What Doesn't Kill You (26 page)

“But this wasn't supposed to happen for another seven years,” she told me through her sniffles. You will be proud of me because I did not laugh, since I was supremely aware that what happens, and what's
supposed
to happen, can be so far apart you can't even see it in the distance. Then she looked at me with her tear-streaked face like she just wanted me to make it better. For the first time in ages I saw my little girl, looking just like she did the day she didn't get the part of Pocahontas in the second-grade play. So I held her, let her cry. And poor J.J., Lord love him, sat there patiently waiting. I winked at him over Amber's head and let her sob until she was through.

This time I did not quote The Fool's Guide to Motherhood. I quoted John Lennon—told her life is what happens while you're making plans and that she would be a wonderful mother, my son-in-law would be the best dad, and I would be the sassiest, hippest grandmother ever. Oh, and that I could already see Ron helping J.J. build the swing set for the backyard.

Would I want to change anything that happened? You bet your sweet behind. Because what doesn't kill you can really piss you off. But the problem is if you mess with one part, how does it change the others? Would I be where I am now if I had changed what happened then? I don't know. I'm not even supposed to know, and if I could have gotten here without going through all that mess, I'd be the first to sign up. But right now, I'm glad to be where I am, and to be with the people who surround me. And I'm writing it all down—there are probably a
few parts I'll need to edit out—so I can give my grandbaby a word or two of advice, not that they'll listen. Some things you just have to learn for yourself.

OK. Since I didn't give you the intimate blow-by-blow—so to speak—between me and Ron—I kinda felt like I owed you something. So here's the recipe for my Yummers. I know it's not quite the same, but it's all you're gonna get. Besides, you can have these for your very own, unlike my Ron—him I'm not sharing. Or you can make them for
your
special someone.

Enjoy!

 

¾ cup chopped nuts—
I like walnuts or pecans—think I'll change it up and try Macadamias or hazelnuts next time.

¾ cup dried cherries—
they're a little sweet and a little tart. Remind you of anybody?

1½ cups bittersweet chocolate chips

2¾ cups all-purpose flour—
no need for triple sifting—it's not that complicated

1 teaspoon baking soda—
not from the box that's been sitting in the back of the refrigerator forever

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened

½ cup granulated sugar

½ cup brown sugar packed—
light brown, dark brown—whatever shade you like your sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 eggs

6 ounces semi-sweet baking chocolate

 

I like to get organized first, find all my ingredients so I'm not digging around for the vanilla after I've got everything else ready and waiting. You did put it on the grocery list, right? Also,
dig out those cookie sheets. When was the last time you used those? Not counting supermarket slice, bake and serve cookies. Anyway, no need to grease the pans. There's enough butter in the dough to take care of it.

Start water in a double boiler. I'll tell you what it's for later. A rolling boil isn't necessary, but it should be hotter than from your tap. And preheat your oven to 375°F degrees. Now, it only needs to preheat for ten minutes, so if it's going to take you a half hour to get this together you can wait to turn the oven on, but remember to have it hot before you put your cookies in.

I give my nuts and cherries a rough chop. You want to leave them big enough so they're identifiable in your cookie. I combine them with the chocolate chips in a plastic container with a lid and give them a shake so they mix evenly. Set aside. Hint: leave the top on. It makes sneaking samples while you're working more difficult.

Combine the flour, baking soda and salt in a small bowl. Set aside. Beat the butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar and vanilla in a large bowl. I guess you could do it with a fork or whisk, but a mixer makes them a whole lot lighter and fluffier than your so-called hand whipping. Besides, you know you're out of practice. Add the eggs, one at a time and beat after each addition. Set aside.

OK, now it's time for the boiling water. Put the 6 ounces of semi-sweet chocolate in the top of the double boiler. Stir the chocolate occasionally until it's all melty and shiny—no tasting. I know it's hard. Yes, you can use the microwave if you must hurry this along—check the package of chocolate for directions. By now your kitchen is smelling like you're making something extra good (which you are). Let the chocolate cool a minute. This would be a good time to make sure the oven is on,
or clean up a little. I hate to get finished and have the kitchen look like a wreck.

Add that shiny, melty chocolate to the butter and egg mixture and combine until the dough is evenly brown. Gradually blend in the flour mixture.

Get out that old wooden spoon. Stir in your nuts, cherries and chips. This requires some elbow grease, but try to distribute the pieces evenly so there will be goodies in every bite.

