Lynda Cohen Loigman, THE WARTIME SISTERS
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[0:34]I'm here today with Linda Cohen Lloydman, the author of the two Family House and the
[0:38]wartime sisters.
[0:39]Linda was a trust in a state's lawyer before raising her children with her husband in
[0:43]the suburbs of New York.
[0:44]A Harvard college in Columbia Law School graduate, Linda is originally from Long Meadow,
[0:48]Massachusetts, near where the wartime sisters took place.
[0:52]So welcome, Linda.
[0:53]Thanks so much for coming on Momstone Have Time to Read Books.
[0:56]Thank you for having me.
[0:57]I'm so excited.
[0:58]So Linda and I are both sitting here in the middle of winter with colds, so bear with us.
[1:03]So little sniffly, but you won't mind.
[1:05]Yeah.
[1:06]At least we can't get you sick from the radio or whatever.
[1:10]So can you tell listeners what the wartime sisters is about?
[1:14]Yes, I will.
[1:16]It's always a little bit, describing this book is a little bit more difficult than with
[1:20]my first book because in a way it's almost two different things.
[1:24]So it's a family story, first and foremost, and it's about two sisters who grow up in Brooklyn
[1:29]and they are opposites, they don't get along, their parents sort of contribute to the
[1:34]rift that develops between them and they become estranged and then they are joined back
[1:39]again together at the Springfield Armory at the start of World War II.
[1:43]So it's also a home front story.
[1:44]So it's kind of those two different things.
[1:46]I think of it as a family story first and that's partly because of the way it came about,
[1:51]which I know we'll talk about, I'm sure, but it also really does involve that greater
[1:55]sisterhood of women who worked at the Springfield Armory during the start of World War II.
[1:59]Well, let's just go right there.
[2:01]How did the story come about?
[2:03]Well, so my mom grew up in Brooklyn, which, and I used that sort of setting for my first
[2:09]book, The Two Family House, but she moved to Springfield when she was 18 and she actually
[2:13]stayed behind her family for a few months because she was finishing high school.
[2:17]So when I went to write my second novel, I wanted to write another family story, I wanted
[2:22]to write about that sort of transition of a family from a big city to a smaller city and
[2:28]I wanted to write about somebody being left behind.
[2:31]And I kind of had this theme also of sort of the roles of childhood that were assigned when
[2:35]we're young and trying to break free from them and can you ever sort of escape from them
[2:39]if you're the smart one, you're the pretty one, you're the lazy one, you're the flaky
[2:44]one, whatever it is, can you ever sort of escape from them?
[2:46]So that was my starting point for the book.
[2:49]And I had this idea that I was going to have one character once we got to Springfield
[2:54]when the family moved.
[2:55]I was going to have one character who was going to be there and she was going to have
[2:57]this backstory of working at the Springfield arm major in World War II.
[3:01]And the armory, a lot of people I'm sure who are listening, have never heard of it because
[3:05]I grew up near it and I had really didn't know anything about it.
[3:09]But it was started like by George Washington, I mean, he commissioned it to have an
[3:13]arms factory in Springfield after the Revolutionary War.
[3:17]And so it has with this very long history and it's just a fascinating place in
[3:23]Durham World War II, of course, as we all know, with the Rosie the Riveter stuff, you
[3:27]know, so many women worked in the defense plants.
[3:29]And I started researching the army.
[3:31]I thought I knew what was going to happen and I thought I thought I was just going to
[3:34]have this character.
[3:35]I just wanted to know what job she would have.
[3:36]I was going to do like a little bit of research that was going to be it.
[3:39]And then I started listening to these recorded interviews that someone had the great
[3:43]sense to record of women and men who would work and live there during World War II.
[3:47]And when I started listening to them, I got so caught up in them and it seemed like such
[3:50]a fascinating place that I decided to set the book there and move the whole time period
[3:56]of my story back 20 years.
[3:57]So I was originally going to write this story in the 1960s, the early 60s when I'm
[4:01]mom moved and I decided to make it set at that World War II time period.
[4:06]So that's how it came about.
[4:08]It was the characters really came first and their conflict and all of that came first.
[4:15]And then the sisterhood of the woman at the armory kind of was layered.
[4:18]So in some of the audio recordings, did you hear about how to actually assemble the gun
[4:24]parts?
[4:25]I mean, it was so detailed.
[4:26]This is amazing.
[4:27]How does she know this?
