Tag Archive for: Maggie Barbieri

Real Things that Have Happened to Me (or that I’ve Done)

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In another attempt to avoid working last week, I reflected on a few real things that have happened to me or that I’ve done. I’ve decided that we’re going to call this blog, No Regrets Wednesday here at the Stiletto Gang.

In another attempt to stretch out the work avoidance for as long as possible, I then decided that I would sit down and list these real things that have happened to me or that I’ve done to see if anyone has had similar experiences and if you would like to share one or two similar things so that we could all have a good laugh.

Here goes:

1. I once got in a cab in New York City when I was in my twenties and after I told the cab drive where I wanted to go, he said, “Wow, you’re beautiful. After blushing from the tips of my toes to the top of my head, I confessed that no, I was not a model and thanked him for the wonderful compliment. He said, “It’s ok. I didn’t really mean it. I ask every woman who gets in my cab so I can get a big tip. You’re ok looking, though.”(He did not get a big tip.)

2. I once had to open up and then relinquish a foiled-wrapped sandwich in the security line at JFK because nothing says terrorist like chicken salad on a roll and an almost middle-aged textbook editor. They did not confiscate the sandwich, but I didn’t feel like eating once I got on the plane.

3. I once saw a woman walking in Times Square with her entire skirt tucked into the back of her underpants.(My mom can vouch for this.) I stopped her, made her stop talking on her cell phone, and told her that about three million Japanese tourists had just seen her bootie and many had taken pictures. She thanked me and went on her way, happy that there was a woman in the world who was brave enough to tell another that her behind had been displayed on the Jumbotron outside of the Good Morning, America, studios.

4. I once wore my husband’s boxer briefs to a job interview because I was too lazy to do my own laundry.

5. I once told my kids that I was getting my own apartment. (Actually, that happened more than once.)

6. I once laughed so hard that I wet my pants. And my husband’s pants.(In the interest of full disclosure, I was nine months pregnant with child #1, who turns 18 today!)

7. I once got lost driving home from a grocery store in a neighboring town.
It took me ninety minutes to find my way back. Yes, the ice cream had melted.

8. I once told a client that he had to buy what I was selling because I was nine months pregnant (see #6) and ‘baby needs a new pair of shoes.’It worked.

9. I once wore pajama pants to class because I hadn’t washed any real pants. I know this is commonplace now but back in 1865, it was positively scandalous. Although I got a talking to from the dean of students, I also got a date with a really cute guy who I married five years later.

10. I once ate an entire bar of Velveeta cheese. I then proceeded to realize, almost immediately, that this was a really bad idea.

Ok, so it’s No Regrets Wednesday at Stiletto.

Fess up, Stiletto faithful.

Let me know one thing you’ve done that you’ve carried around in your heart for all these years, unable to reveal.

I’m counting on you.

