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Episode 147—Meredith May on What Cracked Open Her Memoir, Nature as Parent, and Bees, Lots of Bees
132 Plays6 years ago
"The pleasure of reading a book is that it's reciprocal," says Meredith May (@meredithmaysf).
Meredith May, author of The Honey Bus: A Memoir of Loss, Courage, and a Girl Saved by Bees, stopped by the show.
The show is made possible by Goucher College's MFA in Nonfiction, Bay Path University's MFA in Creative Nonfiction and my monthly newsletter!
Keep the conversation going on Twitter @BrendanOMeara and @CNFPod. Instagram is @cnfpod.
Subscribe to the show and thanks for listening!
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Transcript
Introduction to Creative Nonfiction MFA Programs
00:00:00
Speaker
Here we are, CNF-ers. Did you know that the Creative Nonfiction Podcast is sponsored by Goucher College's Master of Fine Arts in Nonfiction? It sure is. The Goucher MFA is a two-year, low-residency program, online classes that you learn from anywhere, while on-campus residencies allow you to hone your craft with accomplishmenters who have pulled surprises and best-selling books to their names. The program boasts a nationwide network of students, faculty,
00:00:27
Speaker
and alumni, which has published 140 books and counting. You'll get opportunities to meet literary agents and learn the ins and outs of the publishing journey. Visit Goucher.edu slash nonfiction to start your journey now. Take your writing to the next level and go from hopeful to published in Goucher's MFA program for creative nonfiction.
00:00:52
Speaker
That all sounds good, right? Let's kick it. Well, how are you?
Podcast Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:01:01
Speaker
CNFers, I'm Brendan O'Mara, and this is the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I speak to badass writers, filmmakers, producers, and podcasters about the art and craft of telling true stories, chart their journey through this crazy world, and offer a few tips along the way to help you get the work done.
00:01:20
Speaker
Be sure to subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts and follow me on the show on Twitter at Brendan O'Mara and at cnfpod. You can follow the show on Instagram too where I post some great quote cards and audiograms from the show's deep bench. If you're feeling real friendly
00:01:39
Speaker
please leave review over on iTunes ratings work as well I'd love to see reach 100 just an arbitrary number 100 sounds pretty cool but it'll it'll take you it'll take you going that extra mile free but the
00:01:57
Speaker
This week, I have Meredith May. At MeredithMaySF across all the socials, she is the author of The Honey Bus, a memoir of loss, courage, and a girl saved by bees.
00:02:10
Speaker
if bees categorically killed Macaulay Culkin's character in My Girl, right? Isn't that what happened? Then bees saved Meredith. Anyway, speaking of love, I want to read an email I received from a listener this week. This was great. And if you want, you can email the show at creativenonfictionpodcast at gmail.com, and I just might read it on the air.
00:02:35
Speaker
Jeff, Jeff is his name, Jeff wrote in the subject line, loved the Blake Harris interview. For those who aren't familiar, that's episode 143. Jeff wrote, I learned a huge amount about him, way more than usual, quote, tell me about the book, unquote, standard interview. Thanks for the deep dive.
00:02:56
Speaker
Well, thank you, Jeff. That was great. That's always the goal of the show. Sure, we could talk about the book, but in order to make these conversations evergreen, we here try to talk about the principles around getting the work done, so while the book might be topical, the conversation is evergreen. I love that. That was nice. Made my damn day. My week. It made my week.
00:03:21
Speaker
The Creative Nonfiction podcast is also sponsored by Bay Path University's MFA in Creative Nonfiction. Discover your story, man. Bay Path University, founded in New England in 1897, is the first and only university to offer a no-residency, fully accredited MFA, focusing exclusively on creative nonfiction. Attend full or part-time from anywhere in the world.
00:03:47
Speaker
In the Bay Path MFA, you'll find small online classes and a dynamic and supportive community. You'll master the techniques of good writing from acclaimed authors and editors, learn about publishing and teaching through professional internships, and complete a master's thesis that will form the foundation for your memoir or collection of essays.
00:04:05
Speaker
Special elective courses include contemporary women's stories, travel and food writing, family histories, spiritual writing, and an optional, week-long summer residency in Ireland, with guest writers including Andre Debuts III and Hood, Mia Gallagher, and others. Start dates in late August, January, and May. Find out more at baypath.edu slash MFA.