Drop by rounded tablespoon-full onto your ungreased cookie sheets. The size of your cookies is up to you. I like mine around 2½-3 inches, but leave plenty of space in between. They'll spread a little.

Bake in your preheated oven for 9-11 minutes. Ten minutes is perfect in my oven. They'll look a little soft on the top, but they're supposed to. Let them stay on the cookie sheet for about 2 minutes, then remove to a plate or wire rack and let them cool. It's really hard not to start sampling during this step, but they're really perfect if you give them that little extra time. So start brewing your pot of coffee, making sure your vanilla ice cream is at just the right scooping temperature, or pouring that cold glass of milk. By then the cookies have firmed up but the chips are still molten. Yummers!

You should end up with 27-30 cookies.

Hint: The next day pop them in the microwave for 10-15 seconds to regain that just-baked taste. If there are any left the next day.

Dear Readers,

Telling Tee's story was a hoot—as close as we've come to a story that tells itself. We love her voice, her attitude, her honesty, her humor, her flaws and her flair for the ironic. OK we are biased, but as a character, we think Tee is terrific. It was great getting to know her. And we look forward to hearing what you think!

When we first came up with the idea for
What Doesn't Kill You,
we weren't exactly sure how it would work. We hadn't written in first person before, but from the start Tee was in your face. We felt a narrator would be too removed. People always want to know how we work together. Now we were planning to write not just together, but solely from a single character's point of view. Hmmm…Could we pull it off? We love a challenge, so we had to try.

Surprise! Channeling Thomasina Hodges proved easier than we anticipated. Seems she was a part of our collective storytelling mind that was longing to talk. Without much encouragement, Tee began to speak—about the disappointments, disasters, pitfalls and perils she had to maneuver through, past and over on her road to self-discovery. Had she been waiting her turn all these years (we know patience is not Tee's strong suit)? We don't know. But she was quite obviously ready to be heard.

Sadly, we are aware that an awful lot of Tee's journey is all too common in our current economy—some portions of her experiences have touched our own lives in a personal way.
Downsizing, foreclosure, outplacement, joblessness, redundancy, recession,
outsourcing, cutbacks, and the mortgage crisis
are regular headlines in the daily news. And all of those numbers and percentages that get tossed around represent folks trying to figure out how they're going to keep it together. Most of us either know someone whose life has been impacted by one or more of these realities, or are managing their own personal meltdown. It's rough getting through those times—definitely no joke. But as with all hard times, humor helps get us through it. Tee found out that while the situations and struggles will piss you off mightily, mostly they won't kill you. The process may toughen us up, make us stronger, force us to face bad habits that need our attention and find solutions we wouldn't have looked for without a push. And more than anything, remind us to appreciate what we have and to remember what is truly important in life.

Thankfully,

Virginia & Donna

 

http://deberryandgrant.com

http://myspace.com/twomindsfull

http://twomindsfull.blogspot.com

[email protected]

DeBerry & Grant

PO Box 5224

Kendall Park, NJ 08824

 

P.S. We enjoy meeting you so please check our website for our travel schedule, and updates on our movie news.

What Doesn't Kill You

Seeing Thomasina “Tee” Hodges dancing the night away at her daughter's wedding, you might be fooled into thinking that she has everything life can afford: a magnificent dress with matching high heels, an elegant hairdo, a beautiful family, and even a handsome younger man biding time to be by her side. But this external image conceals a more somber truth, as Tee internally struggles with the reality of a lost job and a deepening debt just waiting to catch up with her. Choosing to lie to her closest friends and family rather than accept the truth, or share it, Tee allows herself to spiral down into a deep financial and personal recess. But with her strong and humorous voice to guide the way, we witness as Tee pulls herself up by her bootstraps—proving to us, as well as to herself, that women are nothing if not tenacious, and that the strong bonds that we create in our lifetimes will help us survive in the end.

 

For Discussion

1. The first chapter epigraph quotes, “…all you can do is mop up the aftermath, dump it in a giant personal hazmat container and move on.” The topic of resilience is deeply woven into the fabric of Tee's story. Do you feel that it was her own strong character, the people around her or both that allowed her to pull through the adversity she faced?
   
2. How did denial facilitate more problems for Tee? She believes that you should “never let them see you sweat” (page 8), and acts accordingly, but that only deepens her debt and her troubles. Is this a common hurdle for people in distress?
   