Maggie Barbieri

Dieting and Writing: The Link

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Dieting and Writing:  The Link
I will lose fifteen pounds by spring.
I will write one thousand words a day—or more—so that I beat my deadline by three months.
Dieting and writing are two things I think about way too much.  Thinking about these two topics is probably a good thing.  I need to be conscious of what I eat and how much and I need to be conscious of what I write and how much.  I need to reflect daily on the quality of both what goes into my mouth and what goes onto the page.  Meeting these goals should be easy with this kind of conscientiousness, right?
Wrong.
In terms of dieting, I seem to gain and lose the same seventeen pounds every single year.  Last year was supposed to be different.  I was supposed to lose the weight and through conscious eating, diet, and exercise, I was supposed to keep it off.  The holidays approached.  I wouldn’t fall into the same traps.  But a trip to the emergency room where I received the somber news that my gall bladder needed to come out threw me off course.  I would have to eat differently until I lost the organ that processed fats and bile so that meant, in my mind, all bets were off.  What does one eat when they can’t eat fats?  CARBS!  And lots of them.  Carbopalooza began in earnest and slowly but surely, the weight started to creep back.  The good news is that I only allowed myself a three-pound gain over the month before I reined myself back in.  The bad news?  No more carbs for the foreseeable future and I need carbs.  Without them, I turn into a very bleak, very sad person.
As for the writing part, I also set goals.  A thousand words a day.  Every day.  No exceptions.  Unless of course I see a cobweb up in the rafters of my office.  Got to get the vacuum!  Got to vacuum that up!  And the cat litter…that needs to be changed.  Oh, there’s laundry?  I must do that, too.  While I’m at it, let’s eat a bag of pretzels…wait! I can’t have carbs.
See where I’m going with this? 
Dieting and writing are not all-or-nothing propositions.  Sure, it would be great if I could get the last ten pounds off while keeping the first seventeen off (and writing a thousand words a day) but that’s a long-term goal.  It won’t happen overnight, so the best course of action is to set a short-term goal for myself.  “This week, I’ll write down what I eat and exercise three days.  Next week, I’ll reassess.”  Same with writing.  If I wrote one thousand words per day, well, then it would only take me two and a half months to write a book which would give me lots of free time to vacuum up cobwebs.  And as we all know, it takes a heck of a lot longer to write a book than that.  It’s usually around a year because I owe my publisher one book a year.  I’ve never beaten a deadline but I sure as heck have almost blown one or five.
So while last year was the year of Zen Maggie—a spectacular failure if the stressed looks on my children’s faces are any indication—this year is the year of Attainable Goal Maggie. The year in which we finally figure out how to eat the elephant (hint:  one bite at a time) and never bite off more than we can chew or set goals that are unattainable and thus make us feel like constant failures.
Who’s with me?  And who hid the pretzels?

Maggie Barbieri

When Salsa and Writing Collide

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I have to learn to salsa dance.  By Saturday.  While wearing heels.
I can’t reveal the reason for this challenge but suffice it to say that the continuation of life as we know it depends on me being able to remain upright while dancing to Tito Puente.  Oh, and did I mention that fifty percent of the people there will already know how to do this?  It’s definitely a pride thing with me and it all goes back to the fact that no matter how hard I try, I still can’t figure out how to do the Electric Slide. Having stood silently against the wall while everyone slides around to the verses that talk about “it’s electric…boogiewoogiewoogie” is not the way I roll and I’m determined never to let it happen again. So salsa I will, even if it’s the last thing I do.
I’ve downloaded several salsa tunes and even accessed a video on YouTube where a lovely couple demonstrates exactly how to dance salsa like a pro.  Hey, even Victor Cruz of the New York Giants can bust out salsa moves after scoring a touchdown; just how hard can it be?  Very, apparently.  I’m still working on it and may even have some video to post next time I post, so stay tuned.  It may be a thing of beauty or so embarrassing that it becomes a YouTube sensation.  You know I’m not shy—I’m the first person to don a lampshade on my head if the situation calls for it—but this may even break my gregarious spirit.  We shall see.
But all of this talk about salsa dancing got me thinking about writing.  Really.  (Wait for it; I’ll get there.)  I’m a fairly good dancer—some would even say that I have good rhythm—but trying to stay true to traditional salsa has proven hard for me because I fancy myself more of an interpretative dancer, allowing the music to dictate where I go and how.  Following specific steps and not deviating from those steps, while staying true to the salsa tradition, would not allow me to stay true to myself as an “artist” (and yes, I mean that in a tongue-in-cheek way).
It’s kind of like writing.  I know some of the steps and can even put them together in a cohesive package that looks fairly attractive and has some rhythm.  (Based on some of my reader mail this week there are some who would beg to differ that point.)  But try to adhere to a formula? Well, the wheels fall off the bus for me.  Learning to salsa correctly, following the intricate steps, is the equivalent of starting a writing project with a complete and thorough outline, something that goes from point A to point Z in a straight line.  I can’t do it.  What I can do is jiggle to and fro to the music in time while salsa dancing, making a passable attempt at mimicking the steps and everyone who knows how to do salsa well.  In writing, I can do the same, going back and forth, to the future and back to the past, over something a thousand times to make sure the words say what I want them to say, and doing it all again the next day and the next with no pattern, no particular flow, no organization. 
I will probably never win a salsa dancing contest nor will I ever win the Pulitzer, at least until I stop writing about bumbling college professors, sly nuns, and people who kill in the heat of the moment, but for now, I’m content to sway to the music and let the words that I want to write come out in one interpretative jumble until I can put them in an order that makes some kind of sense.
Writers out there, how do you do it?  And can anyone come over and teach me to salsa before Saturday?
Maggie Barbieri