Meredith May's Journalism Journey
00:04:32
Speaker
Okay, so Meredith May is here to talk about her career in her new book. She was at one point shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize for a long feature she wrote back around the time of the Second Iraq War for the San Francisco Chronicle. We talk about
00:04:52
Speaker
That, her book of course, and the toxic nature, we talk the toxic nature of the competition Olympics and how writing about someone else in another book cracked open her memoir for her. So here's my conversation with Meredith May. Give it up.
00:05:15
Speaker
I read it just over two days and it was just fucking amazing. I love it. It was so damn good. It is so damn good. And yeah, you crushed it. This book is amazing. Oh, wow. I thank you. I don't even know what to say when I hear things like that. It's just, you know, it's this odd thing. Like, you know, you're writing a memoir, but then once you do and once you turn it in, it's kind of like,
00:05:45
Speaker
Oops, what did I just do? And then when people talk to you about it, you feel like weird. Like, how do you know that? Like, you still have that inner feeling of like, how do you know so much about me? Even though you know you wrote the dang thing, it's just, it's this out of body experience. It is, it's gotta be, yeah, very, very weird that it's like, hold on, like, how do you know these inner secrets? And you're like, oh yeah, I kind of cracked myself open for 300 pages. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:06:15
Speaker
Yeah, I think we'll of course get to the book in detail, but I think what it would be kind of fun to start out with is actually what would happen, say your book is 321 pages, it's essentially what would be happening
00:06:34
Speaker
pages 321 through say 500 which is kind of once you broke free of of your of your of your home at that point and that's part it's just not within the scope of this book but it but it is part of the scope that led you down the road to being the writer you are and getting into journalism at school so how did you you know once you got to college you know what was your what was your path to becoming the writer you are
00:07:00
Speaker
Oh gosh. Okay. Let's do it because you know, you're not the only one who said, I, I wanted to know what happened after you, you know, you broke free of that situation. And you know, that's really all that stuff that happened after exactly to your point is what made me end up writing the book. First of all, I was always writing, even as a little kid, it was sort of one of my escapes.
00:07:30
Speaker
And you know, I would take my diary and I would sit in the closet with all the lights off, but I would light a candle. Super safe, right? But when you, you know, when you don't have parents paying attention to you, you get away with a lot of juicy stuff, but yeah. And I would just write in the closet and sort of, it just calmed me down. So I always, you know, I was really geared,
00:07:57
Speaker
toward becoming a writer. And, you know, my my granny was always the very practical one. And she said, well, you know, the only way writers make money is if they work for newspapers. And I thought, well, OK, that's that's what I'm going to do. I went to Mills College in Oakland and all women's school, small liberal arts school, which is really wonderful in that they did not have a journalism program per se.
00:08:27
Speaker
they had a few journalism classes, but they didn't have a major, they had a minor. And, you know, what was actually in hindsight, great about that is it forced you to think about not just I want to be a journalist, but what do I want to write about if I'm a journalist, and I had a very wise journalism teacher who became my mentor, like all through my writing career, we stayed in touch and
00:08:57
Speaker
I took all her journalism classes. She was the journalism program. Then what are you going to write about if you're a journalist? I thought, that's a really good question. I made my own major. That's a great thing about a small school is they let you devise your own path. I made a journalism major and I added a lot of
00:09:27
Speaker
internships into it. So I worked at CBS News in DC and had an internship there and I combined all these experiences out in the world. I worked at a TV station in San Francisco and those all really really helped me get entry-level jobs at small newspapers because I was very young but I had a little bit of experience. And then I just sort of made my way up
00:09:56
Speaker
little newspapers until I finally got my dream job. Like 10 years later, the San Francisco Chronicle hired me on a probationary two-year position, which means we'll give you a try, kid, but if you screw up, you're out. That's it. The funny thing is I had been applying to the San Francisco Chronicle.
00:10:24
Speaker
every year since I graduated from college, even though there was no opening. Okay. So I would just find out who the editor was and write this letter and send a few clips. And, you know, they must've finally just, I broke them down and they brought me in for an interview. And, and I joined newspapers at the, at a heyday. It was 1990. Yeah. 1999.
