This book is a compelling memoir in that the author shares a range of human emotions from her experiences in life. The challenges that she was forced to confront beginning at such a young age led her on a unexpected journey. Donna Marie
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This review is from: And I Thought I'd Be a Nun (Kindle Edition)
I can recommend "And I Thought I'd Be a Nun" as a book you won't soon forget. Once I started reading, I couldn't stop until I'd finished, and I'm still thinking about it long after the end. This is a very personal story that many girls and women can relate to, and one that might seem very foreign to others. But either way, it's remarkable in the candor and self-awareness of the author, who survived a harsh early life to tell her story of triumph. Joan St. Peter & Paul's school.... I haven’t written on my blog for some time because I had been working on a screenplay, continuing to try to market my book and looking for past friends, mentioned in the book. So in attempting to write about finally locating Karen, my best childhood friend, through one of her relatives, I find writing about this hard for some reason. As mentioned, I finally talked with my childhood friend, Karen. My best little friend from Jamestown N.Y. Of course she was happy and surprised. She reminded me that thirty years ago when I had gone back home for a visit we had actually met for lunch. How could I have forgotten that? Possibly because my uncle had passed away the very night I had arrived. I did remember our visit when she mentioned it though. I told her I had been trying to find her off and on for years. In this day and age, you would think you could find everyone; however I find that some older people are not that computer savvy or even have the desire to be on social media for which I credit for finding some of my relatives. As we continued to catch up on the past thirty years, Karen asked if I remembered cleaning the convent at St. Peter & Paul’s. I had not. She said my father or hers would take us there and we would sweep the floors and dust. I wish I could remember that. Perhaps too many bad experiences have erased some of the better memories that I should have. I do have a memory of sitting in the convent for some reason. Maybe that was one of the days we had gone there to clean and I was waiting for one of our dads to come and get us. I am still looking for at least two more former classmates from my parochial school days. Why so important to me, you might ask. Why do I continue to "collect people" as I asked my husband once if he minded? I don’t collect many; just a few that for some reason I take an almost immediate liking to. Why do I have many friends? Friends that I have had for thirty, forty years? Simply put; probably because I was abruptly taken from family and friends as a child. All of the family I had known since birth and friends since kindergarten. Just taken away at the age of fourteen and not allowed to contact anyone. I am happy how all things are now, after so many years coming to a satisfying conclusion. How I found the best therapy in writing my book and how I am finding long lost family and friends and how peaceful my life has become. It is truly like a good book that you would read. Just finished my screenplay, "Bass Reeves - Lawman" Feel pretty good about it..now to send out into the universe...see what happens. If nothing, well at least I am writing and enjoying myself.
Hello !!
Thanks for stopping by. Currently working on a screenplay. There have been some movie production company's looking at the logline of my book and a couple have looked into it further so I am excited to get a screenplay or two done by the end of the year so they have an opportunity to view those also for possible production. Will post a few stories here soon as inspiration allows me. Appreciate all messages left on this blog. Thank you ...stop by again!! Currently working on a screenplay- - thanks for stopping by...
I caught a news story the other night, mainly at first because they mentioned Harrisburg Pennsylvania, the birth place of my mother. It was a story about a woman who had gone into the hospital because she had cancer. She said an angel came into her room which again peeked my interest. It was a nurse. The sick woman said something like she felt overwhelming warmth within her body and a peace about her. She said she had never felt anything like this ever in her life nor had she ever felt this way about another person.