New Year’s Resolutions

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Some parents—like me—have this misguided notion that everything will always be the same and that the kids will always be there to celebrate holidays, good times, and everything in between.  But as my kids get older—almost 18 and 13—I’m finding that, just like they are supposed to, they are enjoying making their own connections and traditions and branching out on their own.
Every year, we get together with another family whose oldest is my oldest child’s best friend; they also have a son, who although more than three years older than mine, will always watch a game or play with Barbieri child #2.  This year, the girls had two different parties to attend, one right on the same street and another in town that they had to drive to.  My friend’s daughter was dressed to the nines in gorgeous ankle-strap black suede pumps while my daughter went for a more casual look.  One came home early, the other late, but both had reveled with their own friends and didn’t kiss their parents at the stroke of midnight.
I am working hard to adjust to this change.  I used to scoff at people who would coo over one of my adorable children, still a baby, and say, “Enjoy it now.  It goes really fast,” meaning that in the blink of an eye, your baby would be all grown up and ready to fly the coop. I would laugh.  What did these people know?
Everything, apparently.
I told my husband that I am now the person doing the cooing and telling people to enjoy their babies now because before they know it, they’ll be off on their own, living their own lives.  And the people I tell this to look at me like I’m crazy.
I once heard it said that when raising children, and particularly when caring for babies, “the days are long but the years fly by.”  A truer statement has never been uttered.  As you trod the floor at night with a screaming baby, it seems like that night will never end but just when you think you have this sleeping thing nailed down, the kid is up all night again, but for a different reason:  they are a teenager and teenagers like to stay up late.  Granted, there’s no crying anymore, hopefully, but you’re still up and you’re still worried, especially if they are not home.
I am loathe to make New Year’s resolutions but this year, with a daughter going to college in the fall—the longest stint of sleepaway camp known to parents—I’m going to try to remain focused on the present, enjoying every bit of the time we have together, not focused on what will happen in the future.  I know that once she leaves here and experiences the world beyond the doors of our little Village colonial, her eyes will be opened to all the great things she can accomplish.  And as Martha would say, “And that’s a good thing.”
Maggie Barbieri

A Tale of Christmas Eve (or how a seven-year-old picks out gifts at the last minute)

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By Maggie Barbieri

We celebrate Christmas Eve hard in my family.  The reason for this is that when I was young, my father was a New York City police officer who worked many a holiday but usually seemed to be around for some of Christmas Eve, making it easy for my mother to load gifts under the tree and have them ready for us to open at midnight (really, eight thirty…it was dark and we couldn’t tell time).  Usually, the day before Christmas Eve, or earlier in the actual day, my father would realize that while he had been busy keeping the citizens of New York City safe, he had forgotten to get my mother a gift and had to go into serious shopping mode if he was going to have something for her to open.  This particular year, I guess I was around seven, he grabbed me, dusk just about to fall as snow dropped from the sky, and dragged me to a neighboring town where a boutique was still open.  It was called The Pearl Shoppe and sold things like giant pairs of white underpants, enormous bras, girdles with lots of snaps and elastic and some fancy duds that the well-heeled women of Rockland County wore to holiday parties.  We wandered in, immediately assaulted by a woman covered in Jean Nate cologne, and given the hard sell.
Out of the corner of my eye I spotted the most gorgeous silver lame (and apologies that I don’t know how to put either an accent ague or accent grave over the e) gown, hanging close to the window on a hangar, clearly an item that was being highlighted as something every woman should have.  It was hanging alone, calling to me.  As a devoted Barbie aficionado, it seemed like something my leggy doll should wear.  From there, I made the leap that it was something that my mother—the parent of four children under the age of seven, two still in diapers—should have.  After all, she could wear it to all of the holiday parties that she and my father would go to, I thought, not taking into account that the parents of four little children rarely get invited anywhere.  I posited my theory to my father.  He had a wad of cash and little time. 
He was in.
The Jean Nate lady was more than happy to wrap it up in a big box with a giant silver bow, reminding my father that here at The Pearl Shoppe, there were no returns for cash, just store credit.  But we were both blinded by the silver lame gown—it even had a bolero jacket that you could wear when it got chilly—so it didn’t matter.  In our minds, my mother would never return such a glorious item.  Why would she? 
We were both trembling with anticipation when my father handed her the box. 
“Oh, The Pearl Shoppe,” she said, clearly not as excited as we thought she might be.  She undid the beautiful bow and riffled through the tissue paper covering the most exquisite silver gown this side of Garnerville.  While two of us fought over the bow, she let the baby play with the tissue paper.  She uncovered the silver gown, throwing my grandmother a look that said, “where in God’s name am I—the mother of four little kids—going to wear a silver ball gown?” but to my father she proclaimed it the most beautiful item of clothing she had ever seen and would ever own.
It may come as a surprise to you to find out that my mother never did wear the silver gown or that I was with her when she went to return it to The Pearl Shoppe.  The Jean Nate lady was not amused.  Nor was my mother when she found out that the only thing she could exchange it for were a dozen packets of giant white underpants and an enormous bra.
I learned a few things that year:

