Dragonwriter (36 page)

Most recently, Janis' audiobook recording of
Society's Child
won her a Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album and netted her Audie Award nominations for Best Narration by Author and Distinguished Achievement in Production. Her illustrated children's book,
The Tiny Mouse,
with illustrations by Ingrid and Dieter Schubert, will be published in September 2013.

Janis runs The Pearl Foundation, named for her mother, which has given away more than $700,000 in scholarships for returning students at various universities and colleges.

More information can be found at her website,
www.janisian.com
.

A
fter two boys, Anne McCaffrey could be understood for hoping that her third child would be a girl. And what a girl!

As might be expected from Anne McCaffrey's daughter, Gigi is a force to be reckoned with. Although she was distracted by Crohn's disease from adolescence onward, she has maintained her sense of humor, her love of life, and her cheerfulness.

She has also, as you will see, inherited her mother's gift with words and is one of the two people permitted to continue the legacy of the Dragonriders of Pern.

I FELT A
lingering sense that the road had dropped away beneath my feet as I finished sorting through the last of my late mother's books and personal possessions. Throughout the process of packing, I'd looked forward to the time when I would be free to write my very own tribute to my Mum, hoping that the very act of writing would ease my grief. But I've finished cataloging and caressing books I know my mother held in her hands or crying as an ornament recalled decades-old memories. My days are free now, my hands idle, empty, and it's become increasingly difficult to sit myself down and say what's in my heart. It seems far too soon, the jagged pieces still too sharp for me to share just how deeply I miss the person who was larger than life—and such a very large part of my life.

Of course you may already know that my mother wrote amazing stories, tales that took her readers on journeys far away, where her characters were people we longed to have for our friends, whose struggles became our very own, and whose worlds appeared, at first glance, to be kinder than this giant globe we call home. But a real live, warm-blooded female person existed behind those worlds and words, a person whose experiences had shaped and framed her life, a woman who wanted more from her time on Earth than just the prescribed college, followed by marriage and kids. She grew up during the Great Depression, when the world was going to war and women were expected to follow a set path through life, fit into a prearranged mold, and above all else, be restrained and dutiful. Mum watched her father and oldest brother go to war, stood by helplessly while her younger brother suffered a horrendous illness in childhood, and was packed off to a stifling boarding school when her natural vivaciousness craved nourishment. I think my mother's innate need to stand out from the crowd, to be noticed, was at the root of her penchant for touching the lives of as many people as she could in a positive way.

I clearly recall the day, as a young woman, when my mother's greatest gift became apparent to me. I was standing on the doorstep of Mum's house, quietly watching as she comforted a physical therapist hired to help her regain her mobility after hip replacement surgery. Mum's regular window washer, Tim, joined me on the steps, and we both watched in silence as Mum offered gentle advice and a motherly hug to the young therapist. I made some silly remark to Tim about how Mum always had a ready shoulder for anyone who needed it. Without hesitation and with a dawning recognition in his voice, he said that it was because she was—and these were his words—“a universal mum.” Tim's declaration couldn't have been any truer, and as soon as he'd uttered the words, while they resonated around the cosmos, we looked at one another, nodded our heads, and smiled in silent accord. One of my mother's finest qualities lay in her ability to see strength in others. She nurtured many people, men and women, boys and girls, in a way that only a mother knows how.

An old friend, now a pilot, and one of the gang to whom my mother dedicated
Get Off the Unicorn,
contacted me recently, out of the blue. He made a point of telling me that Mum's confidence in him was probably greater than his own. I got the impression that my mother's abiding faith in his abilities to achieve what he set out to do were not shared by his own parents, or by anyone else, for that matter. Mum was benevolent by nature, and she made it financially possible for him to explore a new path in life, one that proved to be not only successful, but very satisfying. Her generosity is something he'll be forever grateful for and is a quality he's tried to emulate in his own life.

When I recounted the pilot's story to a school chum of mine, she shared a recollection of her own about Mum: that when we were teenagers, she loved going over to my place—eagerly looked forward to those visits—because the house was filled with music, laughter, tolerance, and fun. I think Mum would chuckle over that—she always felt it was the young people visiting her house who kept it full of laughter and music and love. It was an atmosphere that she cultivated—cherished—and one that made any who entered into it feel immediately at ease. It wasn't just the reassurances and hugs that made my mother a universal mum. She knew how to allow young people to be themselves; she had an innate knack for accepting everyone for who they were, not who they or their parents thought they should be.

