Posted on

#FamilyStories Meet the Author: JoAnne Bennett

This post is part of an interview series featuring the authors of Family Stories from the Attic, an anthology of essays, creative nonfiction, and poetry inspired by family letters, objects, and archives. Monday posts are featured on the Hidden Timber Books website, and Wednesday posts are featured here. Learn more about Family Stories from the Attic at the bottom of this post. Without further ado, let’s meet JoAnne Bennett, author of “When We Feel Invisible.”

JoAnne Bennett

Q: How has the publication of your piece influenced the work you are writing today or your writing in general?

JoAnne: I still have every assignment I wrote back in my favorite high school class, Creative Writing. Not even looking up from reading one of my first stories, my adoptive mother would say, in a less-than-impressed voice, “That’s nice.” I don’t ever remember hearing my mother’s words of encouragement or that she ever believed in me as her daughter.

Years later, while going through difficult chapters in my life, I found myself leaning on this “buried gift” that I didn’t even know I had up until then. Now, each time I get brave and share my deepest thoughts and heart-felt feelings in a possible new submission, I find myself not only growing as a writer, but also as a human being. I loved being a part of this wonderful writing project where I felt encouraged to try new things, like writing my first prose poem. I am going to take this newly-found confidence as I move forward and continue to challenge myself with more diverse writing opportunities.

Q: What is a fun, interesting, or unusual fact to share with your readers?

JoAnne: How many sisters can say they have enough brothers to have their own Tee-ball team? Yes, I have seven brothers. None are full-siblings, and some are not even related to me by blood. Sadly, many I have never even met, and three have passed away.

When I was placed for adoption at birth, my new parents were already in the process of adopting another newborn – this brother and I are only two months apart (brother #1). Our adoptive parents already had a son … our big brother (#2). And in recent years, I learned who the guy was that called our home back when I was a teenager. My adoptive mother and my stepfather weren’t home. I asked the person on the other end of the line if I could take a message for my dad. This nice guy just said, “Please just tell him his son called” (brother #3). I never asked for any explanation; I knew I wouldn’t get one. He passed away before I got a chance to meet him and to say how sorry I was that life had to be so complicated for all of us.

In searching for my birth family, I learned that 10 months after I was born, my late birth mother got pregnant again from infidelity, and placed my younger brother (#4) up for adoption as well. The much older siblings (including brother #5) that were raised by our mother had been led to believe that she had placed twins for adoption. Of course, we are not twins, but my brother’s adoptive parents named him Joe, which seemed surreal. One year on my birthday, out of the blue, the florist delivered a beautiful bouquet of flowers signed, “With love, from your brother, Joe.” But it hasn’t been easy to make up for lost time. I have learned it’s easier for some birth siblings to stay guarded and keep their distance out of self-protection from the hard stuff in life.

I wasn’t searching for him, but recently a new brother on my paternal birth side found me (#6); he also has a younger brother (#7). While working on this new family tree, I feared it would change everything if I revealed to my new brother that all my close DNA matches were starting to connect to his family. When I asked, “How do you feel about being my brother and me being your sister,” his reply was something I never heard from any of my other brothers.

“I am proud to be your brother.”

You would think I’d have this brother and sister thing all figured out by now.

Connect with JoAnne

Website | Facebook | Twitter

ABOUT THE BOOK

Family Stories from the Attic features nearly two dozen works of prose and poetry inspired by letters, diaries, photographs, and other family papers and artifacts. Editors Christi Craig and Lisa Rivero bring together both experienced and new writers who share their stories in ways that reflect universal themes of time, history, family, love, and change.

Available now from Boswell Book Company, Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online retailers.

Posted on

Letters from Yesterday, a Note for Tomorrow

In the recesses of my closet sits an old Birkenstock shoe box full of letters: updates from a best friend, love letters from my husband-to-be, simple notes from my dad–one note addressed to “OK Slave” that must have been sent during those years I attended the University of Oklahoma. (I dared to leave the state of Texas. It did not go unnoticed.)

These letters are precious, sometimes more so than photos, because they go beyond a snapshot in time. From handwritten script, a personality is revealed, an intimacy declared, a relationship honored in the time spent to find the paper, choose the pen, seal the envelope, and post the stamp.

I still write letters, though not half as often as I used to. I have fallen into the digital tailspin and gone lazy with text messages, emails, and Facebook posts. But certain situations call for old-fashioned correspondence. A new friend of an older generation doesn’t use email; a family member has gone off the digital grid for a time; a box of good stationary holds irresistible appeal. I sit down. I choose the pen. I start with the date. It is morning, I say, or afternoon. I am on break between work and kids. And I fill the page with nonsense or goodness or maybe too much. Give a writer a pen and she won’t stop talking. But Alena Hall (in “9 Reasons Not to Abandon the Art of the Handwritten Letter”) explains why such correspondence is critical:

Long after [letters] are written and sent (and even after their senders and receivers are gone), letters and postcards remain to be read, appreciated and preserved. Whether displayed on museum shelves honoring famous historical figures or saved in a scrapbook between two old friends, letters protect the memories of lives lived in a way that technological communication cannot.

Even the memories of daily minutiae become treasured down the line.

Those tiny notes from my Dad? They often ended with the same message:

Thanks for your card. It was perfect timing, a good note for a bad day.

Email is quickly lost in an inbox full of business and promos and calendar invites. A letter, though, when placed in a box on the top shelf of a closet is easily found. Instantly remembered. Read and re-read. And forever held dear.

Spread some love. #SendALetter.

 

Posted on

The Woman on the Mantel: #Artifacts&Memory

Carved in clay but never fired, she raises more questions than her presence might answer.

I know the artist, the name scratched into the base: Betti jo–my mother. I know the studio where the woman came into being: 4101 York Street, the attic space turned art room. I know her approximate year: 1980.

What I don’t know:

Self-portrait or face of a stranger?
Left unfired by intention or by resignation?
A woman content or resolute? Perhaps both.

What I imagine:

A Sunday afternoon, bright and temperate–outside and in. Kids preoccupied in the yard; husband drawn into football downstairs. She’s been to church, served roast at lunch, cleared the dishes. Usually, it is now that she would nap, but today she slips into the art room and unwraps a cool piece of clay.

She throws it against the table once, twice–pauses, listens. A third time quick, then she readies her hands and the water. With her thumbs she massages the forehead into shape, slow and meticulous. As she smoothes out that space just above the eyebrows, the creases between her own release, her thoughts loosen. She breathes in, breathes out, the scent of clay like a balm. She forms the nose and the nostrils and scratches her own. The nose is too big, she is sure, but the way it turns up at the end makes her grin. The lips, she crafts smaller than her own and more relaxed in a way, and here she stops to consider. Laughter from her girls outside lifts like the wind, and their voices slip in under the sash, curl up and around her shoulders, tickle the back of her neck. Happy.

~

Patty Dann (The Butterfly Hours) says, “All good writing is a blend of memory and imagination,” and as I study the woman on my mantel, I know Dann is right. Artifacts form the base of our memories, but we are often left to fill in the gaps. We do this out of curiosity, out of necessity, out of love. Family Stories from the Attic (Hidden Timber Books, April 1, 2017) is an anthology full of such writing. Co-edited by Lisa Rivero and myself, these stories of exploration by twenty-two authors will inspire you to uncover your own family letters, diaries, photographs, and more, if only to reflect on the real and the imagined and–as always–the loved. Watch for information on pre-ordering and the book launch soon.