00:10:52
Speaker
when I got my job at the Chronicle. And it was a wonderful time. Newspapers had travel budgets. They had foreign bureaus. This was before a lot of the economic crashes. And I had the luxury to work on some very long stories and fly around the world, writing these stories about all kinds of just amazing
Impactful Stories and Pulitzer Nomination
00:11:22
Speaker
I got to investigate sex trafficking between Korea and San Francisco. I wrote about a doctor from California who gave up everything after almost dying climbing Mount Kilimanjaro and went there to build a hospital and just all sorts of really incredible experiences. The Olympics in Greece in 2004.
00:11:49
Speaker
I got to work on long form. I had an editor there who was in charge. He was called the long form editor. And he would have like maybe two or three writers under him. And his name is David Lewis. And I credit that guy with teaching me what long form was, what creative nonfiction was. I didn't know any of these terms. And he would sit down with me. I'd work on a story for maybe
00:12:20
Speaker
Uh, thinking of a couple, like I had worked on them for six months to a year, reporting, traveling, writing, and then sit down with David for two to six months editing and putting it into a structure with an arc and acts. He was a, he's a filmmaker. So he was teaching me how to write cinematically. And we had the luxury of time to do that. I was also at the newspaper long enough to watch all that go away. It broke my heart.
00:12:47
Speaker
So, yeah. Well, you were shortlisted for the Poulter prize. What, uh, what story was that for? Uh, yeah, that's the name of it. It was a series called Operation Lionheart. And it was the second goal for, and it was a story about a little boy named, um, Salah.
00:13:09
Speaker
who was about nine or 10. And he picked up something in his hometown. He thought it was a toy. It was a round something. And it was some kind of explosive. And he lost his hand. He lost an eye. And the worst injury, actually, though, was the lining on his abdomen. And he almost died, but his father raised him to
00:13:38
Speaker
an Air Force base and, you know, was screaming in Arabic. It was an American Air Force base. And there was a doctor who spoke Arabic and understood. I mean, they first thought he was a suicide bomber, which was very scary. But they worked all night, operated on the boy and they didn't think he was going to survive. But they said to the father, we'll try just to give the father peace of mind that he tried. And he survived.
00:14:07
Speaker
but then there was no long-term rehab in the middle of the desert. So the doctors got on the phone and the only place that offered to take this boy for free was Children's Hospital, Oakland in California. And so a photographer, actually the hospital held a press conference about this and a photographer and I ran to the hospital and then after, you know,
00:14:36
Speaker
the microphones and the lights were put away and they're folding up chairs. We asked if we could go visit the boy in his hospital room. I think this was before HIPAA, but we went in and the father was there and there was just this incredible moment where we walked in and the father just removed the blanket and I'll never forget it. Salah was so tiny and sick and
00:15:05
Speaker
Immediately, I thought of this moment when I was a little girl and I found a little bird that had fallen out of the nest. I lifted it up and it was just not going to make it. His body looked like that. His head looked so big and his body was so folded in. I had to step out of the room and I said, just a minute. I cry all the time now, but back then I was a little more shellacked and young and had more bravado.
00:15:34
Speaker
I just kind of had a little mini meltdown in the hallway. And then I said, okay, we gotta follow this kid. So for a year, we wrote about his recovery, his life in Oakland, California. I mean, coming from a war-torn area of the Middle East, I mean, that was really interesting watching him at Justice School. And the story kept changing as time went on because what happened was back in his hometown,
00:16:04
Speaker
His mother, I'm sorry, his mother was in danger because people were thinking, well, why does this one boy get all this expensive American medical care? So they thought that the family were spies for the Americans. And so she had to go on the run with two little girls. And she was pregnant because people were coming after her. So she fled the country. And it was very dangerous. And we actually flew and met her at the border.
00:16:34
Speaker
to follow that whole piece of the story and then came back on the same plane with her. And it was just, it just kept changing and changing and it was super dramatic and scary, but it was a way into the war that hadn't been, like the war hadn't been humanized. I mean, it was when George Bush wasn't even allowing, or he got really upset when they were photographing coffins with American flags draped on them, right?