You can never have enough giant white underpants or enormous bras.

You should never take gift advice from a girl whose fashion icon is a twelve-inch doll with inordinately long legs and is made of plastic.

Always marry a man who thinks that despite the fact that you spend the better part of your day changing diapers and wiping up spilled milk, he always think you should look like a princess.

Happy holidays from all of us at The Stiletto Gang!
Maggie Barbieri

Why the Dog Will Never Die in My Books

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When we were young, we had a host of animals, mostly cats and dogs, but with a couple of Guinea pigs and hermit crabs thrown in for good measure.  One of our best, and most ill-behaved, pets was a sixty-pound Golden Retriever named Dusty who had a habit of escaping at the first sound of the open screen door, usually taking my frail grandmother down with him as he bounded outside, happy to be running free and in the fresh air.  I can speak favorably and lovingly of him now because he’s been dead for thirty-five years but back when he was living with us, well, he was a royal pain in the tuchus.
My parents both worked in those days so my grandmother was charged with getting us off to school with our frozen bologna sandwiches and Devil Dogs, a dime each for the carton of warm milk we would buy when lunchtime rolled around.  My grandmother didn’t drive, so getting us on the bus was imperative because once the bus left, if one of us hadn’t made it on, we would have to walk close to two miles to get to school.  Now that doesn’t sound like a long distance now, but back then, our legs were shorter and the miles seemed interminable.  Suffice it to say that we would ran, en masse, when we heard the squeal of the breaks, someone older pushing someone younger ahead so that we didn’t have to hoof it.  We always made it.
Except for one day.
Dusty had a travelin’ jones that beautiful fall morning and was just waiting for the chance to get out and run pell-mell throughout the neighborhood.  I went out after him, chasing him all the way down our street toward the reservoir, begging him to come back home.  I knew I had all of five or six minutes to make this happen, but as luck would have it, he was out without his leash or even his collar so I had to pin him to the ground and basically drag him up the street, his sixty pounds feeling like a thousand as we inched our way up the street toward home and the bus stop.  We were about halfway up when I heard the familiar siren song of the bus coming down the street and saw my siblings running toward its open doors.  That’s when I began to cry.
Through some sheer force of will, I did manage to get the dog the two hundred and fifty feet back to the house, where I threw him inside and cried to my grandmother that not only would I have to walk to school, I would now be late and probably have to serve detention, meaning that I would have to walk home, too.  She cried right along with me, apologizing for never having gotten her license and trying to figure out what we could do to get me to school in time for the bell.  Desperate, I ran outside and spied my neighbor, Bobby, getting into his brand-new Mustang convertible, the one with the white leather seats, the one that he didn’t let any of us near.  He was on his way to his job as a first-year teacher at a local high school and while I won’t go so far as to say that he was unhappy to see me, let’s just say that, well, seeing me crying in my uniform with my book bag wasn’t the way he wanted to start his day.  I begged him for a ride, explaining the tale of dragging Dusty up the street and missing the bus, the same one that two of his younger brothers rode with me to St. Catherine’s.  He finally relented after my grandmother intervened, making me sit at the edge of the passenger-side seat, lest my plaid uniform leave some kind of deleterious stain on the white leather upholstery.
