Betsy Horvath

Category: Family

  • Traveling Time

    I just got back from spending a longish weekend with my sister, brother-in-law and niece. Since they live about 400 miles away from me, and are pretty rural, flying is not a good option. That meant a lot of traveling time.

    It’s about an eight hour drive each way, but I don’t usually mind too much once I get going. Don’t get me wrong – BEFORE I go, I’m a total wreck. But once I’m out on the highway I settle down until I hit traffic or construction.

    I spend the first hour on the road wondering if I have the correct emergency contact information in my wallet, or why I didn’t remember to make a Will before I left, or if I remembered to pack all my prescriptions. Then the hypnotism of the road takes over and I move to another mental place.

    I find it very useful to travel alone like this every so often. It gives me an enforced break from the world for a day – kind of like when the power goes out or I get snowed in. As I drive, I tend to think about a lot of different things, listen to books or music, or just be with myself.

    This trip I thought a lot about my writing and my life, my goals and where I was going. I thought about getting older and what my expectations are of myself. I thought of what other people think of me and how much or how little that matters. I thought about where I want to go and how I want to get there. It was nice.

    I miss my sister and her family, and I’m glad to be home again among the familiar surroundings. It’s a long drive and I’m still aching from the effects of being behind the wheel for that long. But I did very much enjoy my traveling time.

     

    [tube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWzeInQaUk4[/tube]

  • When Mom Read My Book

    Today is my mother’s 83rd birthday. It occurred to me recently that I don’t talk about my mother much here on the blog. If I’m talking about a parent, it tends to be my father. That might be because I’m in the throes of things with my mother, but I have the benefit of distance with my father.

    But I don’t want you to think that I don’t love her, because I do. And I don’t want you to think that she’s not an important part of my life, because she is.

    Mom is a huge reader, and when I was writing my book I knew that she would want to read it if it ever got published. The thought made me choke a little bit – I couldn’t go some of the places the characters were taking me because I kept picturing my mother reading it later. I mean, my book isn’t erotica or anything, but I was still shy about having my mother read sex scenes I’d written. It was a real problem until I metaphorically stuck my fingers in my ears, closed my eyes, and pretended nobody else would ever see it but me.

    Then my book got accepted by Carina Press. Hooray! Then my book came out and was available for sale. Hooray! And Mom wanted to read it. Ummm…. well…. okay….

    I thought I was safe because it was an digital book and she doesn’t have an e-reader. I made various excuses not to lend her my Kindle (well you know, Mom, I use my Kindle ALL the time...). I knew she wouldn’t want to listen to the audio book. Safety!

    Until one of her neighbors, who has a Kindle, told her that she had bought my book and liked it. She asked Mom if she wanted to borrow the Kindle and read it. And Mom, of course, said yes.

    Here’s the conversation we had when she told me she was going to read my book-

    Me: You know, Mom, there’s pretty much cursing in there.

    Mom: Oh, I know curse words.

    Me: And you know, there are, um, sex scenes.

    Mom: Oh, I know sex.

    AACK!!! TMI!

    So, Mom read the book and she really liked it. Well, that’s what she told me anyway. It happened that when she finished, I was a little down because I’d just gotten a rather nasty 1 star review on Audible. She said, “well I liked it. I would give it 5 stars. Okay, maybe 4 and a half.”

    Thanks Mom! LOL

    Ironically, she really liked the sex scenes. I’m glad she wasn’t bothered by them, although it does disturb me in a part of my soul I will not acknowledge to know that my mother enjoyed sex scenes I wrote. She didn’t especially like the foul potty-mouth language, but I warned her so she only has herself to blame there.

    And the advantage of the whole thing is that I’m not nearly so shy about writing whatever happens in the story now. I figure I’ve gotten the worst out of the way.

    She still doesn’t have an e-reader, but when HOLD ME gets printed for the direct to consumer program I’ll be able to give her a print copy of the book for her own. I’ll even autograph it for her.

    Dear Mom,

    Thanks for everything.

    Love, Betsy

    Happy Birthday, Mom!

     

  • Time Well Spent

    I’ve been thinking a lot about my father lately.  That’s partly because he would have turned 80 on May 4th.  And it’s partly because of Memorial Day.  And it’s also because I’m still learning things about him I didn’t know before.

    I didn’t always have the best relationship with Daddy – the fault for that lay on both sides, especially when the teenage girl hormones kicked in.  Watch out!  Things got a little intense there for a couple of years.  But in spite of the drama that cropped up now and again, he tried to teach me things, the way any good father does.

    Daddy was an immigrant from Hungary, so he didn’t quite “get” America all the time. But he did know tools.  He had a lot of tools.  Lots and lots of tools.

    He’d inherited some of them from my mother’s father.  He bought many others.  He especially loved power tools. Hey, he was a guy.  And he tried to teach my sister and I how to use them.

    Back then, we didn’t always appreciate the lessons, but now I can appreciate them just what he did.  Working with my father, we learned that we didn’t need to be afraid of using tools just because we were girls. We could hammer nails. We could use a jig saw. We could take pieces of extra wood and make stuff.

    For myself, the tools also gave me a way to bond with my father when our relationship was rocky.  I still remember how proud he was the year he gave me a power drill for Christmas.  He used to save the Sears Hardware catalogs for me and mark different pages with things he thought I should get.  We would watch home improvement shows and discuss whether or not we could do what they did if we had all of their power tools.  When I moved out, he gave me my own toolbox.

    Most importantly, as my sister and I grew older and had homes of our own, we weren’t afraid to try to fix things ourselves.  I’ve fixed my own faucets – using wrenches he gave me.  I’ve built shelves from excess wood.  I’ve done some repairs on my windows and doors, and I wasn’t afraid to use an electric saw to do them.

