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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My Mother, Juanita
By Anita Stubbs
The first woman I ever knew was Juanita, my mother, therefore she is the woman I have known the longest. Her influence definitely shaped the standards for my daily life, just as her mother's shaped hers. The way I go about my basic household chores, the way I cook, and raised my children (making necessary adjustments, of course), I owe to Mother. And that is only the beginning. Respect shown to superiors ranked high on the list of common courtesies and polite manners, so much a part of life growing up in my little cocoon-wrapped existence of the Fifties. Knowing one's place in a man's world, first as a girl, then as a woman, had been passed down for generations, instilled into us all as rigidly as the Southern Baptist doctrine seemingly running through our veins!
Sometimes even now, from here in this whole new universe of my life today, I am shocked at my physical resemblance to Mother, as well as the personality characteristics we share. My hands are becoming her hands, this I noticed more than ever last night. She and I can even wear the same glasses and see perfectly. Genetics are powerful!
Mother is the strongest woman I know, although physically failing now, having battled arteriosclerosis for who knows how long. She began suffering from angina in her early sixties, and underwent quadruple bypass surgery at about the age I am now, when her pain became too severe. Just as Bill Clinton is beginning to experience the maintenance necessary with the disease, Mother has endured for years, undergoing several stent replacements, and most recently, vascular surgery in her neck to remove blockage.
Thinking about it now, ENDURANCE, PERSEVERANCE, both physically and mentally, may be Mother's most defining qualities, traits common to all my grandmothers, including the great grandmothers, ESPECIALLY my maternal ones, in one way or another.
Mother's birthday, like mine, comes in March. This year she will be 88 on the 15th, to my 68 years on the 1st. We are planning a lunch date, me, Mother and my youngest sister, Barbara. I look forward to it, and regret my other sister, Jackie, will not be able to join us.
Mother and Me
Mother and me so alike, so different. Smiling, crying, laughing. Moving through our lifetimes, cyclical and enduring, well seasoned by the years.
Mother and me smiling in a black and white photograph for Daddy to take to war. Mother, young, expectant, demure. Me, only two, sanguine, pure.
Mother and me, so alike.
Mother and me crying, in a mental image recorded for me to take to heart -Mother, older, submissive, accepting. Me, mid-teen, impatient, questioning.
Mother and me, so different.
Mother and me, laughing, one long ago spring day well spent together, for both of us to remember. She, great-grandmother, in blue-eyed, quiet mirth, me, grandmother, in brown-eyed, bold amusement.
Mother and me, so alike.
So different.