[4:28]Like where is she been reading this?
[4:30]That was actually funny because well, so the interviews had women from all different, who
[4:34]had all different jobs and all different sort of positions that the army.
[4:37]That was what was so fascinating.
[4:38]So there was an interview with a woman who had put together triggers just sort of sitting
[4:43]at a table putting all the trigger parts together.
[4:45]And that is one of the jobs that I gave one of my characters, really one of the sisters
[4:47]has that job.
[4:48]And there was a woman who was an officer's wife who gave an interview and a teenager
[4:53]who had lived there, who was the daughter of an officer, somebody who took photographs
[4:57]for the armory newsletter, all different kinds of jobs.
[4:59]But that, knowing exactly what to do to put together triggers, I actually, I think I'm
[5:04]just like behind the times.
[5:05]I didn't realize, I emailed someone I went to high school with who I knew had gone to
[5:10]military school for college.
[5:12]And I was asking him about the M1 grand, the gun.
[5:15]And I've never, before I went to the army, I'd never held a gun in my life.
[5:18]I'm really afraid of guns.
[5:19]I'm not like to hurt him.
[5:20]And I'm one grand.
[5:21]So I'm probably with you.
[5:22]A grand.
[5:23]So a grand.
[5:24]So that was the rifle that all the troops used during World War II.
[5:28]And that was the rifle that they made at the armory.
[5:30]But I didn't know anything about them.
[5:32]And he said to me, he just emailed me back and he said, you can watch, there's lots
[5:36]of videos on YouTube.
[5:37]You can watch how to put it together.
[5:38]And of course, I'm so like a mind that I didn't even realize that.
[5:42]So I was watching these videos on YouTube over and over and over and over again to try
[5:47]to get the language down of the different parts and researching the parts and just to
[5:52]write one paragraph of how you take it apart and put it back together.
[5:56]But one, at one point I was on the train going to Boston to visit my daughter.
[6:00]I was watching a video of how to strip a gun on the train and I thought, oh my god, they're
[6:04]going to like that.
[6:06]Like a crazed, like that, I don't know, like the murderer or something, I don't know.
[6:10]I'm sure you're getting like the weirdest ads now, like you get straight to the ad.
[6:13]There's search history.
[6:14]Whenever you're a writer, your search history becomes very strange because you just
[6:18]think of things and you Google them and it just gets crazy.
[6:21]That would be an idea to do like an essay or a book about the people search history for
[6:26]novelists.
[6:27]Yeah.
[6:28]Yeah.
[6:29]I mean, I know like people always talk about how they research different poisons and things.
[6:32]Yeah.
[6:33]That's true.
[6:34]It would be fun.
[6:35]So in the book, I loved how you structured all your characters.
[6:38]They became just so real for me.
[6:40]And I love the scene between Millie, who's the younger sister and her dad when she was having
[6:44]all these doubts about her boyfriend.
[6:45]And she asked her dad, his opinion, he says, ah, mamala, I'm flattered that you want your
[6:49]father's opinion.
[6:50]But believe me when I tell you, you're asking the wrong person.
[6:53]And then he says, when it comes to love, nothing good comes of asking for someone else's
[6:57]opinion.
[6:58]And then you have to decide for yourself, which is so true.
[7:01]But I feel like we've all been in the situation where like, I feel like if you have to ask,
[7:05]it means something's missing, right?
[7:06]Do you ever feel like that?
[7:07]I completely agree.
[7:08]I think, yeah.
[7:09]I think it's difficult, you know, now I have a daughter who's 20.
[7:13]So, you know, like she's had boyfriends and things and she'll talk to me about things.
[7:17]But that's kind of different because she's so young.
[7:19]But when you start talking to adults, you know, when we were, well, I guess she's not that
[7:23]young.
[7:24]But when we were, I don't know, when we were in our late 20s and early 30s and friends
[7:29]of mine were getting married and stuff, it's hard to know what to say to people when they
[7:33]ask you about their relationships.
[7:35]Because if you really like the person, it's easy.
[7:38]If you feel like it's all going to work out, it's easy.
[7:41]But when you have reservations, it's really difficult to say to someone that you have serious
[7:46]reservations about the person that they're in a relationship with.
[7:48]I guess it depends on how close you are to the friend.
[7:51]But I'm not one for confrontation, I'm a very non-confrontational person.
[7:55]So I think it's a really tough thing to do that.
