Getting It Right the Second Time Around was written originally for a novel contest (which I didn’t win) shortly after I had my fourth child. I somehow managed to get the entire first draft written in the span of three or four months…but spent the next 5 years editing it and rewriting it.
I lived in Boston from age 18 until 28, so I can identify with Alison’s love of the city and being young in Boston – which is probably the best city for people in their 20s. You can walk pretty much everywhere. Alison’s apartment is based on one I almost rented on Marlborough Street. This is my favorite street in all of Boston. It goes from the edge of Beacon Hill (near the Cheers Bar) through the Back Bay. It is terribly quaint and also wonderfully expensive. Needless to say, both Alison’s apartment and the one I almost rented were teeny-tiny.
I lived in Boston from age 18 until 28, so I can identify with Alison’s love of the city and being young in Boston – which is probably the best city for people in their 20s. You can walk pretty much everywhere. Alison’s apartment is based on one I almost rented on Marlborough Street. This is my favorite street in all of Boston. It goes from the edge of Beacon Hill (near the Cheers Bar) through the Back Bay. It is terribly quaint and also wonderfully expensive. Needless to say, both Alison’s apartment and the one I almost rented were teeny-tiny.
My daydream was the happily ever after to my once upon a time. As a twenty-two-year-old college senior, I’d seen my future clear and bright ahead of me. Dating a smart, gorgeous guy I thought was meant just for me, I was rejoicing that I’d been accepted to law school. I could clearly visualize our happy home filled with beautiful children wearing perfectly coordinated clothes while I saved women and children victimized by poverty, circumstances, and, all too often, those they loved and counted on.
At age twenty-eight, I was single, working at a fulfilling (read: low-paying) job, without a hope of the future I once planned. In the previous six years, I had made peace with what was. It wasn’t what I planned and hoped for, but my life was pretty good. Truth be told, I wouldn’t have expended a lot of effort to change much about my life. Unfortunately, life was changing for me one way or the other, thanks to Aunt Elinor.
Aunt Elinor could be described in a number of ways, depending on your
perspective. I’d heard everything from persnickety to opinionated to obstreperous. The last one sent me running to my dictionary. Obstreperous /əbˈstrepərəs/ noisy and stubbornly defiant. That was as reasonable a portrayal as any other.
While my grandmother, Margaret, did the dutiful thing for a young woman of her generation—got married, had five kids, stayed home to raise them, and then stayed home to care for her husband in retirement—Elinor shunned her parents’ expectations and vowed “to live my own life without some know-it-all man telling me what to serve for dinner and how he wants his underwear ironed.”
At age twenty-eight, I was single, working at a fulfilling (read: low-paying) job, without a hope of the future I once planned. In the previous six years, I had made peace with what was. It wasn’t what I planned and hoped for, but my life was pretty good. Truth be told, I wouldn’t have expended a lot of effort to change much about my life. Unfortunately, life was changing for me one way or the other, thanks to Aunt Elinor.
Aunt Elinor could be described in a number of ways, depending on your
perspective. I’d heard everything from persnickety to opinionated to obstreperous. The last one sent me running to my dictionary. Obstreperous /əbˈstrepərəs/ noisy and stubbornly defiant. That was as reasonable a portrayal as any other.
While my grandmother, Margaret, did the dutiful thing for a young woman of her generation—got married, had five kids, stayed home to raise them, and then stayed home to care for her husband in retirement—Elinor shunned her parents’ expectations and vowed “to live my own life without some know-it-all man telling me what to serve for dinner and how he wants his underwear ironed.”