I spent the day smoldering with rage at the dog, who was a colossal pain in the butt about 90% of the time.  In addition to escaping, he ate our socks, our sweaters, our shoes; he stole things from kids disembarking the school bus; he barked at things we couldn’t see; and he needed to be loved and petted constantly even in the middle of dinner.  But when I got home, and he ran to me, slobbering and jumping and just so excited to see me, I could do nothing but hug him and kiss him because when all was said and done, he was just a dog.  And a beautiful, fun, loving one at that who adored me in spades and who had a bad habit of escaping when he should have been napping next to my grandmother.
Dusty died at the age of two, after a brief, but horrible, illness, right around the time that he stopped escaping and started becoming the dog we always wanted.  I will never forget my mother, painting the trim in our bathroom, crying and telling me that she didn’t think we could ever get another dog because she just got too attached and it was too painful when they died.  She cried for several days and while I couldn’t really understand it then—the kids and I moved on with extreme alacrity—I do now.
Intellectually, when we get a pet, we know that they are only ours for a short time in the grand scheme of things but the comfort and pleasure we get while they are here on earth with us is so powerful and all-encompassing that we can’t resist the pull to ownership.  With my dog advancing in age, I’m already thinking about getting another dog so that when she goes—and it will happen—I’ll have someone else to comfort me in her absence.  She is a part of our family and plays just as important a role as the humans who make up our little band of Barbieris.
I was thinking about our pets—both past and present—this weekend after I got a call from a good friend telling me that her beloved dog, a miniature Schnauzer named Stella, had died suddenly and unexpectedly.  The shock of hearing that, coupled with the knowledge of how much I love our little Westie and our big, giant cat, made me so sad that I burst into the tears, my friend and I crying over the loss of this twenty-pound animal who loved to bark at squirrels, who played with my dog in the summer while the kids swam in the pool, and who loved to bury her bone in the couch cushions to protect it for later consumption. So while this blog may seem like just a bunch of ramblings about a disobedient Golden Retriever named Dusty, it is a tribute to all of our beloved pets, the ones who grace our lives for a short time but who bring us so much joy and happiness while they are here.
To Stella—I hope you are enjoying a big, giant JumBone in heaven.
Stiletto faithful, tell us about your favorite memory of a beloved pet.
Maggie Barbieri

Lowering Your Expectations

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Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday and I have had the pleasure of hosting the past several dinners here at Chez Barbieri.  This year, we will play host to hubby’s family—twelve of us in all—and perhaps a friend and her family for dessert.  My turkey is known in the family for its moistness and fabulous flavor, success attributed to the brining process that takes several days.  My mashed potatoes are laden with butter, garlic, and sea salt, and although not the same recipe as the one that comes from Jim’s family, a crowd pleaser nonetheless.  I apparently also make great green beans, and for Jim’s brother-in-law and me, I make roasted brussel sprouts, a dish no one else would touch with a ten-foot pole but which he and I love.

I guess I’m what you would call a pretty serious home cook.  It is the rare dish that requires me to follow a recipe and I’ve become more adept over the years with complicated vegetarian dishes in order for child #1, an avowed non-meat eater, to get the nutrients she needs.  Baking is not really my forte, but only because I don’t like to measure and child #1 works at a bakery.  Problem solved.  There is one thing, however, that I’ve never mastered and that is gravy.  Can’t do it.  Have tried and failed repeatedly. And there’s nothing worse at a Thanksgiving meal than putting out an entire meal and then standing over the stove attempting to get the proper amount of roux to make a thick, but not gelatinous, gravy.  There’s something about the preparation of gravy that makes me anxious, and I think that’s because gravy is a staple of many meals, Thanksgiving being the most important.  My entire culinary reputation is riding on it and that’s just not a chance I’m willing to take.