[7:57]I remember my dad told me once a friend of his had asked him when they were in college
[8:01]a really long time ago and he was friends with both of them.
[8:04]I don't know.
[8:05]They asked him and he said, oh, I think this is a terrible idea.
[8:07]It's like a constant.
[8:09]And they ended up getting married and then completely cut him out and then eventually
[8:13]they broke up.
[8:14]But it didn't matter because by the time they broke up, the friendships had been destroyed.
[8:17]So it's like, it doesn't even matter if you're right.
[8:20]You just can't say that, so it's real.
[8:21]And especially as a parent, it's hard.
[8:23]And as a parent, it's true because, I mean, again, my kids are too young.
[8:27]But I do have friends who were with someone and then they broke up and then they ended
[8:32]up marrying them.
[8:33]That's happened to the conference, but the family might not have forgiven the spouse during
[8:41]the breakup period and might have said things to the person during the breakup period.
[8:45]And then you can't take back all those things.
[8:47]You say when the people get back together again.
[8:49]It's so true.
[8:50]So it's a difficult, it's a really difficult thing.
[8:52]I'm not one to ask.
[8:54]I never asked anyone's opinions.
[8:56]But I'm just, I don't know.
[8:57]I don't ask anyone's opinions if I go shopping either, but I really need to get something
[9:00]if I need to get a dress for a certain occasion.
[9:03]Yeah.
[9:04]I don't want to go with anyone.
[9:05]I only want my own opinion of other people's opinions.
[9:08]Just get in my head and get me confused.
[9:11]And I think not that a dress is a serious as love, but I feel that way.
[9:14]I rely on my own counsel, I think, in certain parts of my life.
[9:18]I get dressed in the morning and I'm asking my five-year-old daughter, like, does this look
[9:22]OK?
[9:23]And this morning, she was like, I do not like that dress, so I change.
[9:26]So I like sending pictures from dressing rooms.
[9:29]I have no idea.
[9:30]I need to take a page out of your back.
[9:31]Well, for it, I mean, if it's just getting dressed for the day, I might ask.
[9:35]But you know, like, she was like something you needed for and it's a big deal, I don't
[9:40]know.
[9:41]Do you ask people about your writing?
[9:42]Like, when you're in the middle of a draft, do you send it out?
[9:44]Do you ask for people's advice?
[9:46]So yes and no.
[9:47]So I feel like I have to get to a certain point with it, where it makes sense and the person
[9:53]can see what I'm doing.
[9:55]I think if you just start it sending out too early, then again.
[10:00]and people can get in your head and kind of confuse you
[10:03]and maybe send you down the wrong path.
[10:06]I think you'd really need to know where you are
[10:09]in your story first and for me that I really need to know
[10:12]exactly.
[10:12]And there's, I just call it like a point of critical mass.
[10:15]I get to a point of critical mass where it's shaped.
[10:18]I know what it is.
[10:19]I won't be swayed from it.
[10:21]And that's the story.
[10:23]Of course, I will take criticism and suggestions
[10:26]about the different scenes, things that should be cut.
[10:30]Whatever it is, but the story has to get to a certain point.
[10:33]And do you have it all mapped out?
[10:34]You haven't outlined?
[10:35]Like, is it written or is it just in your head that way?
[10:36]It's my head, too.
[10:38]I'm not someone of the other yesterday.
[10:40]I didn't interview and I was asked if I used a white board
[10:42]and index cards and all this.
[10:45]I don't use any of those things, none of those things.
[10:47]It's just all in my head, which is bad because my head is bad.
[10:50]It's just like kind of constantly churning about things.
[10:54]I mean, well, I don't know.
[10:56]It's just the way that I do it.
[10:57]I can't.
[10:58]I will write down lists of scenes.
[11:01]OK.
[11:01]And that's when I get to a certain point in the book,
[11:04]I kind of know how the next 10 scenes will go,
[11:07]the next 10 chapters, whatever it is.
[11:08]Maybe it's a chapter or maybe it's just a scene
[11:10]and there might be more than one scene in a chapter.
[11:12]And then I'll make a list of what is going to happen next.
[11:16]But I don't ever really outline the whole thing.
[11:19]So how did you get into this?
[11:20]You were a lawyer.
[11:22]You wrote your first book, how many years ago?
[11:23]It came out in 2016, but I had worked on it.
[11:26]I was probably working on it since, oh, wow.
