The Velvet Bridge
by
Anita Stubbs
This true-to-life rags to riches tale, my first novel, is set during WWII and could have actually happened if not for one thing: Mattie Featherstone never existed, other than between the covers of this 381-page book. But the lifestyles, the culture of the time, and some of the places ring so true, you'll wonder. It's classic 1940's, Dallas, Texas, in and around Oak Cliff.
Too young to be
widowed and too pretty to be alone, Mattie Featherstone is both. Suddenly
impoverished, this confused, tormented woman abandons her children and seeks
refuge in an encampment for vagrants situated near the Trinity River on the
west side of Dallas during World War II.
When a twist-of-fate encounter eases Mattie out of destitution into the
genteel world of her paper doll dreams, she manages to conceal the truth
about her past from her benefactors. She even justifies - in her own mind -
the abandonment of her daughters.
However, everything changes when yet another unforeseen event turns her life
into sensational headline news, revealing more than even she could imagine.
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A Birthday Poem for Shannon
March 16, 2010
MOST ESPECIALLY YOURS
Like a tiny pea in its pod, you snuggled for months,
secure, in preparation.
You grew strong, swaddled in love and anticipation,
getting ready.
Overnight, the day dawned sunny and warm,
the coastal air full of early spring,
and its ancient, yet brand new, promise of life--
Most especially yours.
Birth comes in a rush, urgently, in a flurry of activity.
No time for looking back, then.
And memories blur, but for that one defining moment.
Punctuated,
in exclamation, it remains always
embedded in my heart like a jewel:
that first breathgiving, breathtaking, awesome cry--
Most especially yours.
Infancy is fleeting, the most hasty part of life,
marked by a few sleepless nights.
You grew strong, quietly, swaddled in love and anticipation,
getting ready.
Seems as though I blinked, and you were a little boy
finding your own rhythm, your space, your course:
how stunningly quickly childhood vanishes,
Most especially yours.
The years went by, the days, the weeks, the months,
marked by social events, ballgames.
Friendships, school days, first love, lifedreams, ebbed and flowed in
procession.
And I waited.
You left me unprepared, surprisingly shocked
by your empty closet, silence, the last absence:
Every exodus left its own kind of void,
Most especially yours.