My Best Day (OK, Four Best Days)

 I am blessed to be able to count many best days in my life, but this is a writing blog. Let's narrow it down to the writing related ones.

There was the day I got the phone call telling me that Viking was buying my first book, My Best Friend. I was at my parents'. Dad went out to the liquor store at 10 in the morning and bought a bottle of Moet Chandon, which we consumed right then. (Mom was a teetotaler. Besides, she was at work.)

Six years later, a different editor called to tell me that My Best Friend had won the Ezra Jack Keats Award. My daughter was getting ready for her figure skating lesson. 

"I can't find my tights," she screamed from downstairs. "Where's my GAP sweatshirt?"

"Look in the dryer," I yelled back as my editor babbled something about "award" and "My Best Friend"and "Ezra Jack Keats." I think I said "Well, that's great but I have to get my kid to skating right now. Send me an email." (I was talking on a landline, and didn't have a cell phone.)

I was halfway to the skating rink before the editor's words registered. The Ezra Jack Keat Award? I had been a librarian; I knew what that was. A big picture book award!  

One blessing is that both my parents were alive to share in my publishing success. The best day I ever spent with my mom was my first school visit/book signing in Oxford, Mississippi. The day began with a book discussion with an AP English class at Oxford High School, then a signing at Square Books Jr., just across Courthouse Square from its parent store, Square Books. I knew not to expect a bunch of people at a book signing. It was for my first published book, Yankee Girl. First time authors don't draw crowds. Heck, I didn't even know anybody who lived in Oxford. Or so I thought.

The first person in the door was a high school friend I hadn't seen in over 30 years. She was a local doctor, had seen the ad about my appearance, and wondered if it was me. She was followed by a pair of librarian friends from my first job, two hours away in Corinth, Ms. Then two carloads of teachers from the rural Tennessee junior-senior high school where I had taught for eight years. I was bowled over that my good friends had driven three hours on mostly two lane country roads to be there. All the while, people introduced themselves to Mom, wanting to know more about the events in Yankee Girl. 

I remember the trip home from Oxford as one of those blissful Mississippi April evenings of pink skies and soft breezes. Mom was never one to seek the spotlight, but she glowed with the experience of sharing our family's story with a group of my friends. A Best Day for us both.

The fourth Best Day was when my dad invited me to speak to his Retired FBI Agents group about Yankee Girl. The book is based on my family's moving to Mississippi in the summer of 1964, Freedom Summer. My dad was one of 500 FBI Agents assigned to the "Mississippi Burning" case of three missing civil rights workers. Their bodies had been found in their burned out station wagon, buried in an earthen dam, right before my family arrived. I was ten, and between worrying that the Russians would nuke us, or the Ku Klux Klan would firebomb our house, I never thought I'd live to see eleven.

Dad is on my right with the brass bowl over his head

The FBI has a culture all its own. The agents (all male at the time)were never to speak of their work outside the office. Dad was always getting middle of the night phone calls to come into work. We never knew why, although a couple of times we could hear why; bombs going off within a mile or two of the house. Dad would be sent out of town for weeks and months at a time and we wouldn't know where. If there was an emergency, we were to "call the office" and they would get in touch with him. If Dad was ten minutes late coming home from work, Mom would pace the driveway until she saw his car. We worried he'd be shot or kidnapped or have his car bombed.

Although there were other "Agent Kids" my age, almost all of them went to Catholic school. There was one other "AK" in my school, but we were in different classes, lived in different neighborhoods...and he was a boy. The local kids were either distantly polite ("Southern manners") or out and out ugly, calling me names, telling me to "go back up North where you belong." It was a lonely time.

Back to the Retired Agents meeting. About half the group were from the original 500 agents of 1964. They listened as I read parts of the book that dealt with the fear and loneliness I experienced. When I finished, there was a long, long silence.

Uh-oh, I thought. This was a bad idea.

Then slowly the men started clapping, louder and louder, and the ones who could, stood up. One by one they came over to me, with tears in their eyes.

"I didn't know my kids were scared," they said. "We thought we had kept what we did a secret."

"We didn't know our kids were being bullied.  They never said anything to us."

Of course we didn't. We knew our parents were dealing with life and death stuff. Being called a "damn Yankee" or a "N-word lover" was small potatoes in comparison. 

One man took my hands and said, "My daughter is about your age. I'm going home right now and calling her and apologizing for not being aware of what was going on with her while we were working."

My dad was a quiet man, perfect for an FBI agent. I adored him, but if we spoke three sentences in a week, it was a big deal. He spoke only when necessary. That's just the way he was. That day on the way home from the meeting, for the first and only time in my life, he said, "I'm proud of you."

Another Best Day.

Posted by Mary Ann Rodman