Tag: Relationships

How well do you know your cousins?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 6 Comments

Would you agree that a close-knit extended family like the one in my novel What’s Left, is uncommon in today’s American society? Of my own five surviving first-cousins, only one remains in communication — a brief note every Christmas. None grew up in our city; two lived in the other corner of our state; the other four, at the time, in California.

~*~

In a passage I cut from the final version:

It wasn’t quite like that when Baba shows up, but only because we kids aren’t yet on the scene. First, we need some marriages, like when Barney and Pia get a new generation rolling, followed by Tito and Yin and then my parents.

~*~

And if Cassia’s uncle Dimitri or her aunt Nita had been adding to the gene pool, we’d have an even bigger slate of first-cousins to draw on. When it came to the novel, I had to limit things somewhere.

Have you ever been introduced to family members and found yourself asking yourself: Just who are these strangers? Have you enjoyed some of your kin at one point in your life but not at others? Do you ever feel some have been treated better than the rest?

~*~

Do you ever get lost when older members of your family start mentioning so-and-so? Just how do they all fit together?

Well, they couldn’t wear nametags

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

One approach I employed may help readers keep track of the spreading number of family members.

In drafting my novel What’s Left, I envisioned each chapter as a module that could stand alone from the rest of the book. Think of it as a short story. That way, the number of characters in each chapter is more focused.

And while first names are usually repeated frequently in a Greek-American family, I limited this to just one great-grandmother and one descendant, and used a nickname for the elder one. Neat, eh?

Yes, the family members do show up in other modules and there is continuity over the whole, but at least you don’t have everyone in your face at once.

When you go to a social event and are introduced to many new people, are you able to remember their names and faces? Or do you go into a blur? How do you cope with this challenge?

 

Communion with strangers

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

the mailman didn’t leave the stack in the hallway, as I had worried, but rather held it to give to me today (twenty-four pieces, which included one personal letter to me, from somebody amplifying on our Seventh-day conversation in North Carolina, or as he pronounces it, Nor’car’l’na, a personal letter to Iowa from another in Pennsylvania who must have his addresses mixed up, I’ll forward adding my own greetings; three magazines; my union newspaper; six bills; unsolicited junk including offers of wild credit lines if I accept more I’d be rich if I could reach the right country without extradition

Maybe it’s not really news but it counts

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment
Heyduck

In my novel What’s Left, Cassia’s aunt Nita writes a daily newspaper column focusing on local people and their real interests. It’s not all that different from CeCe Cobb’s in my earlier novel Hometown News, but Nita’s is far less corny and far newsier.

In Dayton, where I grew up, it was Marj Heyduck of the Journal Herald. Her mug shot on her daily column featured a new hat each week as a signature touch. And in Cincinnati, it was TV host Sally Flowers.

But I can think of others who just seem to know everybody.

Does your community have a local voice? A minor celebrity or just a naturally curious friend of all?

As a zealous professional

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

so pleased entering my apartment to see everything tight, still in place, no vandals, though the temperature was 89 degrees, apparently the maintenance crew had come in and set the thermostat at 80 to get the radiators going and then left while ignoring repairs to one of those single joy-stick faucets that takes an eight-dollar washer kit to repair, I know, because the three-dollar one I bought had the wrong kinds of springs and plugs and doodads, and none fit

 

Keeping track of a big cast

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

A multi-generational family tale like the one in my novel What’s Left can lead to a lot of characters, and keeping them all straight can be a problem.

My plot line takes a few twists that minimize their numbers, but when you get four generations over time, it’s bound to create a challenge, no matter how hard you try. Sometimes it helps to stick with somebody who knows everybody, when you’re circulating through the crowd.

When reading a big book, do you have tricks for keeping track of the individuals? Anything you’d like to share?

~*~

Just listen to the melody.

Construction report

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

behind plaster we rip from the kitchen crumbling accounts of protracted death Floyd Collins 15 days 1925 age 36 Sand Cave Crystal Cave Kentucky as published in Boston, accounting inescapably cold mud and implacable rock when my own parents were first walking, yet this story my mother related as if she were on the carnival rides of its macabre vigil but now we find nothing holding this roof to the walls so much callous indifference riding on the blind arrogance a foolish turn, perchance, or just dumb luck when it comes to catastrophe of course, I remember living on the roof of a cavern down in muddy Indiana

Remarkably, it seems

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

what’s happened I no longer want to travel or climb the high mountains or is it just all the moves across the continent and back, my years on the road, my commute daily so stretched I’d contract into my nest and grounds for reading or revision, the places I’ve been and people I’ve known so many I want to know my own better . people come from all over the globe to see the landscape I call home

 

Family terms of affection

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

While walking down the street after finishing a revision of my novel What’s Left, I noticed a vanity license plate with five letters, PAPOU. I smiled, recognizing the Greek for “grandpa.” The car was parked in front of the Orthodox church. Wonder if I know him.

Do you have a similar affectionate term for your grandparents?