Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

mothers and daughters

There are advantages to being a 50something writer

by

50+ years of experience

I’ve been gathering experience for 50+ years

  1. I have already been told numerous times I was wrong and proved that I was right.
  2. I have been wrong before and survived and I will again
  3. I have paid my bills, and when I didn’t, I learned to pay them the next time.
  4. I found out I don’t have to answer any questions I don’t want to.
  5. I have learned how to ask questions so people want to answer them (they don’t always, but they want to).
  6. I refuse to sit in the corner and cry about it.  But I know some times a good cry works wonders.
  7. I know what my body does when it is terrified.
  8. I know what my body does when it is tired.
  9. I know what my body does when it hasn’t slept for three days. (My husband and I laughed our heads off about nothing funny, but it was a blast) Not recommended more than once a year.
  10. I know that how I react is not necessarily how another person will act.
  11. Now I decide what I am going to do about it and do it.
  12. I wrote a book.
  13. And then I wrote three more.
  14. I published a book, and then I published three more.
  15. So I am writing another book.
  16. I plan to publish it.
  17. Creativity is in the mind, of the mind, doesn’t always mind, but mind you, it never really leaves.
  18. There are days I don’t want to write.
  19. There are not many days I don’t want to write.
  20. I love my parents despite and in spite of all they did, tried to do and never got around to doing.
  21. I am a parent, and I think she’s going to love me in spite of and despite of all of it.
  22. I married the right man, and he agrees.
  23. What I really know, really experienced and really care about can be a great help with writing about the things I didn’t know until I looked it up, didn’t experience but have an idea about, and don’t care much about but can see how someone would.
  24. I know that crying is not proof that someone is hurt 
  25. I know that not crying is not proof that someone does not care.
  26. I know that silence is not agreement, and taking a stand is far more reliable.
  27. I know my opinion needs to matter to me more than it matters to anyone else.
  28. I have learned that opinion is not fact.
  29. I know that some believe opinion is enough to hang a hat on.
  30. I rarely wear a hat.  Don’t have the head for it.
  31. I can wait a long time, I already have.
  32. I will not wait long for things not worth waiting for or things that should not be allowed to wait.
  33. I have learned that criticism can hurt, but even that sort can be learned from.
  34. I have learned to give criticism that teaches.
  35. Nothing is forever except ideas.
  36. Escapism is not a bad thing.  Writers depend on it. Readers need it well done.
  37. Every day I need to seek out knowledge.
  38. As often as possible I need to share knowledge.
  39. I know how to say I am sorry and mean it. 
  40. I have learned that some of the closest friends a person can have shed, and their only flaw is the amount of hair that can accumulated in the corners.  Dogs, kindness in the warm, occasionally wet-nosed package, that renews itself every morning and sometimes numerous times in the course of the day if you step outside enough times and make a big deal every time you come back in.
  41. I have been an infant, a toddler, a pre-teen, a teenager, a lover, a newlywed, a pregnant woman, a new mother.  I remind my daughter I am old enough to be a grandmother, but I am not ready, nor is she ready to make me one.
  42. I have struggled with self-consciousness and reached a point of mostly not caring what people think about me.
  43. I have found meditation has numerous benefits
  44. I have struggled with achieving a pregnancy, giving up, gone a decade believing and accepting that it was not possible.
  45. I have lost a pregnancy, and helped a friend deal with losing her own pregnancy.
  46. I went preterm and held out for a full term delivery.
  47. I have had a child remind me to pay attention. And I listened. I held her sitting in the crook of my arm.  She placed two chubby hands on either side of my face, turned me to share an eye-to-eye look, and she said, “Momma?” with the firmness of a drill sergeant. 
  48. I know how to hide the fact that I am a shy person. (Head up, chin up, eye steady)
  49. I know how to say no and mean it.
  50. I found out why mothers are never shy when a child is involved.
  51. I learned how to give orders so students do what I say (but don’t ask me to explain how it works).
  52. I have made friends and lost friends and will forget neither.
  53. I have been lied to and lied, and carried the burden of both.
  54. I have fallen in love and worked hard not to climb out because holding onto love is not an easy thing.
  55. I know how it is to lose a parent to cancer.
  56. I know how it is to lose a parent to unexpected death.
  57. I know how it is to lose a parent to dementia.
  58. I have petted the family dog and felt her life flow out and cried for the loss. And I have explained to my daughter why she will not be coming back.
  59. I know how it is to watch my sister lose a child to a brain tumor.
  60. I know how it is to witness a miracle of survival.
  61. I have lived on the East Coast, the West Coast, the Northwest and South Coast.
  62. I have hiked the beginning of the Narragansett Trail and the end of Oregon Trail.  Missed the middle.
  63. I know the reality of not doing something now.  Do it now or it will never happen.
  64. I have graduated high school.
  65. I have graduated college, three times, different degrees.