3. What role does Olivia play in Tee's development? Does her idea of destiny eventually become part of Tee's religion as well? How does Olivia's parenting style differ from Tee's?
   
4. Both of Tee's important careers—at Markson & Daughter and To a Tee—help her make use of skills (label design and organizing) that she originally hadn't even considered marketable. What does this show us about jobs and careers? What are the authors saying about natural talents?
   
5. When Tee recounts her marriage, she distinguishes between the dreamy stage of love and the “reality portion that set in…The part about what's for dinner? Who's doing the laundry? And what time are you coming home?” Do you agree with this distinction? And how do you think that Amber and J.J.'s marriage managed to avoid that trap?
   
6. Discuss the Thanksgiving scenes present in the book—from the shared traditions of old to the addition of new members, like Ron and J.J. How was this setting important, both to establish a sense of time and a context for Tee's troubles?
   
7. When speaking of her parents, Tee comments, “We're all geniuses when it comes to playing the cards other people are dealt.” Do you agree that it is easier to solve other people's problems than your own?
   
8. In one particular scene where Tee is trying to analyze all her problems, she says, “…ignorance is not bliss. It just means that when life slaps you upside your head you can say, ‘Where'd that come from?' and halfway believe yourself.” How do you interpret this thought? Do you agree that ignorance is simply an excuse?
   
9. Why do you think that Tee keeps the truth from her own parents, even when she urgently needs their help? What did you make of her parents' reaction when she finally tells them the truth?
   
10. Tee leads a very solitary life—she voluntarily isolates herself from her parents, daughter and son-in-law, and eventually even from Gerald and the Live Five. She explains that throughout life, she has been betrayed by her closest friends, and rhetorically asks, “How do you know whom to trust?” Do you think that she ever answers this question for herself?
    
11. Two of the toughest downgrades in Tee's life involve her car and her house. She speaks of these luxuries as the measurements of her accomplishments. How do you feel that this materialism led her into the deep recesses of debt? How did letting go of material things allow her to concentrate more on herself as the ultimate judge of her accomplishments?
    
12. Discuss Ron as an example of entrepreneurship. Why do you think that Tee first rejected Ron? What about his final speech in her kitchen made her realize that she was wrong to dismiss him? And what in his demeanor set him apart from Gerald?
    
13. What Doesn't Kill You
    clearly shows strong ties and resonances between the different Hodges generations: Tee's parents, Tee herself, Amber and—at the end of the story—a new grandbaby. Tee admits: “Somehow when you become an adult, and have children of your own, it's easy to forget you'll always be your parents'
    child
    —and that their radar is as tuned to you as it was when you
    thought
    you got away with sneaking in past curfew.” How do parents play a role in our own personal development? And, likewise, how do they sometimes keep us from learning the lessons we have to learn for ourselves?
    
14. Tee sees herself as a voice from the past whose message serves as a warning to a new generation: “And I'm writing [my story] all down…so I can give my grandbaby a word or two of advice, not that they'll listen. Some things you just have to learn for yourself.” What does this say about the chronology of life experiences? What do you think of this end to the story?
    

A Conversation with Virginia DeBerry & Donna Grant

The title of this novel is borrowed from a classic adage, as in many of your other books, including
Tryin' to Sleep in the Bed You Made, Gotta Keep On Tryin'
and
Far from the Tree.
Why do you use expressions to title your books? Do you seek to reinvent them and make them relevant to our current lives?
We like expressions because they are familiar—whatever walk of life you're from—and the words are always wise and sum up a situation perfectly. Of course most of us don't realize that until we experience that 20/20 hindsight for ourselves.

 

What Doesn't Kill You
reads like a proclamation of independence. Although it's carried out by a woman, it seems like an important lesson for anyone—the lesson of living and working for your self-satisfaction. How do you feel that you've learned that lesson in your own lives? Are your careers as writers part of that self-discovery?

We think self-discovery is an ongoing process. It doesn't, or shouldn't, stop when you've reached a particular milestone…the eighteenth birthday, getting married, starting your career, having a child. Goals are OK, but life is not about the end game it's about all that happens before you get there; truly it's how you play the game that matters. We are on our own journey(s) of discovery, not only about writing but about as much other stuff as we can possibly experience.

 

In your books, you always explore the enduring relationships between women. In
What Doesn't Kill You,
you treat that topic in a different way—both giving due diligence to the bond between mother and daughter and acknowledging a woman's need to concentrate on herself. This is an especially important theme when it comes to financial well-being. Do you feel that it's an important message for women specifically?

