all had serifs. Dear Mrs. Baehr,  I am happy to report that I have located your mother.

It was not a joyful reunion but we did the best we could and I transported her to New York to the seventh floor of the Terrance Cardinal Cooke Health and Rehabilitation Center on Fifth Avenue and 105th Street. Her room overlooked the wrought iron gates to Central Park’s formal English Garden, a favorite wedding locale for Asian couples.  In that room, I learned more about my mother than I had up to that time.

I learned that my mother, still in her twenties and freshly divorced, had started a business importing dresses and other things from Montgomery Ward and selling them to the women in her village.  She had run a dressmaking shop, a beauty salon, a boarding house, she called it a hotel. When the war made importing goods impossible, she traveled to the U.S. by bus through Texas, made her way to San Francisco where she worked in a Lucky Strike factory putting the official stamp on packs of cigarettes.

She was a woman who placed all importance on dressing well and looking good. She would apply and re-apply lipstick throughout the day.  She drew in her eyebrows. When I told her that her nephew was dating a girl and that she dressed very well, she said, “That’s all I want to know.”

Here’s the dialogue.

“Your nephew is dating a girl.

“Oh, yes? What’s her nationality?”

”She’s Armenian.”

“Very clean.  An Armenian woman lived next door to me. She was very clean. Tell me, does she dress well?”

“As a matter of fact, she does.”

“That’s all I want to know.  I like that girl.”

“Really, that’s all you care about?”  In the dreamy Fellini atmosphere of the high ceilinged room, the kind of room you would see in an old war movie where the soldiers convalesced and got used to their injuries, whatever she said had more weight.  Maybe how a person dressed said everything about that person but I wanted to take it further.  “That’s all you care about? How she dresses?” I didn’t even raise my voice for this but remained matter of fact.

“More or less.”  My mother answered most questions with “more or less.”

Did you like the ham?  More or less.  Didn’t you think that show was terrible?  More or less. She wasn’t trying for a conversational style. She was a straight shooter. If irony is for ironists.  My mother was an anemianist. I altered my personality in her presence and was a straight shooter, too.

“Yeah, you’re right.  She dresses well.  That’s all we have to know.”  As a matter of fact the potential girlfriend not only dressed very well but she put on makeup in the morning before showing up for breakfast. I go days without makeup and dress erratically.  No wonder my mother thinks she got gypped.

 My mother was 88 and could no longer hold an idea in her head for more than five seconds.  One day she asked me fourteen times if her granddaughter was coming to see her for mother’s day.

“She’s in California.“

“Still in California?” 

“Yes.”

“Is she coming for mother’s day?”

“No, Mom. She’s still in California and she can’t make the trip.”

“Is it the boyfriend?”

“No she has a job.”

“Is she coming for mother’s day?”

“No. She’s in California.”

You might think this drove me crazy but it didn’t. Sometimes my voice got sharp and I thought, how can I kill her, but then I’d take a breath and look around that Felliniesque room and hang in for the long haul. 

“Is she coming?

“No, mom. She’s in California.” 

I got a little thrill using the word “mom.”  It implied a normal sunny childhood.

Just when I was certain this was the last lucid conversation we would ever have, she said, “They came yesterday to see if I was crazy.  They asked me who the president was.  I said the new Bush. I forget his first name.  I never liked the old Bush.  They asked who is the one before that?  I said. Cleenton.  William Jefferson Cleenton.  By the way,” she said, “you have to buy me chooz?” She still has her Spanish accent although she would be horrified to be told this.

“You’ve got shoes.”

“I can’t wear those chooz.  It came with a paper that says don’t wear for more than two hours. I’m not going to wear cheep chooz that say you can’t wear them for more than two hours. That’s ridiculous.”

“They mean don’t wear them too long the first day.”

“No, my dear. These are cheep chooz.  I never heard of such a thing.”

“So don’t wear them.”

“Will you buy me chooz?  Anything.” 

“Ok.”

“I can’t understand why your daughter moved to California.  Her family is here.  You have to stay with your family.”

Really!

What emotions come to mind with mothers? Everyone thinks it’s just love but there’s fear, too. Think about it.  There is fear, too.

It's New Year's Eve. I'm sitting in my office in the house.

It’s New Year’s Eve.  I’m sitting in my office in the house. There are two windows in the room and I’ve covered them with venetian blinds because the sunshine in the morning is so beautifully invasive that I can’t see my computer screen. 

