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.

Embracing Big Ideas

There is nothing more important than flexibility in attitude, expectations, and relationships for those of you, like me, who dream the grand dreams, who yearn to squeeze the most out of each day as we journey through the phases of our lives. It has been said that without self-knowledge, self-independence, self-appreciation, and self-fulfillment, the most basic human right of happiness is denied. As a mature woman, I am still exploring, seeking to know myself better, to understand the why, and the why-not, of the pecking order of things. But at this point, I have learned a few things about going with the flow, about knowing when the time and place is right. I have learned to embrace my big ideas.

I have always had an active imagination. Big ideas! I heard that all my years growing up. Oh, that is just another one of your big ideas! I heard that so often, I became embarrassed to mention any new aspiration. Maybe that’s why I began writing fiction; it was a way of fulfilling all those ‘big’ ideas inside my head. And it is true; I am a believer in large thoughts. Let me tell you about a few of mine, the meandering trails I’ve traveled, and how much fun I’ve had along the way.

It has been an ongoing quest, building on every chapter of my life. When I remind Myself that I’m already sixty-four, Myself says, Well, I sure don’t feel like it! And I agree. I am surprised everyday by the number of years I have accumulated. Although my journey has no end in sight, I am well aware that I have not one minute to waste. I am still looking for the next plateau, the next fork in the road, the yet unrevealed life-changing adventure.

The desire to learn more, to stretch self-imposed limits, intensifies with age, like a train picking up speed, and the journey gets more and more exciting. So much to do, to see, to learn, to enjoy! Education, in all its disguises, is the accelerator, the great energizer. The more my education expands the more complex my thought processes, the bigger my ideas become. Each level of living completed should be the next step up, a new foothold, another page to turn, a fresh approach. Another mind-opening experience. This, it seems to me, is the natural order of things.

I graduated high school in 1961, already married. Being a good wife was the primary short-term goal, with hardly a spark of any big idea leftover from childhood. College had never been a part of my landscape, and I wonder about that even now—why nobody mentioned college to me.  Not my parents. I never wonder about that for I understand perfectly why they did not. But I do find it somewhat curious that not one teacher discussed the possibility. I was a good student, but was never encouraged to further my education. However, we were just coming out of the fifties, and most of us girls experienced the same. I had learned bookkeeping, shorthand, and typing, and graduated with the belief that a secretarial job was an excellent profession for any young lady with a high school diploma. Certainly better than my mother’s job at the sewing factory.

Most of the next twenty years was spent raising our children. Moving often following my husband’s work in construction, there was little time for anything other than homemaking and family. But somewhere, I got this big idea of writing a best-selling novel, and gradually handwritten pages accumulated, if only to be tucked away for finishing later.

After the laundry, after dinner, after the last baby started school, after baseball practice, after countless teenage events, after my children’s own pursuits, I wrote a little. Then Alex Haley’s Roots arrived one day, one of my book club selections. His experience of researching his ancestry sparked the idea of discovering my own family roots. Writing my own kith and kin saga! But the years ticked by, the way they have of doing between young adulthood and middle age, when the chores of daily family living and extracurricular activities, combined with sporadic supplemental income jobs, consume every ounce of a woman’s energy.

During brief and rare times of solitude, my desire for researching my own genealogy festered. I knew so little about my ancestors, hardly any knowledge at all beyond my grandparents, and no one in the family shared my curiosity about our history. I questioned my parents, and other relatives, whenever possible, and scribbled down notes, clues for later. All grandparents had died, along with their memories.

Then, one day my last child was packed up and off to college. My nest was stunningly empty. I looked around the house, took a deep, nostalgic sigh, and felt a surge of enthusiasm I had not experienced in a while. It was as if somewhere far away, I could hear the “all aboard” call, and I knew I had entered a new juncture in my life. I grabbed my car keys and headed for the courthouse, the county clerk’s office. Thus began my life as a records researcher.

The next few years I researched not only my ancestry, but my husband’s as well. Being adopted, his past opened up another area for me—finding his birth parents. Not an easy task considering the closed records law concerning adoptions in Texas. One day in Dallas, at the courthouse, my husband and I were told that a court order would be necessary to open his files. So, I found a piece of paper and a typewriter, and wrote out the request, addressing it to the family court judge at the time. We waited outside his office for him to return from lunch. The man was not especially pleased to oblige. Proper protocol called for an attorney-set, formal court date, but the judge reluctantly read the request for the records to be opened. After a few grumpy and brief questions directed at my husband, he signed the order.

We hurried away to present the paper to the assistant in the clerk’s office. After about an hour of waiting, a metal box containing all his case records was handed to us. We found a quiet table to ourselves, and opened the chest of treasure! The collection of papers in that box revealed his birthparents and other siblings, the beginning of his flesh and blood root system—so many mysteries solved. His own foray into the world of genealogy commenced and over time his family tree grew, spreading out and reaching taller, its root system increasing along side my own, doubling my pleasure.

My files expanded, filled with facts. Story ideas simmered, then developed into rough drafts, as my education about history, culture, geography, and record keeping increased. And as in all my progressions since, each new course of discovery naturally led to another. My inquiries became more productive, as the interconnectivity in my family lineage multiplied. My findings grew exponentially. My interests in literature and documents evolved, and I fell even more in love with the pursuit of knowledge. I got the big idea at age forty-nine, that I should go to college. Get my degree! So, with the help of financial aid, and my husband’s generosity, I became a full time student.

Entering college at that time enriched the experience for me in a way that it could not at an earlier point in my life. It was the right time for me, at the right place in my life. I majored in English, and the next four years changed me more than anything had thus far. I devoured every minute of it. I began to write from an untapped creative resource. I had entered an age of enlightenment I could not have imagined a few years earlier. I stood on the threshold of an exciting new world. Complex issues were laid open for examination, interrogation, explanation, and understanding. In a creative writing class, my last year, I wrote a short story entitled Paper Dolls, and that year, my story won ETSU’s William Owens Award for fiction. Although I did not know it then, that short story began the first chapter of my book, The Velvet Bridge.

The search for self-identity and personal fulfillment continues, but I know now that I will never be a finished product, an end-result. The rest of life will be a work in progress and in that knowledge, I find contentment. What a fortunate woman I am, to be filled with a kind of fluid, ever-changing awareness about the world, about my place in it. How different my life is from the lives of my grandmothers. Yet they travel with me, on every leg of my journey, in all that I write, encouraging me onward in my pursuit of aspirations impossible for them. How grateful I am that my happiness is not found in some final destination, but in the panoramic journey itself.