Apparently she had gone home with the doctors telling her that she may not see her son’s next birthday. He is eight. Then for an unrelated reason ended up back in the same hospital and again she saw this “angel” nurse. This woman, knowing that she was going to die soon and had no one to take care of her son; said she just asked this nurse if she would take her son and raise him. She said something like this. “I was so afraid I wouldn’t see you again and I would like to ask you to take my son and raise him as your own.” I am sure it was a Holy Spirit moment. I have experienced those a time or two. It’s as if something takes over your thoughts and words and you feel confident that it is the right thing. You know it’s not of your own doing but you just accept whatever comes into your head or out of your mouth. The nurse is married and it looked as if she had four teenage daughters. She must surely be an angel and the family members as well because they took mother and son into their home and have made them a part of their family. They said the mother would have ended up in a nursing home until her death and she had no idea what would have happened to her son because her ex-husband was out of the picture and she had no other family. This wonderful family thought the mother and son needed to be together for as long as they had. The daughters had also mentioned how she was like a second mother to them and they loved her and the boy. They all thought it was the right thing to do. I tried to relay this story to my husband but was so emotionally moved by it that I could hardly tell him without choking up. I finally got it out and told him that I wasn’t about to cry only because of this wonderful family taking in these strangers and helping them in a way that God would want us all to do for each other. I was also realizing that I am not that good of a person. I couldn’t see myself taking in strangers especially sick ones who were dying let alone taking on a child to raise. I am quite sure I wouldn’t even take a family member in but you could see why if you have read my book. I would be more apt to take a stranger in though than some of my family members. Maybe. I will say I really haven’t done much for anyone outside of the family and well it’s probably because I was so consumed with just my immediate family that there was no time left to do anything for anyone else. Personally I think I am the way I am now because I had to endure so much growing up that now that I have peace and time for myself, I have become somewhat selfish. So then I really began to think about how bad things are getting in the world and what if? What if and would I….if? You know what I’m thinking right? How about you? Would you? Could you? Have you been the kind of person that this generous family is right now? Thank God for people like this family and May God truly bless them. My husband and I attended a rural electric co-op meeting this week. As the people filed in, I asked my husband. “Do just old people come to this thing?” My observation was that these people looked to be up to the hundred mark. I know they weren’t that old but they sure looked as if they had lived that many years and were still moving around.
I watched these men and women and imagined their lives. I know the majority of the men probably had farmed all of their lives and the women probably worked as hard as the men with other duties required of farm life. I knew nothing of farm life before marrying my husband a few years ago and even though he talks about farming as he grew up and into his adult life and as he tries to explain to me what is going on in the fields we drive by every day, I still don’t know what it’s like to be a farmer. I have learned that it is hard work, many hours of work and the dependency of nature’s kindness among so many other matters. My husband raised cattle as well as farmed. When I asked about the farming he explained how sometimes he would plow for so many hours that at times he would doze off at the wheel. He said there was a lot of climbing up and down, sometimes jumping off the plows, tractors, or trucks and there was plenty of lifting and stacking bales of hay. My husband pointed out people that he remembered as a child or as he grew up. He mentioned their position in the community or what farm they lived on when he was younger and that most of them still live there but probably not still farming the land. Perhaps their sons are or they have leased the land to another farmer, a younger farmer making a living for his family. As he pointed out these folks I tried to calculate in my head how old they were at this point considering my husband’s age now. Why was I so obsessed with these folks and their age, you might ask. It was because they seemed so worn out. Their bodies were crooked, bent, broken and barely moving; their skin parched by the sun and the unending dry wind that blows in this state. I observed how difficult it was for so many of them to get around and I compared them in my mind with people from a larger city, Norman, that I came from, a college town where the elders blend in so well with the younger people that congregate in restaurants, bars or social activities and how those people seemed so much younger than these poor farm folks. I thought about how I had never really seen anyone age except my mother since we were taken away from our grandparents and other relatives so I’m really not familiar with the whole process of aging. My grandparents already seemed old to me when I was just a little girl. They were probably around 60 but seemed much older than 60 year old people today. What do they say? “Sixty is the new forty!” I believe that our minds remain somewhere between 25 and 30ish although we think much wiser as we grow older. I agree with my friend, Ro when she said as we get older we also become more cautious. It’s just so sad that our bodies wear out as we age and some so badly. I also wish we could pick an age and stay there for our duration or pick an age for our children to stay at. You know the age, whatever that might be, that they are the cutest or sweetest. Personally and seriously I don’t want to live too long, unless I can feel as good as Cher or Susanne Summers or Barbara Walters and even Betty White look just to mention a few. I say feel because, I can never look as good as they do. I even thought Joan Rivers looked great, regardless of how much work she had done to look that way. At 83, I thought she looked marvelous and I think if you look good, you feel pretty good too. And what a way to go; just going in for a simple procedure; they put you to sleep and you just don’t wake up. I’d go for that. Now I better think about getting on that treadmill, eating right and take a few vitamins, just in case. I’m not a bible thumping kind of person, if I may use that term. I don’t have scriptures memorized nor do I quote them but I must say, over the years I have read most of the Bible and know what it says. It is as if I have read the book and now watching the movie as the world events play out what is written.