An English literature scholar, who'd first met my mother more than half a dozen years ago, here in Ireland, wrote to me at the end of last winter. The scholar was due to give a talk on James Joyce at Trinity College, in Dublin, and with a few free days in hand before her work commitments began, she wanted to pay her respects to my mother—at her grave, no less. Where Mum chose to take her final rest is on a quiet, winding, narrow road, not really close enough to any major transport links, even though it's within a few miles of the town of Greystones. Because of its somewhat remote location, I thought it was a fitting gesture to offer to meet the scholar at the train station, just as my mother had done years before, and take her to Mum's new “home.”

The cemetery where Mum's buried is a wonderfully serene place, strangely lacking in the heaviness of grief, but full of light and bright, brisk air, nestled on high ground over the village of Kilcoole, and overlooking the sea beyond at Greystones. When the scholar had paid her respects—I'd removed myself a good distance and left her to do so in peace—we chatted for a while, and she told me how my mother's work had shaped her life and fueled her dreams. Our meeting was not, to say the least, a situation I'd ever found myself in before, meeting a fan for the first time over my mother's grave, but it suddenly felt familiar when she asked me a question that, once uttered, I could tell she'd been eager to know the answer to ever since we met at the train station:

“What was it like to be Anne McCaffrey's daughter?” she said.

The scholar was not the first person to ask me that question, and most likely won't be the last, and if I'd ever been any other woman's daughter, I might have a clue how to phrase a reply. But the honest-to-goodness truth was that she was just “Mum” to me. She badgered me to brush my teeth or eat my peas, disapproved of boyfriends she thought weren't good enough, entertained high aspirations for my future, grew exasperated at my lack of tact and abundance of ego, and generally behaved as every parent should—with the best interests of one's child at heart.

It's said that the maternal bond is very strong, and some would say that the bond between mother and daughter is by far the strongest. I have to admit that having only ever been Anne McCaffrey's daughter, I have a limited frame of reference, but during my adult life I've come to realize that Mum and I had a very strong bond indeed. This has become even clearer to me since she died and others have graciously recounted aspects of their relationships with their own mothers. Surprisingly, and sadly, more than a few people have told me that their experiences with their mothers were deeply flawed and unfulfilling. One woman admitted that it was a relief when her mother passed away because she no longer had to endure the burden of being a disappointment. Another woman told me that her stepmother means much more to her than her own mother. And my dear, close friend Derval, on whom Menolly was partially modeled, wept deeply alongside me when the woman whom she'd always felt was her “real” mother died peacefully in our arms. The bond between mother and daughter may be the strongest, but that connection doesn't always need to be biological. What Derval and Mum shared was just as strong.

When Mum started having children, like so many other women of her generation she took the advice of the revolutionary parenting guru of the day, the good Doctor Benjamin Spock, who encouraged parents to see their children as individuals and trust their own common sense and instincts. I guess Mum thought of kids as somewhat akin to water: we'd eventually find our own level. By the time I came along, my mother had already had a teen aged Hungarian foster son to knock the edges off the newness of motherhood, followed by her own two boys—who may have been the only kids on Earth who actively sought, and found, every bit of trouble ever devised. I think that most parents offer the least interference to their final offspring. After you've had a few kids, you tend to let nature take its course. I wasn't any less loved than my brothers (in fact, as the only girl I was highly favored, as I'm sure my brothers will avow), but I do know that my upbringing wasn't “managed,” nor was I mollycoddled. I know now, although it was just “normal” for me, that my mother gave me a huge amount of freedom to find my way and do “my own thing” compared to other girls.

I admit, though with a certain degree of chagrin, that I was a burgeoning adolescent before I realized my mother was no longer the person I should run to when every little disaster and minor trauma lurched across my path. I have a clear recollection of the day I cut my knee, and even though it didn't really hurt too badly, and I could have easily tended it myself, I ran to find Mum so she could kiss the hurt better and show me how important my pain still was to her. I knew that Mum was busy writing, and as I approached her office door I squeezed out a few crocodile tears, made the usual wailing sound that had always brought her to me in the past, and entered her office, calling her name in my best whiny voice.

“Ma! I hurt myself!”

With the briefest of movements, my mother took her eyes from her work and noted that my leg was still firmly attached to my torso and the blood loss was minimal. She immediately returned her attention to her typewriter as she quietly and firmly told me, “Go away. I'm writing.”

I knew then, in a rare preadolescent moment of insight, that my time as the “child” was done and that Mum would no longer entertain every little whim and worry I deemed important. So, as a whining moan began to rise in my throat, I quickly quashed it, dipped my head in apology, and silently backed out of the room, leaving my mother to far more important matters.