00:17:04
Speaker
there was such a lockdown on that war. And so this was like, for some people, some of the first sort of humanization they'd seen about it. So that was the story. And Diane Fitzmorris, the photographer, she won the Pulitzer for photography, which was so great. I mean, the lead shot of that series was
00:17:30
Speaker
Salah in the hospital room when we walked in. So we were there for a lot of his surgeries. We were in the surgery room. At the time, they were removing shrapnel from his brain. People who were involved with Salah's life understood we were doing a really serious long-form look at this boy. And once they realized we weren't just in and out on a daily deadline, they'd give us incredible access. And so
00:17:58
Speaker
I was shortlisted for the Pulitzer for the writing portion, but I didn't make the final cut. It's amazing to even, I mean it stings to lose of course, but it's also like when you kind of reframe it, it's just like you realize that just being in the conversation is kind of a victory unto itself given
00:18:19
Speaker
You know, just the subjectivity of judges and everything, but were you able to process that as a victory unto itself, or were you like, shit, I wanted to win. Oh gosh.
00:18:34
Speaker
Uh, yeah, at first I was like super shit. I was just so upset. Like, yeah, like, you know, eat a pound of chocolate. Damn it. Cause you don't know if you're going to get another chance again. Like that could be like, you know, it's, you never know, but it's just like, wow, you never know if you're going to get a story that juicy again. You're like, damn it. This was my chance and shit. Yeah. I, you know, when I was younger than this and, um,
00:19:04
Speaker
You know, it was 2007 and to me it mattered a lot then, but I did, you know, now I'm, I'm, I'm not in the competition Olympics anymore. And it's real easy to get into it, especially in that field where you're on daily deadlines. So you're competing with yourself, but you're competing with, you know, the other competition, the other newspapers and the other TV stations and you know, now with like,
00:19:34
Speaker
you know, online news as well. I mean, it's just a constant looking over your shoulder about how to get noticed and how to be first. And it's really quite crazy making. I've sort of blossomed out of that. And I feel like what really matters is not the, you know, the plaque on the wall or anything. It's that I had that experience and it informed me as a person,
00:20:01
Speaker
And it really helped when I wrote actually my first book, which also had to do with the Middle East. It was an incredible background. And that led to another project that was even, you know, so now I can see why things happen and what's important about them. And it's not the, you know, the fleur-de-lis or the, you know, the fancy little, you know, cherries on the top of the sundae. It's like the sugar in the whole thing.
00:20:31
Speaker
Is is what you want, you know, you want the essence of the thing not the showy
00:20:38
Speaker
tree topper, you know? Yeah. It's amazing that it's actually really great that you were able to blossom out of that toxic competitiveness before like social media really took hold. Yeah. That seems to be a force multiplier of jealousy and competition because it just feels like everyone's winning and you're just wallowing in shit. And it's so easy to lie about your winning, you know, with not being checked.
00:21:08
Speaker
Yeah, it's amazing. When you were thinking back to those times and probably even today to some extent, what is your relationship to competitiveness and even jealousy and looking over your shoulder? How have you learned to deal with that? I guess I've learned the hard way that what you think of as failures or disappointments are not actually
Challenges and Growth in Memoir Writing
00:21:37
Speaker
that literal. What they are are their very important pauses in how you think about things. Because I've had more experiences with failure and then years later I understand why it wasn't the right moment at the time for me to get what I wanted. Either I would not have appreciated it, I wouldn't have understood it, or I wouldn't have used it for good. I would have used it for my own
00:22:07
Speaker
I can give you an example of that that would make the sound less esoteric. And that is the memoir that's coming out now took me 10 years almost to get to this point. And I had so much rejection with it. And I love talking about it because I think when people see the pretty book and the cover is so
00:22:35
Speaker
Yeah, it really is. You know, they just see it and it's shiny and yellow and glowing like an ore and everything's happy about it. But it really it was a lot of I didn't know how to write memoir. Obviously, it was just so much no. And that's what is the amazing thing about that it even exists is that I somehow
00:23:04
Speaker
was able to navigate everyone telling me, this isn't gonna work, this isn't good. I mean, beyond just my inner monkey monologue, what happened is the first version almost sold. The first version was you really just, I'm mad at my parents' memoir. And so a lot of it was, you know, the chapters were like exhibit,
00:23:31
Speaker
A, B, C, D. These are all scenes of things most of my mother, but my parents did that are awful. And isn't this dramatic, like, glass castle? And shouldn't you love me for telling you? And shouldn't you also feel my pain? I mean, I was so in love with my victimhood that, you know, I thought that's all I had to do was tell you about these awful things. And you'd say, oh, honey, please come here. Let me give you a hug.