I talked with my brother today telling him this exact thing and he agreed with me. I continued with, “All I can say is that it looks like the last days as written and we should make sure we are right with God and our children are also.” I did find my Iraqi girlfriends finally. I don’t know who was happier. Lida is still in California and Josie still here in Oklahoma. Lida said she will come to Oklahoma and we can visit, reminisce, hug and possibly cry with happiness. I cannot wait to see them after about twenty eight years. I can’t believe I allowed myself to lose contact with them. I have always said such things as, “I hate to lose people,” and “I need to find or reconnect with so and so,” and since I now have time to explore my reasoning’s and since writing my very therapeutic book, I realize that it is because I was taken away from people I loved dearly; my aunt’s, uncle, cousins, grandparents and friends. Not only that, but my father was taken from me when I was just seven. I believe this is why I have many friends that I love and some that have been in my heart for many, many years. Some may not even know why they are in my heart and I can’t really explain why some have been privileged enough for that position either; nevertheless they are there and I have never heard any objections. Someone made a comment about how much I must have loved my mother and another said something about how I love as a child and still another couldn’t understand the amount of love that I must have to give. Jesus said, “And now these three remain; faith, hope and love.” “But the greatest of these, is love.” Let’s all try to love one another. Here again, if you have read my book….. you can imagine why I feel so sad about what is happening in the Middle East right now. The little Iraqi children that I knew so many years ago, if they had gone home, could be some of the men and women now who are fighting for their freedom, their lives. Their parents much older may be unable to cope. I think about how happy they were when my daughter and I gave them a Christmas tree, decorations and a gift basket full of cookies and fruits. Their little brown eyes opened so wide and their mother looked so happy and appreciative. I truly hope they remember with fondness this New York/Okie woman and her daughter.
I had some other Iraqi friends, not mentioned in the book. I have lost contact with them but looking for them now. One snowy winter day I was driving to the elementary school to pick my daughter up and I saw a woman running through the snow, cutting through lawns, clutching her sweater close to her chest. She seemed a little desperate to me. I wasn’t sure if it was the cold snow falling or if for some other reason. Perhaps she was late or maybe her children wouldn’t expect her to come and get them and she didn’t want to miss them as they left their classes. I pulled over close enough, rolled down the window and asked if she was alright. In a strong Arabic accent she explained that she was just going to get her children and walk home. I told her I would give them a ride home; to meet at my car after she had gotten them. Her name was Lida; a tiny Iraqi woman with three small children; two adorable dark haired girls and a boy with the same dark hair and eyes to match. They didn’t live too far from the school, still Lida was very appreciative and the children were excited. She invited us into the house and for some reason I accepted. I think we liked each other immediately. It seems like I met her mother and sister that day also. I believe they all lived together at the time. Her husband must have been at work that day. My daughter and I were served hot chocolate as we visited with our new friends. Over the years we remained close. I remember them telling me that their mother was from Syria and at the time I didn’t realize where that was on the map. This family is a Christian family and they told me about how as children they had to hide under the tables or in the closets when Saddam Husseins’ soldiers would burst into their home and how afraid they were that they might be killed. We know that Christians are being killed now and children beheaded by Islamic extremists. Whole groups of people are being told to either convert to Islam, leave or be killed. There are stories of men just being lined up and shot down while they take the children and women. The people are refusing to convert and are killed with no remorse. This Isis group is so extreme that the other extremists will have nothing to do with them. It is as if we are watching the words of the bible coming to life; like being played out on our big screen T.V.’s. At some point my friend Lida moved to California and I lost contact with her. I know this family is in the U.S. because they had become citizens so I know that they are as safe as we are for now. I know someone who returned home to Israel many years ago and I think of him and what he and his family have been facing daily. I don’t just think of these areas because I know people from there. I would be sad and concerned for these people regardless. I think of the Ukrainians, the Russians, the Ebola outbreak and other issues that are going on right now. I can only continue to pray for the human race. I know a couple of people who don’t watch the news at all. I am a person who wants to know what is going on. I want to see what’s coming. I know most people like to read a book and then go see the movie. I rather see the movie and then read the book. In this case I know quite a bit from reading the Bible and listening to certain preachers about this new world movie that seems to be playing now. I am interested, fascinated and pray continually. |
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