I tried for years to make the right gravy, standing beside my mother and mother-in-law, watching what they did and trying to replicate it.  It just doesn’t work.  So, for the past few years—and with full disclosure to my holiday guests—I buy gravy at the local gourmet store where it is made fresh from the turkeys that they roast and which I serve it in my china gravy boat.  It’s delicious and the right consistency every time and all I’m required to do is heat it up.  Voila!  Perfect gravy.
Maybe it’s age, or maybe it’s just that my usual perfectionism just doesn’t translate to pan drippings, but I’ve decided that I’m going to make things easier on myself in order to enjoy the holiday. I’ve also decided the same will be true for writing because no matter how many times I decide I’m going to write the perfect first draft, trying to follow some self-created recipe for writing, it doesn’t happen.  (I bet you didn’t think I could connect gravy and writing but YOU’D BE WRONG!) You’d think after six books, I’d be smarter and know that the perfect first draft is an urban legend, kind of like the multi-city author tour or the alligator that lives in the New York City sewer system.  Or that everyone can cook gravy.

Starting a book without a roux—which is basically an outline or some kind of detailed plot diagram—is pretty scary but it is something I do every time I write a book.  (I’ve only written one outline in the past decade and it’s for a book I’ve yet to write.  We’ll see how that goes.)  It usually works out ok, though, with me figuring out halfway in whodunit and why.  The problem I have is that I hate every word I’ve written before I sit down to write again and I want to revise everything, every day, before I start again, kind of like how I always mess with the home-cooked gravy until it is the aforementioned gelatinous mess.  I can’t leave well enough alone.  This kind of self-critique, I’ve found, is detrimental to the process and just slows things down.  So with this latest book—the seventh in the Murder 101 series—I’ve just taken off the breaks, or to continue with the metaphor, bought the store-bought gravy, and am just dumping everything from my head into the gravy boat and figuring out how to make it work later. (I know…the metaphor is getting a little thing, but stick with me.)
So far, so good.  I have about 40,000 words to write to finish this book—piece of cake!  But lowering my expectations about what constitutes perfection has been a great lesson for me.  Interesting that after writing for all these many years, I’m still learning new things with every book.  I don’t have to make perfect gravy and I don’t have to write perfect first drafts.  That’s what the delete key is for.  What about you?  Anything to share on the topic of the perfect first draft?  Gravy?  Thanksgiving?  Let it fly!

Oh, and in honor of the release of PHYSICAL EDUCATION next Tuesday, one lucky commenter will be chosen at random (my cat will do the picking) to win a signed copy. 

Maggie Barbieri

Halloween Past and Present

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I was talking to child #2, a rambunctious 12-year-old boy, about Halloween. He was stuck, not having any blessed idea as to what he could dress up as for his favorite holiday. I suggested my old standby, a hobo.
“What’s a hobo, Mom?”

“Well, it’s a guy who rides the rails with a pouch attached to a stick, his worldly belongings in the pouch.”

“Why is he riding the rails? And what are rails?”

“The railroad. He’s riding because he’s got the traveling jones. And no job.”

“So, he’s homeless.”

“Yes, I guess you could call him that.”

“Mom, that’s not very politically correct.”

Suffice it to say that we were in the car, on our way to Party City to purchase a costume before I could go into the politics of Herbert Hoover, explain what “Hooverville” was, or why the Great Depression created more hobos than any other historical event in our nation’s history.

We purchased a gladiator costume, true meaning of which child #2 did not know either. When he donned it, and I pretended to be a Christian hiding from the Romans who would surely throw me to the lions, he looked confused and singularly unimpressed by my acting performance. I was still bristling over the fact that we had to buy a costume and was trying to make the best of a less-than-stellar situation.

All of this talk of costumes got me thinking about my costumes of the past. Thanks to a very creative aunt and a genius of a seamstress across the street from my house, I had some pretty wonderful get ups. Here’s a sampling with only one picture. Very few pictures exist because…well, I could lie…but my mom got lazy with the camera. (Sorry, Mom!)

