About Mother's Day

Mother's Day approaches, andthis year is significant to me for two momentousreasons.  The first is personal, the second, professional.

I learned a few weeks ago that my daughter, Rachel, is pregnant with her third child.  This was totallyunexpected and, actually, just short of a miracle.  After conceivingher first child with no trouble at all, she and her husband worked for four years to conceiveagain.  Eventually, they resorted to in vitro fertilization to get sonnumber two.  Now, three years later, without any assistance frommodern medical science, God and Mother Nature did their thing, and so this Mother's Day finds me celebrating the imminent arrival of a new life. 

My only quarrel is with their timing.  This will be the third grandchild with a November birthday.Plus my husband's, plus my sister's.  Throw Thanksgiving into the mix, andthe eleventh month is a crowded one for the Brown family!

Now to the second reasonfor this Mother's Day being particularly significant.  My son Ryan'sdebut book, PLAY DEAD, goes on sale May 4th. 

I was both gladdened andsaddened when he told me he was writing a novel.  Gladdened because hewanted to work at something that I love so deeply.  Saddened because I knewhow rough the road ahead would be for him...as it is for every writer.

I realized that he would fall asleep each night gnawing on the plot elements of his work in progressand fear that they might not be as brilliant as he had originallythought, and then wake up every morning sick with anxiety andsure beyond all reasonable doubt that whatever talent he'd possessed the day beforehad been stolen by the Evil Creativity Thieves while he fitfullyslept.

As a parent I got a littlequeasy knowing that he would soon dread looming deadlines, andnit-picky copyeditors, most of whom declare that they couldn't possibly write anovel, but who have no compunction whatsoever against tearing into yours andunderlining all your stupid mistakes. 

No doubt Ryan will come to resent critics, those who have a byline and are paid totrash your work, and those self-appointed anonymous ones on the Internet whooften express their opinion in the vernacular vein of: "This booksucked." 

(That they're sometimes rightdoesn't make it any easier to have it out there for all the world to read!) 

So, yeah, just as Ryan inherited my aversion to heights and love of Tabasco, I fear that he will come to experience all these professional anxieties, too.

And maybe -- hopefully -- he'llalso experience some of the joys of being a fiction writer: Getting a starred review.  (Which he already has done in the March 1 issue of Publisher's Weekly.), receiving a fan letter that is so heartfelt in its praise that it brings tears to the eyes, seeing passengers on the bus, subway train, or airplane thoroughly engrossed in your book.  And of course, composing that one sentence that doesn't make you want to throw up....stuff like that. 

So, a heartfelt thank you to both my children this Mother's Day.  To Rachel for giving me another grandchild to spoil, and to Ryan for an autographed copy of PLAY DEAD.

Both have done me proud!