00:24:01
Speaker
You know, and it was, I needed to do that. It was therapeutic. It was part of why, you know, that is a part of why I write them out. Of course, every memoir's got, you know, something, but it's not that interesting, right? On some level, we're all sort of pissed off at our parents, you know? So why do you want to read about someone else who is too, right? That was the first version. And
00:24:26
Speaker
There were about a dozen, my agent sent it to about a dozen editors and there were a couple of nibbles, but no bites. That was another one of my moments in my career where I had to have a whole day full of chocolate. Six months later, one of the nibbles came flying back in with an offer, but had nothing to do with my book. And this was, they wanted a ghost writer for
00:24:55
Speaker
This other story, it was a story of an Iranian child. This is my first book called I Who Did Not Die. So this was a story of an Iranian child soldier who was supposed to kill, he had orders to kill anyone he found in an underground bunker. This was after a battle and this was the first Gulf War. And he found nobody alive except for one guy and he couldn't bring himself to shoot him. And so he hid him behind, he made a wall of dead bodies
00:25:26
Speaker
hid him behind it and nursed him back to health over three days. And then they both went their separate ways. They're both captured, both prisoners of war. The injured guy was 17 years in prison. And then, spoiler alert, if anyone wants to hit pause, but this is why the book is interesting. 20 years later, they sat down next to each other in a center for torture survivors in Vancouver, Canada.
00:25:56
Speaker
And yeah, the reason they were there is the Iranian had PTSD and he had just tried to commit suicide. The Iraqi was dropping his father off, but they lived, they didn't even know it. They lived 20 minutes apart. They had never known each other's name. And in this beautiful way, the Iraqi got to save, return the favor and save the old kid who saved him.
00:26:22
Speaker
And now they're like brothers. They see each other all the time. The Iranian felt like he had a reason to live again. He's never been suicidal since. This is an amazing story that I was perfectly positioned to write because, well, A, I needed a job and I was really sad. My book didn't get picked up.
00:26:50
Speaker
I felt like I understood a little bit about that part of the world having done the other newspaper story. I was Operation Lionheart and I understood a little Arabic. I had been to that part of the world. And so I flew to Canada to meet the men and brought copies of the Chronicle article with me and showed them, especially the Iraqi man started crying because he just
00:27:18
Speaker
recognize that in himself. So it was amazing that I did not win the Pulitzer Prize, yet that book unlocked the door and got these men to trust me because they had been approached and especially the Iraqi was not wanting to talk, but that story unlocked him for me. So that led to that book.
00:27:47
Speaker
And then once I wrote the book, I did it, I wrote it as a memoir. I wrote, I used I and Me, but I was writing as the men. And the chapters alternate from their points of view. So it's like Irani and Iraqi, Irani and Iraqi. Once I had done that, then I picked up my manuscript again in my memoir and I knew immediately what was wrong with it because I was able to write
00:28:15
Speaker
someone else's story because that's what I do. But I couldn't write my own until I had had that experience and understood why mine wasn't working. Because I wasn't writing with interior monologue and reflection and honesty and I wasn't going all the way with it. I was still being protected, protecting myself.
00:28:40
Speaker
But when I'm doing it for someone else, you know, it's, it's their story. So I don't know. I'm more open, more free. So all of that failure helped me finally get where I wanted to be, but I wouldn't have done it. I don't think, you know, if, if one of those early editors had said, yes, I would have been so happy, but I would have been so ashamed of that book if it had been published the way I'd written it originally.
00:29:08
Speaker
Yeah. So when you were able to approach the memoir again after having done that other book experience, what was the main change? Where did you direct your focus versus that initial draft that was more cathartic for maybe for you to write but ultimately not great for a reader?