1. Rudy Vallee: My ingenious aunt found a size 60 beaver coat that had belonged to her Aunt May. I donned that, even though it was about three hundred sizes too big, was given a pennant to wave, a megaphone to carry, a hat to wear and sneakers to put on my feet and I was transformed into the megaphone crooner of the 1920s. So what that nobody knew who I was, this being the mid-70’s? I was dressed unlike any other trick or treater and was in my glory.

2. A Can-Can girl: My seamstress neighbor had made a dozen or so Can-Can girl outfits for a church show that was being mounted at St. Catherine’s (my home parish) and tailored one costume so that it fit my pre-teen body to a tee. Mom curled my hair and let me go crazy with the blue eye shadow and poof! Insta-Can-Can girl. I went to a Halloween party at the roller rink where I certainly would have won first place—even the cool girls thought so—but since I couldn’t skate and was unable to sashay around the judges, I wasn’t even entered. Another one of life’s shattering disappointments.

3. A Nun: No Catholic childhood would be complete without a few hours dressed as a nun or a priest. In my case, I was fully habited in a floor-length habit with a white rope around my waist. Think six-year-old flying nun and you’ll get a visual. A whole gaggle of us neighborhood girls—thanks to the creativity of the aforementioned seamstress neighbor—were transformed into a little squad of sisters, trolling the neighborhood for candy. The interesting thing? No one looked twice—maybe because there was a convent in our town?

Here’s a shot of the Can-Can outfit, my siblings, and the neighbor kids (the ones whose mom crafted most of our costumes). See, not a store-bought one among them. Those were the days, right?

Maggie Barbieri

In Memory of a Great Lady

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Now I know that I have officially turned into my mother:
1. I keep the “better butter” in the fridge (it’s whipped, not in a log);
2. I read the obituaries.
In my defense, my local paper, the Daily News, has taken to accepting long and beautifully written obituaries to anchor the page that just held the shorter, “just-the-facts” obits that used to reside there.  It is through those pages that I learned of another woman whose family called her “Maga,” just like we did with my beloved grandmother, and that my first boss—Sister Bartholomew Swayne—had passed away at the age of 84.  It was one of those moments where although I hadn’t seen or thought of Sister Bartholomew in years, memories of her came flooding back as I read the details of her long and productive life.
“Bart,” as we called her behind her back, was from the Bronx and entered the Dominican Sisters as a young adult.  She taught at a variety of parochial schools; managed the convent of the Dominican Sisters of Blauvelt; and in her later years, worked at Calvary Hospital, a place for terminally ill cancer patients.  From reading her obituary, it seemed that she had worked right up until she lost her life, presumably of natural causes.
I started working for Sister Bartholomew when I was fifteen, too young to get a working permit, but old enough so that she could get me a job in the sisters’ dining room at the convent.  My grandmother worked on a floor above, doing light housekeeping and keeping things running.  Truth be told, she hired me as a favor to Maga, but then went on to hire my best friend and my sisters.  To me, the convent was a strange and mystical place, but it did have its attractions:  one’s own room, a uniform (I still wear one to this day but it’s in the form of a pullover sweater, jeans and clogs), three hot meals a day (which were actually pretty good), and usually, a job teaching.  The disadvantages?  Living with the same group of women for your entire adult life, the job teaching (I’m not cut out for the classroom), daily prayer, and daily Mass.   When all was said and done, it was kind of a wash but I knew that a life in the convent was not for me.
Bart kept things light and jovial for the girls who worked there and made her life seem exciting and special.  She ran the convent with drill-sergeant precision, getting all of us to do mundane tasks like sweeping and washing every single step of the five-floor convent until they shined.  And when we started to flag in that onerous task, she would come by and clap her hands like the task master that she was, always telling a little joke before she left to let us know that she knew that what she was making us do was horrible but that it was necessary in order to make the convent a place where the other sisters would feel comfortable and cared for.
She reminded us almost daily that the place we worked was the sisters’ home and that we were to treat each and every one with dignity and respect, no matter how ornery or persnickety they were.  Every sister was to be greeted by name (and my sisters, friends and I to this day can summon up just about every name from memory) and treated as if she were special.  These women, after all, had given up everything for God and as such, served the poor and mostly, the children of the archdiocese and around the world.  We didn’t understand it then, but we get it now, all of us married, some of us with children.  In the world that is the Catholic Church, these women were what kept the whole machine going.  They were the cogs in the wheel and made sure that everyone had an equal opportunity to make it in a harsh world.
Bart went about her business briskly but with compassion.  When my grandmother, her good friend, died, she grieved right along with the rest of us.  And when my sisters and I went off to bigger and better things, she praised us, I’m sure still offering daily prayers for our success.  It’s no wonder that I write about nuns, having spent so much time in their presence, but it is Bart who sticks out most in my mind.  She was a wonderful lady and I hope—no, I know—she rests in peace.
Maggie Barbieri

