Launching Violin Girl: the Story Behind the Story.
I started with a question when I spoke at the Newberg Library to launch Violin Girl, into the reading world.
“How well do any of us really know our parents? Who are they behind the mask of parenthood?”
I explained that we grow up seeing our mothers and fathers through one lens, child to parent. Like a kaleidoscope, our relationship changes through the years. But the lens doesn’t. So how many of us every really know our parents, not as mom or day, but as Alise or John, or whatever their given name is. And especially who they were before you came along. They haven’t always been parents. Who were they before?
As I looked over the audience I could see the question resonated. And I understood, by the surprised looks, that I’d hit something that hadn’t been asked before.
And that’s the question that gave rise to Violin Girl. I wanted to know more about who my mother was.
I knew she had played the violin and even performed in the 1920s in Chicago, but she never talked about it and I didn’t pay much attention, having more important things in my daily life to think about.
But after she died, I thought a lot about our relationship. and realized I never got past seeing my mother through the lens of a child. And through that lens, I resented what I saw as her constant attempt to tell me what to do.
Yet she had all the qualities I would want in a friend. She was smart, funny, opinionated, wonderful organizer, and superb knitter and seamstress. Could I shift my lens? I decided to go in search of my mother.
The digital archives of the student newspaper at the University of Illinois, recorded 150 articles about her performing throughout her college years and winning contests. This was a revelation. My housewife mother had been a celebrity before she married and had children. I had no idea. But I was fascinated enough to keep going and sat down to write about her.
I was able to draw on stories she had told me about her childhood, surprised that I remembered as much as I did. I interviewed my brothers and cousins and researched old records of her playing, wherever I could find them.
With enough stories and information to form a framework, I set out to tell her story, imagining what I didn’t know. Mark Twain’s quote “Never let the truth stand in the way of a good story,” was prominently posted where I could see it. I gave myself permission to speculate, knowing that the heart of the story was real.
It took five years of research, writing, and revising to make my mother come alive as Violin Girl. Perhaps my she will get the acclaim in death that she was prevented from getting in life.
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Many thanks to all of you who came to the Newberg Library for the launch and for those who wrote me to say they were sorry they couldn’t attend. The event exceeded my expectations.