[11:29]2010.
[11:30]Yeah, 2010.
[11:31]2010.
[11:31]Oh, my goodness.
[11:32]And what made you start, right?
[11:33]Did you always want to write?
[11:35]Does it something you loved or did you do that?
[11:36]I loved it, but I never really did it.
[11:38]It was like one of those things where, theoretically,
[11:41]I would have liked to have been a writer, but I grew up.
[11:43]I grew up just in a very middle class family
[11:46]and western Massachusetts.
[11:48]I didn't know any writers.
[11:49]My mom was very practical.
[11:51]So her thought was you have to do something
[11:53]where you can support yourself because we're not going
[11:55]to be able to support you.
[11:56]You have to do it yourself.
[11:57]And you should be a doctor, a lawyer, or like an engineer.
[12:01]And so of course, I wasn't going to be an engineer.
[12:03]And I wasn't going to be a doctor.
[12:04]So that's sort of left lawyer.
[12:06]And lawyers sort of make sense for a lot of people.
[12:08]I think there are a lot of English majors who
[12:10]become lawyers and they're frustrated
[12:11]because reading and writing is your thing.
[12:13]So you think you're going to use those skills.
[12:15]And you do.
[12:16]But it's just to what end, what are you reading?
[12:19]And what are you writing?
[12:20]It's not the thing.
[12:20]It's not a novel.
[12:21]It's not an Victorian novel.
[12:22]Like, I want it to be reading it.
[12:24]It's the tax code or whatever it is.
[12:27]And I really didn't think that being a writer
[12:30]was anything practical that I could make a living out.
[12:32]So it wasn't anything that I ever thought about pursuing.
[12:34]But I practiced for eight years.
[12:37]I had my daughter.
[12:38]We moved out of the city.
[12:39]I worked part time a little bit.
[12:40]I was a legal recruiter for a little bit.
[12:42]And I just had this story in my head.
[12:44]The two family house was a story I had since my daughter
[12:46]was a baby in my head floating in there.
[12:49]And I used to talk to people about it
[12:51]and kind of tell the story.
[12:53]So sort of like an oral kind of story that I would tell.
[12:56]And when I would walk with my friends in the mornings,
[12:58]I would tell them the story.
[12:59]And then my mom passed away.
[13:02]And then I turned 40.
[13:03]And it was all these chain big changes in my life.
[13:05]And I knew that I just had to start writing.
[13:07]It was just kind of eating at me.
[13:10]So I took a class, started taking a class at Sarah Lawrence.
[13:12]And that was how I got started.
[13:15]And I took a class for almost six years
[13:16]for like five and a half years.
[13:18]Wow.
[13:18]And I wrote the whole book in that class.
[13:19]And then there was a seminar.
[13:21]And I got an agent at the seminar,
[13:23]which was some complete luck.
[13:24]And she sold the book.
[13:25]And I don't know.
[13:25]It was really lucky, really, really lucky
[13:27]how it all happened after the book was written lucky.
[13:30]But it was like six to 10 years of hard work.
[13:33]It was.
[13:33]I mean, it was.
[13:34]It just happened.
[13:35]Yeah.
[13:35]Yeah.
[13:36]Well, you know, there's so many novelists.
[13:38]And there's so many novelists who write so many books.
[13:40]And then there are seven or eighth book
[13:42]becomes The New York Times Bestseller.
[13:43]And they say, like, I'm an overnight success after.
[13:46]I'm an overnight success with my eighth book.
[13:47]Yeah, whatever it is.
[13:48]Do you have doubts or anything I've
[13:50]been hearing a lot about, like, second book doubt?
[13:52]Like, the second book doubt is real.
[13:54]Yeah.
[13:55]The second book is hard.
[13:56]I, for me, I had started working on this other book.
[13:59]When my agent was trying to sell the first book,
[14:02]I started working on a second book.
[14:03]And I was really excited about it.
[14:05]And I talked to her about it and showed her some of it.
[14:07]And she liked it.
[14:08]But she said, London, this can't be your second book.
[14:10]Because it was so kind of different from the first book.
[14:14]And she told me this after, I guess she had just sold the book.
[14:17]And she said, your readers will want blah, blah, blah.
[14:21]And I said, I don't know how many readers did they tell you?
[14:24]She said, no, you will.
[14:25]And it was kind of as soon as it came out of her mouth,
[14:28]as soon as she said it, I knew she was right.