From the Mind of a Guilt-Ridden Perfectionist

/in /by

by Maggie Barbieri

Hello, it’s me again. You get me two days in a row. Why? Because a guest blogger is a no-show, undoubtedly felled by an over-packed schedule and a failure to keep everything he or she had planned to do in a neat little row in his or her mind. I can totally understand. Remember, I’m the girl who still uses a paper planner and writes down EVERY SINGLE TASK that needs to be tackled in a given day. Some days, I cross everything off the list. Others, I may cross one thing off and leave a trail of broken, self-imposed promises on the page, my neat little handwritten notes a sad reminder of what I didn’t accomplish.

But back to memory. I pride myself on having a good one, although sometimes, I’m human, just like everyone else. (My husband and kids will guffaw mightily if they read this. They know for a fact that I’m human.) Curiously, I can go to the grocery store three times a week and always fail to come home with two products that we use in great quantity here: toilet paper and peanut butter. Despite my best efforts, I usually get everything else I’ve gone into the store for, and forget these two crucial items. The result? I end up buying them at the local mom and pop and spending at least triple what they would cost at the store. It’s like I have a mental block against toilet paper and peanut butter, two items that have never done me wrong. My lack of attention to purchasing them is confounding.

Writing a mystery series—and I’m knee deep in book 7 as I write this post—requires a good memory as well as some handwritten notes. For me, I have a host of characters who live in my head—Alison, Crawford, Max, and Fred, predominantly—but others who make an appearance very now and again and require my attention so that they can tell me their back story and let me know how they would react to a given situation. For instance, I have a kid right now in the new book, the name of whom Alison can’t remember. His name? Alex. Why? Because that’s what his great-grandfather’s name was, the great-grandfather who came to this country from Russia with just the clothes on his back and currency that converted to three dollars. Is this germane to the story? No. But Alex told me his backstory and I need to be attentive to that. Now, if Alex happens to reappear in a future book, I’d like to say that I will remember this backstory verbatim, but there is a slim chance that great-grandfather will have come to this country from Poland with the clothes on his back and currency that converted to ten dollars. Why? Because my brain is crammed. With ideas, with characters, with plots, with the reminder that I need to buy peanut butter and toilet paper the next time I go to Shoprite.

Why am I telling you this? Well, it’s simple: sometimes I get messages from people who have spotted an inconsistency in one of my books. In an earlier book, someone may have had black hair, and in a subsequent book, it’s a shade lighter. All I can say is that I do my darnedest, really I do, to make sure that these types of inconsistencies don’t happen. Fellow blogger Susan McBride told me that a famous author—who shall remain nameless—once wrote an essay about this very issue. He said, and I’m paraphrasing, that he does his best, but his goal is to tell a good story. So what that character A had a brother in book 1 and then three sisters and no brother in Book 6? It doesn’t matter to famous author. He wants you to enjoy his books for their story, not specifically for the continuity.

I’m not there yet, in terms of attitude. I’m still trying really hard to make everything as consistent as it can be in every book I write, but I, like other authors, make mistakes, and sometimes, forget things. (See: peanut butter and toilet paper.) I’m a perfectionist, really I am (insert husband and kids guffawing) so it pains me to think that I’ve missed something. All this to say that we’re all doing our best to make sure every t is crossed and every i is dotted and that everyone has the same number of siblings and the same color hair every time we publish a new book.

And if you see me around town, do me a favor? Remind me to buy toilet paper and peanut butter, please?
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