Winner! “What Did You Make During the Pandemic?”

Remember back in late March I made a list of things I had made during the “Stay Home, Stay Safe” pandemic times of the past year? I challenged readers to share their own list and be entered in a drawing for a copy of my memoir when it is published by She Writes Press in Fall 2022. (Yes, it’s a while off.)

Congratulations to Shelley Waia’u, winner! Here is her response:

My Covid year meant that instead of 16 people going out 16 different directions every day, 16 people varying in ages from 1 to 64, stayed in one big ol house every day…..my husband was the only one who still had a job and left every weekday morning.
We made messes
We jigsawpuzzled
We made a fence
We made rules to stay sane
We played games
We made a garden
We made SO many pies
We made greeting cards
We made holes in our walking shoes
We made a pool in the back of the old truck
We made new friends on Zoom
We made babies….not me but my daughter & daughter in law….. coming soon!
We made friends with the mailman with all of our online orders…..
And now, slowly, routines that take us outwardly are developing and Camp Waia’u is less a camp and more of a hub.
Aloha from Maui!!

Thank you, Shelley. I’m thrilled for Shelley to be the first contest winner as she was one of my sister Rebecca’s best friends during their youth. And Rebecca is a major player in the memoir!

(You can read the “What did you make” post here if you missed it.)

And what’s the memoir about?

Mother Lode: Finding Myself in My Mother’s House is a memoir of the author’s move across the country to live with and care for her 96-year-old mother, from whom she had been contentedly distanced by the continent between them for thirty-six years.

It’s the story of leaving a Zen-like grown-up home and returning to childhood in the house where her parents had boxed musty history behind cabinet doors and stashed stuff that might be useful again into every drawer, shelf, and cubbyhole for more than fifty years.

It’s the story of a daughter’s journey into early elderhood alongside her mother’s descent into dementia, vision loss, and stubbornness at life’s end, doing battle that echoed the clash of adolescence and menopause decades earlier.

It’s a story of forgiveness and acceptance.

It’s a story of mother-daughter relationship coming full circle.

She came for a year, she stayed forever.

Stay tuned for more opportunities to get your copy. Sign up to follow my blog (and get an email notification of new posts) so you don’t miss any of them!