00:29:31
Speaker
writing the men's stories made me realize is that a book needs a higher purpose. A story needs a higher purpose beyond just it's my story and isn't it interesting or it's my story and I want to write it so I'm going to make you read it. There's got to be something the reader, the reader is going to get out of it. I mean the pleasure of reading a book is that it's reciprocal.
00:29:59
Speaker
I didn't have any reciprocity in my first version. And what I realized is I had been focusing on the negative with my book. I had been focusing on what was missing for my life and what a survivor I was, right? For getting through all this without having a stable platform. But what I wasn't writing was
00:30:24
Speaker
I was saved in the most amazing way by my grandfather and his honeybees.
Bees as a Metaphor in 'The Honey Bus'
00:30:30
Speaker
And the connection between the dysfunction in my family and then the uber function of a bee colony is what pulled me through it. And that is really interesting. So as soon as I realized that and focused on that, how nature
00:30:52
Speaker
can be in some ways apparent. It became really, really unusual and quirky and cool and deep and fun and surprising and uplifting. And that's something that that's the paycheck for the reader and me too writing it. You know, once I moved on beyond my childhood was cursed to actually was quite blessed. I became even happier person.
00:31:21
Speaker
Was the early, like your first draft, did that not even touch the honey bus and your grandfather and the bees at all? Yeah, they were there like, um, spice in the recipe. They were, they were popping in and out as, as kind of cool creatures. But no, I had not made the connection metaphorically between bee society and
00:31:47
Speaker
a family society, like the social living of bees and what you can learn about how to be a good person by watching them. I hadn't made those connections yet. I actually, well, I started writing the book in my MFA program at Goucher College and that, and I didn't get bees again as an adult until 2011.
00:32:18
Speaker
when I put two beehives on the roof of the San Francisco Chronicle. And so I wasn't mature enough about bees and about my own processing of my own childhood to write the book that's out now. So I really started this memoir before I think I was emotionally ready for it. And that's another reason why it took so long.
00:32:45
Speaker
Did you see this video, um, of a little dachshund in the whole bee garb makeup with the screen, the veil and everything to sniff out like bad hives before it can take over an entire colony? Yes, I did. And that's that, um, like six years ago, there was one that was like a chocolate lab in, or in a bee suit, like a dog bee suit. I mean, it's not like it just happened.
00:33:11
Speaker
But I guess it's making the rounds again on social media because I don't know, the suit's cuter because it's smaller. But yes, dogs can smell foul-brewed and other diseases because, I mean, you and I can smell it too, I guess, but I guess they can catch it before we catch it. It is stinky. It smells like rotting meat because what happens is the larva, when the hive gets it, the larva liquefies.
00:33:41
Speaker
in the in the cells so before it you know so it obviously doesn't emerge and it just kind of rots back there but yeah yeah of all the the cool things that that the that bees are capable of it makes me think to like Cy Montgomery spoke the soul of an octopus too
00:34:05
Speaker
Love her. Love her. She blurbed my book too and is so excited. She's great. She's been on the show and when she came to Eugene on tour on another speaking round, I actually met her here and just hung out and had lunch with her. She's amazing. Oh my gosh, I'm so jelly. Yeah. I'll never forget in her soul of an octopus that
00:34:35
Speaker
Octopuses, it's not octopi. That's the first thing I remember They hug you, you know when they get to know you and don't see you for a while you come back They like reach their arms out and and and put their suckers on you and may change color depending on Yeah, unbelievable
00:34:55
Speaker
Yeah, it's this mollusk, and no one ever thought of something of that nature would have some sort of consciousness. And so that made me think of the bees, too, in the way that you don't think of an insect having that kind of higher level thinking. And they totally, after you read your book, you realize that they have all these complex dynamics. I'm sure a lot of people know that they dance, but there are so many other things that they do to
00:35:23
Speaker
to make the collective greater. I'm so glad you said that because I was very careful to try to put things in the book that only a beekeeper sees because it's so easy to slip into cliche when you talk about bees and industriousness and busy as a bee.