This room was originally a bedroom.  It was the Jill part of what developers like to call a Jack and Jill set up.  I sleep in the Jack part across the hall from the bathroom.   This room is located inches to the right of the front door and in the early days (I was still tolerant) when carousing co-workers needed a place to sleep I would tell them to come in the door, make a sharp right and just get in the bed. I never locked any of the doors even though my house is only one block from a main road and the Railroad Station. (I was tolerant and crazy.)

With the arrival of my first dial up internet connection I made the bedroom near the front door my office and moved the bed upstairs. This became the room where I re-invented myself as a publisher and purveyor of digital books that I learned to build and upload to Amazon.  I also created a rudimentary blog and began posting simple ideas that seemed brilliant in the shower. In this room I've received good news and disappointing news.  I’ve cried in here several times. (Not recently,)

Here is some of the good news I’ve received in this room over the years:

1.  Can you come in to town, I think I’m starting labor?

2.  Can you come in for the award luncheon?

3.  I’ve been asked to work on a show.

4.  Grandma, it’s me.  Can I come over?

5.  We got the house.

6.  Consuela, I read your manuscript last night.  It’s wonderful. (This from my devoted agent who never in twenty-five years has gotten my name right.)

7.  “Daughters is the best book I’ve read this year.” (Daughters has received 119 5-star reviews and 47 4-star reviews.  One reader gave me four stars because she was mad when it ended.

8. One Hundred Open Houses does not sell well but when someone buys it and connects - aaah! “I loved this book.  Now, how did the author get into my mind and pick out every thought I’ve ever had, do have and will have and get it all together in this book?” This is my personal favorite.

9.  Hello, Ms. Baehr.  This is Rachel from Fast Company Magazine. We’d like to include you in our Kings of Content article if you’re willing. Do you know anything about me, I asked?

10. We’d like to publish Thinner Thighs in Thirty Years as a Kindle Single.  Ok. 

2013 was a good year.  I got rid of a couple of bad habits. (Well, almost.) I did not lose a single pound although I was sure I would lose about five every single day. (Oh, you have to stop eating? Who knew.)

What I liked best were the e-mails and comments from people who read The Repurposed Writer.  The post goes out with a little click and the next morning readers weigh in.  I’m always surprised.  Who knew these good times were waiting for me?  Thank you. Thank you.

Happy New Year! 

21,000 downloads in 72 hours

Daughters was free for three days (Feb. 5 through Feb 7). It was downloaded over 20,000 times (Amazon’s reporting has been wonky since the end of Jan. so figures are approx.) On the 8th when the book was no longer free an avalanche of sales began around 6 p.m. The “sales” came with such rapidity they were recorded in batches of threes or fours even if I refreshed continuously. I kept slapping my cheeks in shocked amazement like the kid in “Home Alone.” The blizzard lasted about an hour and later I learned that these were “catch-up” numbers that had not registered because of malfunctions in Amazon’s servers. I suspect most of them were for unrecorded free downloads but I won’t know for sure until the monthly statement.

About 12 hours after the book went back to “paid,” it began selling briskly and I awoke on Feb. 10 to see it had cracked the Amazon 100 bestseller list at #88. The title climbed as high as #64 before starting back down. How did I feel? I kept blinking . When I stepped away from the computer, I realized I was dangerously overstimulated.

I don’t know how this title will perform going forward and I can’t even draw any conclusions about the experience or offer advice on how to replicate. Previous to the promotion, the title was selling 1-3 copies a day. Now it is selling a few hundred a day. The volume will taper off but even if only 10% of the people who downloaded the free copy read it, I will have gained 2000 new readers. There are people on the Kindleboards who know all about Amazon’s algorithms and how they impact certain titles. They talk about “also boughts” and how they impact a title. I suspect all of it helps but there is also a serendipity to events that is what people think of as luck.

I don’t believe in luck. I believe our subconscious has a worn and tattered handbook of our expectations and outpictures them for us from time to time. My handbook allows me to reinvent myself every few years and creates opportunities for me to do so. Ideas occur to me and I act on them. The actions aren’t systematic or strategized. I grope around in a grab bag of arbitrary choices. My handbook allows limited success and too often it takes me back to zero.

The way I outwit my handbook is with this blog. I have control of this blog. Yeah, right.