Tribute to Mother

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Mama singing

This is my attempt to tell you about my Mother, Alice Larson Hodges.
What can I say about a mother who paraded around Geneva, Alabama in bright clothes, big hats and jewelry? “Gossips be damned.”

What can I possibly say to help you understand this unique and talented woman?
She wore loud bracelets. They clanged as she played the piano at the First Baptist church. She often sang louder than the choir.

What can I say about this fearless woman who took me and my sister out of school in the middle of the year and drove to New Mexico from Geneva to see the Caverns in New Mexico? And during the summer, she stuck us in camp while she studied art.

What can I say about this oldest daughter of Norwegian immigrants? She once told me she married Daddy because he promised to buy her a piano and teach her to drive. After Daddy died, she never married again.

What can I say about a mother who loved water and painted beautiful pictures of water, but never learned to swim? Yet, she encouraged me and my sister to become good swimmers.

What can I say?

She raised two daughters alone while preaching: “Cleanliness is next to Godliness. A stitch in time saves nine. Early to bed, early to rise, makes a woman health wealthy and wise. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. You won’t like most of what you do every day, but if you do one thing you like, you should be happy.”

She was certainly adventurous.

She drove us to New York City to see the musical “My Fair Lady.” During our trip, we toured the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty.

We arrived in New York in the middle of the night. Alice Kay and I were asleep in the back seat. As she drove up to the Brooklyn Bridge, she woke us, shouting, “Wake up, girls, New York City.”

I could go on and on about her. How she filmed us as if we were movie stars. Thank God, we were able to salvage the rolls of film.

My sister had some of it spliced together, chronicling our lives as children, teenagers, young adults and mothers. In the beginning of this video, Mother is featured as young and beautiful and smiling for the camera. My father, who died when I was seven, is dapper and handsome, often puffing on a cigarette.

One thing’s for sure, Mother never failed to surprise me.

Several years ago, after she suffered a stroke and was in a coma. The doctors offered little hope for her recovery. I didn’t want to accept that diagnosis, and as I was talking to her, she opened her eyes and said, “I’m so proud of you.”

Many Mother’s Days have come and gone since she passed, but I still feel her presence, and she lives on in me, and in my children, Rene and Andrea, and in my grand daughter Cody. I hope they know how proud I am of them. #HappyMothersDay,#ILovemyMama,#GenevaAlabama

Calling All Muses, Dead or Alive

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As a writer, I’m always searching for a muse, and when country music superstar Merle Haggard died recently, I became reacquainted with his story and found him more inspiring than ever.

Haggard grew up dirt poor and became a hellion. He was sent to reformatory schools, but no school could reform him. At 20, he robbed a restaurant. After he was arrested, he broke out of the county jail, was recaptured and sentenced to San Quentin. In prison, he gambled and brewed beer and was thrown into solitary confinement. There he conversed through an air vent with a death row inmate.

This conversation changed him, he said, and when Johnny Cash performed at San Quentin, Haggard was inspired to become a musician. He taught himself to play the guitar, and after his release, he worked in the oil fields, as he wrote and performed music. He eventually composed 38 number one hits.

I find his story amazing. He overcame impossible odds to achieve great success, and he found his muses in unlikely places.

Going for a simple walk can bring out a muse for me. I love to walk on the beach near where I live. Nature created the white sands from crystal rocks. The gulf sparkles like emeralds in the sunshine. I sometimes hear music in the gulf’s roar. The other day, Larry and I were walking our dog P-Nut, and I started to sing a tune I was hearing.

I asked Larry if he’d heard the tune before. He plays the piano and has performed with many musical groups. He also composes music.

“Sounds different,” he said.

I explained how the tune flowed through me. He didn’t think this was strange at all, but creative.

In thinking about the creative process, I remembered the time Larry asked me to sing, “If I Can Dream,” at the church where he plays piano. This song was written for Elvis Presley. Elvis was the only artist to record the song, as far as I know.

On the morning of my performance, I walked to the podium to sing, but then I flew into some kind of unconscious zone. The congregation clapped afterwards, so I figured I did okay.

Larry said, kindly, “You nailed it.”

The preacher smiled and said, “You wiggled your hips while you were singing.”

“You channeled Elvis,” Larry teased me.

But all joking aside, I’ve had many strange things happen to me, mostly when I write. I can never predict how my characters are going to behave. I think I know them. I have created their back story and outlined extensively, but then when I start the writing process, my characters always surprise me. They’re like jazz musicians. They know the structure and the rules, but they want to jam and do their own thing.

My characters eventually return to the story line, but I often have to figure out how to rescue them or not. Sometimes they create such a mess I must call on my slumbering muse. She’s the one who appears in my dreams after I go to sleep while thinking about the problem. This muse seems to have the ability to provide a solution by morning.

Most of the time, I draw from my own experiences, as a newspaper reporter, columnist, broadcaster, political activist, exercise enthusiast, wife, mother and grandmother. I’m more comfortable writing about what I know. Some of my favorite authors do the same. John Grisham, an attorney, writes great legal thrillers, and many of Stephen King’s protagonists are authors. In fact, King is considered one of American’s most prolific authors. Also, my fellow authors at Books We Love write tales on subjects they’re passionate about.

