The good news – the stomp-and-yell good news — is that my memoir, White Wife/Blue Baby, has been accepted for publication. When will it come out, everyone asks. It’s too early to know. But it’s in the queue at All Things That Matter Press. (https://allthingsthatmatterpress.com/)
When I got the ATTM email message stating, “We want to put you under contract,” I was at first totally mystified. Or maybe the word is stunned. Or stupefied. I carried my laptop down to where my husband was sitting and showed him.
“I think they want to publish your book,” he said.
When I worked at Norwalk Community College, my job in the mid-nineties was to place students into paid internships. Throughout his 8-year presidency (1981-89), Ronald Reagan (not usually one of my heroes) badgered Russian President Gorbachev to lighten up on the Jews. “Gorby,” whom we all admired at the time, told him to mind his own business. But when the Soviet Union dissolved, Jews knew to come to America. One path brought emigrants to Stamford’s Jewish Community Center.
At NCC, and at probably any community college, you truly never know who is going to show up on the doorstep. I was able to place a highly sophisticated female Russian engineer into an internship at a major precision instrument firm in the area. (They quickly hired her permanently.) Her English was quite good, and she was proud of it. Still, when she called to thank me, she was so excited, no words would come. Finally, she burst out with, “We—we—we go to restaurant!” She, her husband and their two sons.
Looking down at the email from ATTM, I finally shouted, “We go to restaurant!” And indeed that day we did. An Italian place in Norwalk, Primavera. We were glowing, I guess. As we scooped up the last bites of our shared chocolate dessert, the owner brought two tiny glasses of Limoncello. On the house.
May all good writers have similar luck!
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