00:35:47
Speaker
Or yeah, the dancing is pretty common although you can't write a book about bees without mentioning that they dance but I was trying to yeah pick things that Kind of blow my mind that you never hear about or see that do make you go, huh? Are they thinking about that? grandpa and I were Working the hives and it started to rain and bees hate bad weather they stay inside unless it's like nice and sunny and no wind and
00:36:15
Speaker
it started to rain and one of the frames covered with bees was on on the ground and it had been out there for a while and it started to rain so we were putting all the frames a hive box has either eight or ten wooden hanging frames in them and in our frames have the honeycomb and so we were putting them back together and then we
00:36:43
Speaker
looked over at the one that was still on the ground, and the bees had aligned themselves all, like in military precision, all in rows, all facing the same direction, and they'd locked their wings together like Spanish roof tiles, and they were making an umbrella over the nursery, like protecting the eggs from the rain. And it was just like, what are they doing?
00:37:12
Speaker
How'd they know to do that? How did they know to do it so quickly? And how did they all get in the same formation when we had our heads turned for a second? It was so wild. And then the loving thing about it is that they were putting themselves in the way of the rain. They knew enough that the eggs needed more protection than they did. They were more precious than them.
00:37:40
Speaker
And you know, how long would they have stayed like that? I don't know if they would have made it, right? If we left them out that way. So they were willing to die for their babies, maybe? I don't know.
00:37:50
Speaker
Yeah. Another thing too, just the entomology of the bees is when the queen is dying and they decide to make through their various processes, turn a larva basically into a queen and then there are several queens and then the queens go on, they go on a killing spree to kill the other queens.
00:38:14
Speaker
It's like you think of these things as these like beautiful like communes, but then it can get downright ruthless, too. Oh, for sure. And, you know, the queen is the only bee that can sting repeatedly in the hive. The males don't have stingers. And then the worker bee females have barbed stingers. So when they sting, the stinger pulls out and they die. But that's why the queen has
00:38:42
Speaker
smooth stinger is because if she ever needs to like kick some ass in the hive
00:38:51
Speaker
Hey, hey, what is the meaning of this? Well, I want to say that this episode is also brought to you by my monthly newsletter. Oh, yeah, that's right. On the first of the month, you can get a tasty bit of goodness sent right to your inbox. My reading recommendations for the month and what you might have missed from the world of the podcast. Visit Brendan O'Mara dot com. Once a month. No spam. Can't beat it. Now back to the
Family Dynamics and Influences
00:39:21
Speaker
show.
00:39:21
Speaker
When you were writing this book and you were getting and it and the focus took it went more to your grandfather and to the bees and and then I wonder especially at this point like you are when you when you moved out out to California from Rhode Island your grandfather was rough in his low 50s I think it might have been if I'm remembering right about 51 or so
00:39:48
Speaker
And now, you're not 50, but you're about the same age as your grandfather was when you moved out there in the mid-70s. Yes. Did that ever cross your mind as you're approaching his age when you really started to live with him? You're like, oh, wow, this is this weird connection. Can you imagine what it must have been like for him basically being the same age as you are now, getting this new brood?
00:40:14
Speaker
Like coming to his house and that that kind of connection did that ever sort of like just Joggle around in your head as you're right. Oh, yeah that about Two years ago that started clicking with me and it was a Beautiful time to click because that was helping me and like the last few miles of the marathon with this book because I could write about him
00:40:42
Speaker
in a way that was so much more compassionate and understanding of what he might have been going through. But really what it helped me understand is figure out which moments and conversations to include in the book that we had. Because now I can see what he was doing. Like he would just be
00:41:11
Speaker
talking to me about, I'll give you an example, scout bees and what they do. And up until I got to be about his age and, and realize, wow, what would that be like to have a, you know, a five or six year old just suddenly wander into my life, you know, and not even know that she needs help, you know, our guidance and, and how would I, and I'm, you know, I'm not biologically her, you know,
00:41:41
Speaker
grandfather, I'm her step grandfather. And, you know, he had to sort of tiptoe around my really volatile mother, and his wife who was like my mother's bouncer, you know, so he had to help me without them really noticing and sort of take charge without looking like it. So that's why a lot of our conversations happened inside the old World War Two army bus that
00:42:09
Speaker
served as this honey house in the backyard. And, you know, going back to the scout bees, he would just tell me what scout bees do. And scout bees are the ones that leave the hive when there's something wrong with their house. You know, it's too crowded or too drafty or too damp. And they'll start scouting the neighborhood for a new place to move to, to swarm to. And so he would talk to me about
00:42:38
Speaker
how sometimes your house isn't the best house for you and you need to go out and look for a new one. He was explaining to me what scouts do as if we're just having a little conversation about these really cool bees. It's lodging somewhere in my brain. What he was doing was giving me a sense of initiative and nothing comes unless you go out and get it yourself.