In two of my novels (Sex, Love & Murder and A Message in the Roses), my protagonists are reporters. However in Hurricane House, the lead character is not a journalist, but a catastrophe Investigator (CAT, for short). Creating this unique protagonist seemed to make more sense. Luckily I know a CAT, and he generously shared his knowledge with me. As to describing the hurricane, that was easy. Larry and I have survived a few of those.

I created A Message in the Roses, from a murder trial I covered as a newspaper reporter in Atlanta. But even though I lived through this trial, I had to immerse myself in 80s music again and read news accounts from that time before my muse decided to resurface.

While working on the sequel, I’ve tried to set reasonable writing goals, allowing for my day job and family responsibilities. This time around, I’ve had to call on a variety of muses, alive and dead. Will they lift me to a higher plane and help me write my best novel yet? I hope so.

I Feel Better Already Now

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  1. Here’s an original song, Larry and I wrote and performed. It’s called I Feel Better Already Now. I wanted to share the YouTube Video, celebrating our song. I hope it brings you a smile. Love and hugs! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6Pbhe3jV5c&feature=share

I’m Graduating from Feminist to Nasty Woman

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“Are you a nasty woman, Mama?” daughter Andrea asked me recently.

Her question took me off guard. Then I remembered the third Presidential debate and knew exactly what she meant.
For those who didn’t watch, here’s the exchange:

Hillary Clinton: “I am on record as saying that we need to put more money into the Social Security trust fund. That is part of my commitment to raise taxes on the wealthy. My Social Security payroll contribution will go up, as will Donald’s, assuming he can’t figure out how to get out of it.”

Donald Trump: “Such a nasty woman.”

Following that debate, his “nasty” comment became a “feminist battle cry,” on social media. T-Shirts with “Nasty woman” printed on them are now in demand, as are hats emblazoned with, “Make America Nasty Again.”

Streams of Janet Jackson’s song “Nasty” skyrocketed after the debate, according to Spotify. In the song, Janet calls men, who display bad behavior toward women, “nasty boys.”

No question Trump’s “nasty” comment has struck a powerful cord. I’ve never seen so many women open up and describe in detail how they’ve been discriminated against and treated differently than their male counterparts. Women are sharing their stories as never before. They’re talking about how they’d been grabbed and abused. How they were told to be nice, not bossy and to smile, not frown. They’ve shared their stories about being sexually harassed, and how they were shamed, demoted or fired when they reported the harassment.

All of these conversations have sparked my own painful memories, and I’m thinking it’s time to share two of those memories with you.

At 19, I was sexually assaulted in New York City, where I was living at the time. My attacker was a successful businessman and owner of the business where I’d worked. Ashamed and traumatized, I left NYC without reporting the assault.

Fast forward many years, I’m walking to the Marta train in Atlanta. It’s the end of the day, and I’m heading home from Georgia State. It’s raining. I’m in a great mood, happy I remembered to bring an umbrella.

A strange man steps under my umbrella and says, “Are you from out of this world?”
I’m caught off guard, but I sense he’s a psycho, his eyes wild, glassy. “Get lost,” I tell him.

He grabs my boobs, squeezes them brutally. I yell out in pain and horror and swing my open umbrella to defend myself.

He runs inside the nearest building and disappears.

I’m shaken, but I continue on to the Marta Station, hop on the train and go home. Once I feel safe, I call the campus police to report this psycho and try to stop him from hurting anyone else.

I describe to the officer what happened, but before I can give him a description of the man, the officer asks, “What were you wearing?”

Stunned, I don’t how to respond at first. “Dressed casually, like any college student.”

I should have demanded to speak to his supervisor or to a female officer who would empathize. But I didn’t, I played nice, when I should have been assertive and nasty.

It’s interesting how that word “nasty” has changed through urban interpretations, but it appears more complimentary when referring to men. Men can be nasty cool, skillful, as in “He plays a nasty guitar.”

While with women, the urban definition usually refers to sex: “freak-nasty, blatant, unhindered sexuality, and has an undertone of kinkiness.” Unlike the traditional definitions, which are: “smelly, bad, filthy, repulsive, malignant, ugly, spiteful, disgusting, incredibly mean and stinky, very loud, obnoxious.”

But getting back to the question Andrea asked. In answering her, I said, “Yes,” although I prefer the “cool, skillful” definition of the word, and hereafter I’ve decided to graduate from feminist to nasty woman.

For Halloween, I’m leaning toward dressing up as the good witch in The Wizard of Oz, with a hat that reads, “Good Witch, aka Nasty Woman.” What do you think?
As an afterthought, Andrea sent me this recipe for The Nasty Woman drink, a Quartz cocktail, created by Jenni Avins:
Three parts silver tequila (made by the “bad hombres” of Mexico)
Two parts cherry juice (Avins likes the one from Trader Joe’s)
One part lime juice
Pour over ice and top it with sparkling wine or sparkling limeade.
This drink should get a wedge of lime, but Avins says she too nasty to fuss over a twist.
Whatever you prefer to drink, be sure to enjoy it like a nasty woman should.
To read more, please visit my website:
http://www.sandysemerad.com/
Also would love for you to purchase my latest novel, A MESSAGE IN THE ROSES. This story is loosely based on a murder trial I covered as a newspaper reporter in Atlanta, and it’s also a love story.