If you’re a Huntingtonian or one of my Facebook friends, you no doubt already know that my mother is one of the best people, ever. She is funny, kind, fierce in her love of her children, and whip-smart. She’s famous amongst my writer friends because if I say reading one of my essays would make her unhappy, she genuinely doesn’t read it. What greater gift could a mother give her writer-child?
Mom is also a a great force for justice in my hometown. (There were surprisingly few public articles about her work, which I’m sure suits her just fine. I can remember her saying to me, “As Miss Anna would have said, a lady only gets her name in the newspaper three times: when she’s born, when she marries, and when she dies.”) But she, along with Betty Barrett and Francie Roberts-Buchanan, have been driving forces behind Huntington’s response to some of its most pressing problems, particularly homelessness and domestic violence.
Pretty much every good thing I know about how to be a responsible community member, I learned from Mom. (I learned a few less good things from Dad, like sometimes it’s funny to give strangers absolutely wrong directions if they are silly enough to ask you how to get somewhere.) The Urban League programs, the community-building activities on campus, even my relationship with Mot, are all directly attributable to the values she taught us growing up. (She will roll her eyes at that last one; admittedly, she would have had more sense than I did.)
Which leads me to a problem, because I can make a problem out of almost anything, even having a great mother. I’m in a section of the book where I’m writing about civic engagement as a way to belong to a place, and I’m writing quite a lot about the work of other relatives in shaping Huntington’s development from Lake Sr.s arrival onward, a fair amount of which focuses on Mom’s work with the homeless and domestic violence victims. And the thing is, I know we aren’t supposed to write flat characters who only do good things—but that’s pretty much all I’ve got. I mean, sure, there was a period of my childhood where she took a fancy to Cajun food and put okra in things a little too often… but that neither fits in this piece or really counts as “bad” except if you’re a kid who hates okra.
So I have two asks:
Family Members: I’d love to hear about ways in which our family was involved in civic work in Huntington that I may not know about. Please let me know! (Although I already have quite a lot to work with, I could always use more.)
Writer Friends: How would you approach this topic with more nuance than I’m managing? I find that right now, this essay kind of reads like “See, we were always good citizens! Stop being antisemitic if you are, and thank you if you’re not!” How do you write about good people doing good things without writing hagiography?
Thank you for your input on both asks!
It took her a few tries before she found the perfect man but she finally did! It took my mother a few tries too and all the men turned out to be my father. Go figure
It might be kind of fun to lean into it, and write hagiography (just looked it up) like you are writing about an actual saint and the miracles they performed. Using that vocab, syntax, rhythm.