[14:30]Because I was kind of just going down at completely
[14:32]different path.
[14:33]And that was really difficult.
[14:35]So that I kind of got into a point
[14:38]where I didn't write for a little while.
[14:39]Because first of all, I was really excited and nervous
[14:43]about the, and the publisher buying my first book.
[14:45]And then my second book, I was just like,
[14:47]I don't know what to do.
[14:48]I don't know what to do.
[14:49]What should I do?
[14:50]So I had this like 100 pages.
[14:51]I put it away.
[14:52]And I was trying to come up with this next story.
[14:54]And then I decided I wanted to write another family story.
[14:56]And that's when the sisters from the wartime sisters
[14:59]started brewing in my head.
[15:01]But getting to that point took me a little while.
[15:03]Do you have a sister?
[15:04]I don't have a sister now.
[15:05]And someone actually recently pointed out
[15:07]to me that it's really good that I don't have a sister?
[15:08]Because if I did, she would think I was writing about her.
[15:11]You'd be in huge trouble.
[15:13]Yeah.
[15:13]There was another great moment in the book
[15:15]that I thought was really beautifully written,
[15:17]when Millie has started debating befriending someone
[15:19]when she's in her armory life.
[15:20]You wrote, Millie had spent her first few months in Springfield
[15:22]trying to fit into her sister's life.
[15:24]She had folded herself up like a torn scrap of paper
[15:27]and over end, making herself small.
[15:29]She had tiptoed and whispered and confined herself
[15:31]to corners all the while, taking up
[15:33]as little space as possible.
[15:35]But she was done with all that.
[15:36]It was time for a change.
[15:38]I felt like this was like confessions of a summer house,
[15:40]guess.
[15:41]It's like when you try to like take up less physical space
[15:44]in the world that feeling like where to do sort
[15:47]of some in that image from.
[15:49]I don't know.
[15:50]I don't know.
[15:50]I really love that part too.
[15:52]I'm happy that you like makes me happy
[15:53]that you picked that passage.
[15:55]Because I do love that passage also.
[15:56]But I think that happens a lot.
[15:59]I think a summer house guest is a classic example.
[16:02]But I think it happens in marriages.
[16:03]I think it happens as a mother.
[16:05]Sometimes it happens whenever you kind of give up
[16:10]your own needs for someone else's.
[16:12]And at some points in your life, that's OK to do.
[16:14]And that's appropriate to do.
[16:16]And then at some points, it's not.
[16:17]And so in this case, she was sort of throwing herself
[16:22]at her sister's mercy for a place to stay.
[16:24]But there comes a time when she realized
[16:27]she had to make her own life, too.
[16:29]And she could not have any friends or not live
[16:33]a more fulfilling life just because her sister wanted
[16:36]to sort of have her be seen and not heard from her,
[16:39]whatever it was.
[16:40]I sent copies of the book to my mother and my grandmother,
[16:42]because we all like love to read.
[16:43]And I knew they would like the book, which they did.
[16:45]And my mother was like, you know, I really just
[16:47]wanted to tell Millie to get on with it.
[16:49]Like, stop worrying so much about her sister.
[16:51]Like, what's the holdup, you know?
[16:53]I guess it's just because she's living, you know,
[16:54]when you're living with someone, that's the holdup.
[16:56]Yeah, that's what it was.
[16:57]Of course.
[16:58]It's a power struggle.
[16:59]You know, it's a power struggle.
[17:00]That's why I think that happens in marriage sometimes.
[17:03]And with motherhood, I just think that, I don't know.
[17:05]I say, I guess I felt that way sometimes
[17:08]as a mother, that not that I was doing that,
[17:10]because my children were wanting me to,
[17:12]and they didn't even know they were little,
[17:14]but you do kind of give up your own needs sometimes.
[17:17]And self care just takes like a huge backseat
[17:19]and you're just like living your life for your kids.
[17:21]And you know, it's certain ages.
[17:22]Well, you have four children.
[17:23]I don't have to tell you.
[17:24]I'm like, yeah, it's hard, it's hard.
[17:28]There was a day where I was like,
[17:29]I can't remember the last time I sat down to eat.
[17:32]Yeah, I mean, like it was just like,
[17:34]it's just one of the things, like the kids, you know.
[17:37]Anyway, absolutely.
[17:38]I mean, that's like a tiny example, but.
