My guest today is Stephanie Grace Whitson, a woman I personally admire for her perseverance and cheerful spirit. Here’s Stephanie:
“Mother, 1913-1996
My Mother was born into the world portrayed in the film Titanic, but she never knew the delights of elegant teas and high-button shoes. Instead, she knew hard work and harsh words. She knew walking into the living room to discover her own mother laid out for a wake. She knew rocking her baby sister and handing that sister over to a “woman who is going to help us with the baby” and then never seeing that baby again, because Elsie Ruth was given to an adoption agency. She knew being taken to stay with relatives who didn’t want her until she was old enough to keep house for her father. She knew being retrieved from those relative and relegated to the role of housekeeper and cook. She knew having the breakfast biscuits tossed across the room because they weren’t fluffy enough. . . and other things of which she never spoke. She knew being told to pack her suit case when she was a teenager. She knew what it was like to be driven to a nearby town and put out on a street corner. She knew being wished a good life, and watching as her father drove away. And because of that awful day, my mother came to know love.
She went door to door looking for work. “Do you need your house cleaned? Do you need a cook? Can I do your laundry?” Climbing the steps to the front door of the biggest house in town, Mother found herself face to face with a woman who invited her in and allowed her to clean a room. In the process of cleaning that room, Mother found some pennies under the bed. When Mrs. W. came in to check her work, she literally pulled on a white glove and checked the furniture. Then she asked about the pennies. “I found those under the bed when I was cleaning,” Mother said. “You’re an honest girl,” Mrs. W. said. “You have a job.”
Mrs. W. expected a lot, but Mother worked hard. She went on to a job at a dress factory and, at last, friendship with a girl named Pearl who shared her own mother with a lonely girl. Bertha Mae Johnson was love in action. Her tiny shotgun house was lighted by coal oil lamps and filled with blooming African violets. At Mom Johnson’s, my Mother felt safe, perhaps for the first time in her life. Pearl eventually arranged a blind date for my Mother with a tall, slim, truck driver named Grayson. Together they built a life and raised four children.
My mother wasn’t always mentally stable. She had a terrible temper. Sometimes she lost her grip on reality. When I see my Mother in heaven someday, it will be the very first time I will see her finally, truly happy. In the meantime, I honor her ability to rise above the nightmare of her own youth and build a marriage that lasted for nearly sixty years and raise four reasonably sane children (the jury is still out on me). In her own way, my Mother was a great woman. She lasted. She stuck. She stayed. She served. She loved–as much as she could. And it was enough.”–Stephanie Grace Whitson
I must agree, Stephanie. With that kind of history she could have let life defeat her. And I also look forward to seeing a mother happier in heaven than she was on earth.
More about this author:
Stephanie writes historical fiction. . . and rides a motorcycle. She writes contemporary fiction. . . and loves tromping around old cemeteries. Wife, homemaker, mother, and grandmother, Stephanie Grace Whitson has made a career out of playing with imaginary friends, and it all started in an abandoned pioneer cemetery. This one’s graves are scattered on a tiny corner of land near where the Whitson family lived in the 1990’s–mostly providing comic relief for the real country folk in the area. That cemetery provided not only a hands-on history lesson for Stephanie’s home schooled children but also a topic of personal study as she began to read about and be encouraged by the pioneer women who settled the American West. Since writing had always been a favorite hobby, it was only natural for Stephanie to begin jotting down scenes in the life of a nameless woman crossing Nebraska on the Oregon Trail. Eventually that story took on a life of its own and Stephanie sent off a query letter–expecting instant rejection.
God had a different plan. He blessed Stephanie’s beginnings, putting two of her three first books on the ECPA best-seller list and making two of her first nine books finalists for the Christy Award. Other awards have followed, but Stephanie considers her most precious “award” the reader letters that share how God has used Whitson-authored novels to bless lives. “It’s astonishing, humbling, and encouraging. I can’t really put it into words–and I can usually find words for just about everything!”
With the spring 2010 release of Sixteen Brides (Bethany House Publishers), she will have eighteen novels and a non-fiction book on “how to help a grieving friend” to her credit. She’s also working on a quilt documentation project to be released as a book about pioneer women and sod house homemaking in 2011. Along with antique quilts and pioneer women’s history, French, Italian, and Hawaiian language and culture remain passionate interests.
“The flip side of writing,” Stephanie says, “is being asked to teach writing or to speak at various events.” She has developed a menu of lectures and workshops that “provide opportunities for me to travel and get to know not only other writers and history lovers, but also students and quilters. I love sequestering myself in a library to do research, but the speaking part of my career has provided some unique and wonderful memories.”
And then there’s Kitty. . . her motorcycle. “In some ways I’m 57,” she says, “in others I’m probably about 17. It all depends on the day.” On days when her virtual age leans towards the younger side of that equation, she’s been known to wake up in the morning and decide to ride Kitty to Canada that day.
In addition to keeping up with her five grown children and two grandchildren, Stephanie enjoys motorcycle trips with her blended family (she was widowed in 2001 and remarried in 2003) and church friends as well as volunteering at the International Quilt Study Center and Museum. She is currently in graduate school pursuing a Master of Historical Studies degree.
www.stephaniewhitson.com
stephanie@stephaniewhitson.com