I figure I still have plenty to learn, and all of it will be useful to me as a writer and a person.

Losing my mother one precious memory at a time.

by

Casting light on the darker moments.

The past year has been one of a calculated effort to connect with my mother as she slips into dementia.  Two years ago she was a vibrant business woman, respected and successful.  I left a message on her phone each Wednesday night, my “Wednesday Love Call,” and then I would call on the only day she wasn’t at work, Sunday, and we would chat about our varied experiences that week.

When I was a teenager coming home after a really bad day of teenhood, I would sit down with my mother and spill out my troubles, but they always made us laugh.

  •  “Mom, I dropped a book from my locker today, and it landed on the head of the cutest boy in school. His locker is below mine, which is ridiculous.  I’m 5’2″ and he’s 6’2″.”
  • “Mom, the college prep class I’m taking is weird.  Even the teacher looked at me like I must be lost to be in her class.  It’s been more than a week, and I feel I am trying to break in on a clique of beach girls. I want to be at the beach, but I am not crazy about the company.”  
  • “Mom, that teacher asked me if I had read The Source by Michener.  I want to write my analysis essay on it, and she doesn’t even believe I have read the book I have chosen.”

As an adult, these phone calls always served to make life something I could laugh at.  Together we made the perfect funny bone.

  • Mom, I just spent the morning cleaning up dog vomit which my husband made sure to point out to me just before I stepped in it.  He gets up at least an hour before I do. It was very cold through the paper towels.  Do you know he was very annoyed about the affect of stomach acid on linoleum?
  • Mom, my students were particularly energetic yesterday.  I made them get out of their seats and do jumping jacks, and then we started on the lesson.  Today they wanted to know if we would be exercising again.  Shucks, we do exercises every day: grammar.
  • Mom, your granddaughter asked me if I would still love her when she is a big girl using the potty instead of pullups.  The doctor was right: she definitely was potty trained before four years old.  All it took was telling her I would love her every time she grew bigger.  Instant potty trained child.  Really this is prime information every parent needs and no one shared.

These days she gets caught in loops, repeating herself.  I tell her about the weather over and over like she hasn’t already asked me three times.  I call prepared to tell her a story that will make her laugh, because she knows there is something very wrong with her memory and that unspoken knowledge ensnares her in fits of weeping if I don’t keep her focused on something humorous.

  • Mom, she’s a junior now and wants to be an engineer.  Oh, she’s wanted to do that since she was about twelve.  Her birthday is in June.  But I’ve been telling her she is not allowed to grow any more since she was about seven, and I think this time she is listening to me.
  • No, Mom, even if you moved half way here it would still be a long way to walk.  About four hundred miles, which would leave your feet a bit sore.  And then there’s that long walk back.
  • Well, Mom, occasionally the grading does get me down, but when it’s 11:50 PM and I read an essay in which the student has written, “Marlowe was really confused when he found the book written in cypher, and he thought there was a spy trying to steal the ivory, but it was really a skinny Russian guy wearing patched clothes.  What was Conrad thinking when he wrote that?” Of course, then I have to explain the book to her, and by the time I am done, we’ve had quite a chuckle.

This woman I call my mother is my father’s last wife, so she didn’t give birth to me.  But she and I have always had a favorite “you say, I say” — “I almost remember giving birth to you.”  “Mom, I almost remember it, too.”

This could be me thirty years from now, and if I don’t write these books now, they will never be written.  Whatever the dream, don’t let it die with you.  Don’t let it become lost one day in the thunderous shift of a mind.