[17:39]Oh, this great expression you have in the book,
[17:41]so there was this phone call that you were counted
[17:44]between Ruth, the older sister and her dad
[17:46]when she's urging him to be careful while he's driving
[17:49]and he says, because it was late at night,
[17:50]he says, oh, I never sleep anymore.
[17:51]And then he says, small children don't let you sleep,
[17:54]big children don't let you rest, which was great.
[17:57]I was like, I feel like I need to put an expression,
[17:58]put that on the board.
[17:59]I had not heard that before.
[18:01]Well, it's kind of a variation on little children,
[18:04]little problems, big children, big problems.
[18:05]So that's a very, it's a variation on that, I feel like.
[18:08]But this is different, it's different,
[18:10]because it's sort of what's required of you.
[18:13]It's the stakes are higher, the older they get,
[18:15]stakes are higher, and their pain becomes more real,
[18:19]and more relatable.
[18:20]And you can't control it, it's terrible.
[18:23]It is, I mean, now, so I have a 16-year-old
[18:27]and a 20-year-old and I remember very well
[18:29]when they were babies and when they were little
[18:30]and you know, when they're little, you don't sleep
[18:33]and they are little problems.
[18:34]And then when there's another expression
[18:37]that my mother-in-law always says,
[18:39]which is another good one,
[18:40]which is, you're only as happy as your least happy child.
[18:44]And I think that's true, it's not true for everyone,
[18:47]because there are some people who are really able
[18:49]to kind of take their role, their motherhood role
[18:54]and separate it.
[18:55]You know, there are people who can compartmentalize it.
[18:57]I'm not friends with any of them people.
[19:00]I don't know, that's just like, you know, I'm not,
[19:06]I have my friends and I from,
[19:08]so I live up in Westchester,
[19:10]and I was so lucky when I moved there,
[19:12]because my daughter started preschool at age two
[19:15]and I met this wonderful group of women.
[19:17]And there are like three or four of us,
[19:19]and we always say, we're the mothers,
[19:22]like there are two kinds of mothers,
[19:24]this is what we used to say.
[19:25]There were many kinds of mothers,
[19:26]but what we used to say was there are two kinds of mothers,
[19:28]there are the ones, so you're somebody's house
[19:30]and it's a group play date,
[19:31]and the mothers are kind of in one place
[19:33]and the kids are in the other, right?
[19:34]And you hear a scream.
[19:37]They're the mothers who run,
[19:38]because they think their children are being hurt.
[19:40]And then there are the mothers who run in
[19:42]and say to their child, what did you do?
[19:44]And that's kind of like, assume the worst,
[19:47]and like are just completely like fixated on,
[19:51]making sure that their children are gonna be,
[19:53]yes, people.
[19:55]You're gonna be nice,
[19:56]if I have to knock it out,
[19:57]yeah, call me in this out of you,
[19:58]and you have to...
[20:00]you know, whatever. And we were always the ones that ran in and said, what did you do?
[20:03]Yeah. So those are my people. So the people who can come to hurt mentalize
[20:08]are it's like a foreign thing to me, but I know there are people who can do it.
[20:12]I think it's a really healthy thing. I do. I was like, I could do it.
[20:14]Sounds great. I know. I wish I could. But I also think there's
[20:18]the thing about in terms of the kids that least happy kids, it's like they always know how
[20:23]to take turns. Like as soon as I get someone on a like better footing, like it's
[20:27]as soon as one of them is like in a good place. You know, it's like when you're, you know,
[20:31]I'm, I'm envisioning I'm doing this with my finger, which I don't can say, but like,
[20:34]but we know those magicians who balance a plus spinning plate on a stick. Yes. So it's like,
[20:38]once I get one kid swirling perfectly on the stick and I hand off the stick to focus on the next
[20:43]one, then of course the end of the play like breaks. So I can't, I took I can't. Well,
[20:47]with four, it has to be really complicated. I mean, I mean, it's still like this balance.
[20:53]Yes, but just the law of numbers. Yes. That's mean that it's harder than four than one, too.
[20:58]I'm actually even only talking about my older kids to be perfectly honest at this point. I mean,
[21:02]because my little kids, the little ones, you know, they're like, yeah, there's still too little,
[21:05]you know, the dog is sitting the wrong way in the bed. That's like a big deal.
[21:08]I think it's just that the older they get, the more you can relate to their pain.
