Happy Monday everyone! This week is the last week of our series of Table Talk conversation cards. If you missed the previous cards and want to go back and print them out so you can use them at your family table, or with your book club, or at your next meeting or holiday party, you can get them here:
— Conversation Card 1 click here
— Conversation Card 2 click here
— Conversation Card 3 click here
— Conversation Card 4 click here
— Conversation Card 5 click here
— Conversation Card 6 click here
— Conversation Card 7 click here
— Conversation Card 8 click here
— Conversation Card 9 click here
On the porch today, we’re moving on the Card # 9, which comes from upcoming February 1012 book. Firefly Island was so much fun to write. It’s a tale of unlikely love at first sight and the unexpected consequences. Here’s a quick description:
At thirty-four, congressional staffer Mallory Hale is about to embark on an adventure completely off the map. After a whirlwind romance, she is hopelessly in love with two men–fortunately, they’re related. Daniel Everson and his little boy, Nick, are a package deal, and Mallory suddenly can’t imagine her future without them.
Mallory couldn’t be more shocked when Daniel asks her to marry him, move to Texas, and form a family with him and motherless Nick. The idea is both thrilling and terrifying, but Mallory has barely arrived in Texas before secrets threaten to upend her wild new life.
Mallory and Daniel’s story led to this conversation card:
There’s a funny story about this particular card. We originally developed these cards for use at a conference dinner last month. My mother came with me to the conference, and we picked up her my delightful Aunt Sandy, on the way. Mom and aunt Sandy had a sisters’ weekend while the Belles and I attended the convention. On the night before the dinner, it was all hands on deck in our room, putting together decks of the conversation cards to be used at each table at the dinner.
While we were working, Aunt Sandy started asking us the conversation questions, to pass the time. When we came to this question about an out-of-the-box love story in the family, we all thought of my grandparents, Vi and Norm. Their love story has always been one of my favorites, because it confirms that, like Mallory and Daniel’s surprising love in the story, love-at-first-sight really does exist, and it can last a lifetime. You can meet someone and know instantly that it’s the real thing.
The night my grandparents met, he was a tall, swave, drummer in a jazz band, and she was a shy young girl at the dance with her parents. During a break, my grandfather asked her to dance, and that night he went home and told his mother he had met the girl he was going to marry. After a short period of sparkin’, my grandfather bought his sweetheart a beautiful diamond engagement ring. I’ve always thought theirs was the sweetest of love-at-first-sight stories.
What I didn’t know until that night in the conference hotel room, was that there was a little family secret about that sweet love story.
Sometimes, family history is altered to protect reputations, or just to make a story a little more glossy and it really was.
While we were working, my mother happened to mention that my grandmother, when she was newly engaged, had lost that original diamond ring when it slipped the potato peels and was thrown out into the hog pen with the slop. The ring, my mother had been told, was a little big on Grandma’s dainty finger. Sadly, it was never seen again.
My Aunt laughed when she heard my mother’s version this story. She had been told (perhaps by one of my grandmothers fun-loving brothers) that the engagement ring was lost in the pigpen after my grandmother threw it in there and broke up with my grandfather. Grandma had surprised her beau at a dance hall where his band was playing, and she saw him dancing with another girl. She’d have none of his explanation that the woman was an old family friend. My grandmother then proceeded home and threw the ring into the pigpen.
Luckily for those of us descendants, the breakup was only temporary. But by the time apologies were accepted, and forgiveness was extended, the ring was long gone. The troughs and wallows were sifted, but the ring was never seen again. When my grandparents married, a plain, small, gold band went on my grandmother’s finger. My grandfather said he never bought her another fancy ring because she had thrown the first one to the pigs.
Perhaps the truth is a little something different. Perhaps that plain, gold band remained on my grandmother’s finger as a reminder that love is not about fancy tokens or flashes of emotion. Love that lasts is about patience, daily devotion, the determination to listen, the habitual extending of kindness, and the habit of looking for the best in the one you love.
A little creative storytelling doesn’t hurt either.
So, here’s to family history, that which is slightly altered, and that which is newly shared, and that which will always be tenderly remembered.
What about you? Is there an out-of-the-box love story and your family? Or is there a family story that may have been creatively embellished along the way?
Blue Moon Bay was named One of BOOKLIST’S 10 Must Reads Of 2012!
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