By Claire Fullerton
My mother was not a writer, but
maybe she should have been. She was one of the most natural born story tellers
I’ve ever had chance to come across, and she glowed under a willing audience,
well aware when she had one in the palm of her hand. She was a product of what
I now call the old south, raised in an era when ladies were cultured and
charming.
Her name was Shirley, and never was
a woman more appropriately named. To me, the name tinkles like Champagne in cut
glass: captivating and celebratory in its effervescence, happened upon only on
rare occasions. Never have I seen a woman occupy a chair quite like Shirley,
who could be found at the cocktail hour holding court in the card room in the
house I grew up in with one feminine leg tucked beneath her and the other
dangling freely at her seductive crossed knee. This was how she observed the
end of the day, for in her mind, there was much to discuss. She was fascinated
in the players who populated her extravagant world and had an uncanny ability
to dissect their character down to the last nuance.
I couldn’t say now if she was
insightful or just plain observant, whether she was legitimately concerned or
liked to gossip, but she had a way of telling a story that could turn a trip to
the grocery store into the most enviable journey ever taken. I used to watch my
mother—study her with adolescent awe, looking for clues on how to evolve from
an inchoate girl into her replica. I could have come out and asked her, but I
always knew she wasn’t the type to ever confess. She is nine long years in
heaven now, but the reverberating shadow she cast keeps her never far from
reach.
I was asked just the other day how I
became a writer; whether I studied it in college or took some other road. It’d
be so convenient to say I have an accredited piece of paper granting me
permission, but the truth is I have much more than that: I grew up under the
tutelage of a southern shanachie, who showed me the seemingly ordinary in life
is actually extraordinary; it all depends on how the story is told.
______________________________________________________________________
Claire Fullerton is the author of A
Portal in Time (Vinspire
Publishing.) Her second novel, "Dancing to an Irish Reel" will
be published in early 2015. She is a three-time, award winning essayist, a
contributor to numerous magazines, and a multiple contributor to the
"Chicken Soup for the Soul" book series. She had her own weekly
column in the ”Malibu Surfside News," and is currently writing a
Southern family saga based on her award winning narrative in the San Francisco
Writers Conferences' 2013 contest. www.clairefullerton.com
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