Women must learn to take care of themselves—not just their families—because in reality, you are actually the only thing you can really count on.

 

Are any of the characters in the book based on people you know? If so, whom? Do you feel that the best characters are ones that the authors know in real life?

We actually try to avoid using people we know from our lives in our stories—it's not fair, and we mostly want to keep them
as friends! But there's a lot of Virginia in Tee's personality and demeanor and way too many of Tee's experiences. Virginia doesn't have any children, so no, there was no sleeping with the best man at her daughter's wedding, but many of Tee's post-employment dilemmas are ones Virginia knows personally—so we had a great “in-house” resource.

 

Another important choice of words from Julie comes when she tells Tee, “You know, Tee, you don't know what's around the next corner if you don't turn it.” Are these words that you have often had to say to yourselves? What is so comforting about a close friend assuring you that there will always be unpredictability to life?

It's hard to be brave all the time. Sometimes it is hard to be brave at all and, without your friends, to remind yourself that you have to keep putting one foot in front of the other, that “this too shall pass”—the journey would be so much lonelier and more difficult. We often quote the scene from
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
when they're on the cliff—the posse is hot on their heels. Butch suggests they jump. Sundance says no and is forced to admit he can't swim. Butch cracks up and says, “Are you crazy? The fall will probably kill us!” Then they hold hands and jump.

 

You don't conceal the fact that the friendship between the two of you began with competition, as you were both working in plus-size modeling. Eventually, you developed a successful co-authorship career. Does the strong friendship between Julie and Tee mirror your own? Is there a specific common ground that leads to strong bonds when two people share a competitive past and a common respect for one another?

Mutual respect and trust has got to be at the core of any thriving friendship, and that has always been the case with us. And we established early that although we were competition for one another, the contest would always be fair. Unlike Tee and Julie, professionally we were always on equal footing. Tee started off as more of a role model for Julie. We enjoyed allowing their friendship to grow, so much so that Julie later has lessons to teach Tee. The space to grow and change is a wonderful gift friends can give each other.

 

Toward the first surge of her new career, Tee mentions that she created a blog with ideas on organization where her readers could ask for tips, ask questions and make comments. Do you find that your own blog (twomindsfull.blogspot.com) is a place where you can connect with your own readers and reach your audience more directly?

We love having our readers connect with us via email, our blog and our MySpace page (myspace.com/twomindsfull)! We post topics that run the gamut from the serious to the ridiculously inane, but our favorite part is reading the comments—and frequently commenting back. We like the immediate, hands-on involvement. And yes, we do monitor our own blog and MySpace page—'cause we get asked that all the time. That's why we're sometimes slow to respond—it's all do-it-ourselves.

 

Why did you choose the end of the story to be dedicated to the future, the new generation created by Amber and J.J.? How do you feel that our own experiences help shape those of the next generation?

We have loads of readers that are a generation, even two, younger than we are. And we're always tickled when we hear
from them, in great detail we might add, about the things they learn from our books. When you reach a “certain” age, as we have, you have attained a “certain” wisdom—but that's nothing new, it's what has been happening with human beings on the planet from the beginning. So as storytellers, we are doing our part in continuing a cycle that's as old as life itself.

 

Your books have a great following with women and especially with book clubs. Why do you feel that the lessons you exemplify in your stories speak so loudly to groups and to women? Are either of you in a book club?

We believe that the truth of women's life experience—family, friends, mates, children, jobs, struggles, joys and everything in between, is a universal experience, one that transcends age or race.

 

Are you two currently working on another book together? Can you tell us anything about it?

Indeed we are—all we can (will) tell you at the moment is that, like so many of today's headlines, politics and scandal will be at the heart of the story. Will the past cast its shadow over the present forever?

Enhance Your Book Club

1. This book is primarily about organization—physical, emotional and personal. Write a “diary” entry about the sector of your life that you'd love to have a Mess Master come and sweep into nice, compact cubbyholes. Are there any ways that you can help do that yourself?
   
2. Tee taps into a small but viral underworld of reality television, that of the home makeover and DIY organizing. Do you agree with the organization of the renovated rooms? Do shows like these help their “customers” find a good balance between cleanliness and style?
   
3. Much of
   What Doesn't Kill You
   deals with careers—those that change, those that serve as models to others etc. Are you looking for a change yourself? Check out such websites as LinkedIn.com and careerbuilder.com.