    So thanks, Dad! I am a firm believer that everyone – boy or girl – should have a toolbox of their own – including power tools,  and that everyone should learn how to use them safely.

    Now, get out there and fix something.

     

  • Goals, Dreams, and Remembering My Father

    I was thinking about my father as I drove into work today, and it made me feel kind of melancholy. We’re coming up on the third anniversary of his death, so he’s been in my thoughts more than normal, I guess.

    The reason I was feeling melancholy was not because he died. He’d suffered for a long time and saw death as a release. But I was thinking about the dreams my father had, his goals for his later years.

    They were simple dreams, really.  He wanted to buy a little truck and go around working as a handyman. He wanted to care for his house and lawn. He wanted to take long walks.  He wanted to travel.

    Then I thought about my own life, and my participation in it.  I have goals too. I have dreams. But what have I done to work towards them? Yes, I have a book published. Yes, I have written other things, some published, some which aren’t and never should be.  But I’ve known for years and years that I want to be a writer and it’s only recently that I’ve been committed to working towards that goal.  I’m stalled in a lot of other areas as well.  Why do I hesitate?  Why am I afraid?  What am I waiting for?

    It’s so much easier to devote your time and attention to the demands of ordinary day-to-day existence than it is to become extraordinarily “you.”

    Thinking about my father today reminded me that we don’t know what life is going to bring us. We can try to drop out of it, but life will always come in and sweep us away – whether we want it to or not. The illusion that we have all of the time in the world is just that – an illusion. My father did not imagine that he would die in a nursing home, trapped inside his own body. He thought he had time.

    Although I am feeling a little melancholy, this is not really a melancholy post. In my mind it’s a  hopeful one. Because we may not have all of the time in the world, but we do have today. The future will be what the future will be, but the choices we make today are what set it in motion, at least to a certain extent. So the important thing is to remember all of the things that are important. And to do the best you can. And to work towards your dreams.  Today.

    “You are never given a dream without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however.” – Richard Bach

  • A Place Of One’s Own


     
    I’ve been thinking about Place a lot – place in the physical sense. But place in the physical sense translates to place in the spiritual sense, I think.

    I moved away from the town where I grew up about twenty-five years ago. My mother, on the other hand, has never lived anywhere else. She’s always lived within 5 miles of where she lives now. My mother’s parents and grandparents and great-grandparents are all buried in the town cemetery. My father is buried there.

    In contrast to my mother, my father was a first-generation immigrant. He came from Hungary in 1956 during the Hungarian Revolution and settled in my mother’s town when her church sponsored him from the immigration camps.

    I often wonder if my father ever felt like the town where he lived and raised a family was his town. I wonder if he felt like the town was his place. My mother’s roots go very deep there, but did he eventually feel like he was rooted too? Or was Hungary always his place? His family lived there, died there, was buried there. His roots went very deep there. Did he ever plant himself here? I wish I could ask him.

    As for myself, I don’t know. I have deep roots in the town where my mother lives, but it’s not really my place anymore. I’ve never known Hungary, although my roots are deep there as well. I have some ties to the place where I live now, but it still feels as if I’m a visitor in a way. In the back of my mind there’s the faint expectation that I will eventually have to move on. Maybe it’s because I’ve never owned the land I’ve lived on, and so I’ve never had any power or responsibility over what happened to it.

    I don’t know if you need to have roots. I don’t know if you need to feel like you belong to one place, and that place belongs to you. I know a lot of you have moved away from the towns where you were born. What do you think? Do you feel as if you’ve planted roots where you are now? Or do you still feel like a visitor? Do we need to be rooted in one place at all? I’m just wondering…

     

  • For My Father On Father’s Day

    I’ve been writing fiction for years, with various degrees of serious intent.  Sometimes I thought I wanted to become a published author.  Sometimes I thought it was just too bloody much work.

    I was having something of a crisis of faith about 2 1/2 years ago.  I was working on a romance manuscript that never seemed to be finished.  I’d written a number of science fiction short stories that never seemed to go anywhere (mostly because I really wanted to write romance).  My life was too busy, too stressful, and I was too tired.  I had been diagnosed with diabetes.  I had a lot of debt. I was going nowhere.

    Then my father died.

    Until I was about twenty-five, my father and I had a rocky relationship.  I don’t think we understood each other very well.  And the adolescent and young adult years were hard on us.  We’d patched it up, forgiven each other, and moved on.  Then he got sick with Lewy Body disease.

    In case you don’t know, Lewy Body disease is a delightful combination of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s symptoms.  You can’t think straight. You can’t talk. Your body won’t move properly. But, unlike Alzheimer’s, you actually remember. So you know that you can’t think, or talk, or move. And it’s sneaky. It’s misdiagnosed a lot of the time, so you don’t even know you have it.

    Looking back now, we figure that Daddy had the disease for about 5 years before we even knew there was something wrong.  We thought he was slowing down, that he just wasn’t active enough. We didn’t know that he was really sick.

    Eventually he ended up in a nursing home – his body so stiff and unresponsive that it took 3 aides to get him into bed each night.  He was there for 2 1/2 years before he died.

    After he died, and after the grief had diminished somewhat, I thought about my life.  I realized that I was foolish to turn my back on my writing. I wanted to continue.  I wanted to finish the romance manuscript I’d been dickering around with for years. I wanted to push it to the next level and see if it could be published. I wanted to do it for myself, because life is too short and too precious.  And I wanted to do it for my father.

    Now that manuscript is indeed being published.  I dedicated it to him.

    Happy Father’s Day everyone!