[21:11]Yeah. It becomes more adult. It becomes more real. And you can't, they, they have to figure out
[21:20]their own things. You know, resilience is the most important lesson to teach them. It just is.
[21:26]So it's disappointments are so hard, but they do learn from them. And I don't know.
[21:31]And I feel like that's one of the themes of your book is sort of remounding getting through stuff.
[21:36]Like figuring out how to, you know, take what life is throwing your way and make something of it.
[21:42]I mean, they go through a lot of stuff in your way. They go through a lot.
[21:46]And I think it's also, you can't hold these grudges, you know, like with siblings or whatever it is,
[21:51]you know, you've wronged someone in the past, but you can't blame your relative. You can't blame
[21:56]your mother for all your problems. You can't, you know, you can't blame people. I try to explain it when
[22:01]my kids will say like what you didn't like being a lawyer, like, but your mom wanted me to be
[22:05]a lawyer, but I don't blame my mother. It's not like my mother forced me to be a lawyer.
[22:08]Right. I just, I wasn't sophisticated enough to figure out that I didn't have to be a lawyer.
[22:12]And that was kind of on me. You know, if I had really been kind of more aware and it was kind
[22:18]of a lazy decision, you know, to go to law school, it was lazy. Oh, well, you know, it was easy because
[22:23]you're in school and then you just go to more school. So if I had kind of taken the reins and said,
[22:27]you know what, I'm going to do something else, I'm going to research it and I'm going to figure out
[22:30]what it is, then it would have been a different path. So you can't, you know, you at some point,
[22:34]you just, you have to just kind of take responsibility for all the things that happened to you.
[22:38]So it's tough. And are you working on another book now? I am working on another book. So
[22:43]that book that was my second book that is not my second book. Yep. I have kind of changed it a lot.
[22:49]Okay. Added a different character. I'm not going to be my third book. So I'm really,
[22:52]really excited about it. I'm not quite ready to really talk about it too much. But in a way,
[22:58]it's an immigrant story that's set in the early 1900s. So it's even earlier than this book.
[23:04]And it follows two Italian immigrants and an Eastern European immigrant. And they all end up
[23:10]in Boston's North End. So yeah, it sounds like it's so different from the first two books. But
[23:16]it's actually, it's really all about relationships again. There is a pair of warring sisters who
[23:22]don't get along. So it has, I think that the people who liked my first two books will really like
[23:27]this one too. I don't know. I'm having a lot of fun writing it, except now I'm like having to
[23:33]research takes even all these crazy ways. So now I just like was reading a book about the Russian
[23:36]Revolution. Yes. I'm trying to figure out all of the reasons for why my Eastern European immigrant
[23:43]is leaving and how it's going to get to the North End and all these things. And so it's requiring
[23:48]me to have an understanding of the Russian Revolution or the pre, you know, sort of the early stages
[23:53]of it. And that's not really anything I've ever learned about before. So it's awesome.
[24:00]Yeah. Do you have any advice to aspiring writers? I think you just have to write.
[24:05]I mean, I think having a community is really important. I felt like a writer when I started
[24:11]my class. I think you need other people to bounce things off of. And I know it goes back to that
[24:18]question. Do I show people my stuff? But even if you're not showing people your stuff, just even
[24:23]to talk about the whole process with it's important to have people to come as a right with
[24:28]and other people who understand what it is to go through that process and to want to put a story
[24:34]on paper. So I would say definitely take a class, definitely, or find a writer's group, find some
[24:38]people who are doing the same thing that you're doing. And try to think of yourself as a writer
[24:42]because if you don't think of yourself that way and sort of legitimize what you're doing, then
[24:48]I think it's really hard for other people to think of you that way too. So that was a tough thing
[24:52]for me to start calling myself a writer. Well, I'll call you a writer. Thanks.
[24:56]No, because you know you have that imposter syndrome all the time or I did. So now that my second
[25:01]book is out, I'm like, finally, like, I guess I'm a writer. I can say I am. Okay. I think
[25:05]I think it's okay. I think it this way. It's okay. It's okay. Well, thank you so much for
[25:08]spending time. Thanks for having me. I have three books. I feel like I'm going to show up and
[25:11]like crash one of your friend group nights because you share your friend groups.
[25:15]Sounds awesome. I'm like, I can totally relate. You should tell me.
[25:20]Bye. Thanks. Today's episode was sponsored by cereal box. S-E-R-I-L-B-O-X dot com cereal box.com
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