00:43:08
Speaker
and that sometimes your situation is not great, but if you know you can make it better if you're patient and work hard, all those lessons are like somehow bubbling in my brain and it's not until I'm his age and I'm like, wait a minute, that's what he was doing. And then that helped me figure out what the scenes need to be in the book and to do them in a way that
00:43:34
Speaker
makes the reader feel like they're figuring it out as well. Because I'm also figuring it out in live time. And it made it a more multifaceted book with a lot of layers to it. And that's what I mean when I was trying to pick B moments that are significant. One, just in terms of the cool things bees do that you might not have heard about, but also significant in what they
00:44:03
Speaker
how they can also apply to humanity and to helping a kid. Yeah, I imagine it was probably hard for you as the writer of this not to be heavy-handed with the B metaphors because if you didn't handle them as well as you did, it would just be like, okay, that's very obvious. But the way you handled it was such great subtlety that
00:44:27
Speaker
You know, I could pick it up like when he was talking about the Scalpies. I'm like, okay, this is him talking in code, telling his granddaughter who like whom he loves so much, but he can't like meddle too much, but he can speak this other little language about Scouts and be like, you know what? You need to start considering because no one's given you permission to even consider a life outside of Carmel Valley and what you and that and that very sort of
00:44:53
Speaker
that toxic atmosphere and he's like telling you, you know, through these that, you know, you do have to start exploring and considering a life away from this hive, so to speak. Yeah. I mean, he was the only one who would ask, you know, well, what are you going to do after this? And, you know, it kind of didn't occur to me that, oh, I don't get to live with grandpa forever. You know, there are things out there beyond
00:45:24
Speaker
that he was just kind of scratching me to start thinking about. And, you know, he was always the one who was outdoors. He was down way in some remote canyon in Big Sur. And my mother and my grandmother were in the house all the time. And there was just this huge difference in the way the two lived. And I really appreciated Grandpa for taking me out and taking me around and giving me a sense of
00:45:54
Speaker
There's something out there. There's really beautiful places out there and adventure out there. You don't have to stay here if you don't want to.
00:46:03
Speaker
Another part of the book that I found, of course, very touching is the relationship you have with your brother. You two are just bound in the circumstances that you were raised, and I'm trying to tiptoe around the things in the book, too, because I don't want to give too much away about the circumstances under which you grew up. But how did you bond with your brother, and how did that relationship really galvanize
00:46:31
Speaker
given where you guys came from. Yeah, Matthew and I, I mean, when I'm just smiling right now, like when I think of my brother and, um, you know, we, you know, we were the, we were obviously the only ones having this very unique experience, but, um, you know, we kept each other company and, um, I think as we got
00:47:02
Speaker
older. I'm struggling a little bit because we have very different personalities and reacted in very different ways to what was going on. My brother became very quiet and also because he was living
00:47:26
Speaker
He was not in the house as much as I was. I'm trying not to reveal too. I'm figuring out, but I'll just say, yeah, one of the things is, you know, he lived in a trailer on the property. Um, you know, my grandparent, my grandmother's wisdom, she thought that would be a good idea in this little kid in this very cold night trailer. I mean, so he, uh, I,
00:47:50
Speaker
I was in the house, I was in my mom's orbit a lot. I was sort of the focus of my mother's disappointment. And I was sort of the buffer between her and my brother. So he retracted, he deals with it by closing up. And I dealt with it by being
00:48:18
Speaker
an overshare, an overachiever, like constantly on the run. And I had lots of little friends and, um, I would just be super charming, um, and get invited for dinners and sleepovers. And I had like toothbrushes scattered all over Carmel Valley. Um, and that's how I was always gone, you know, and that's how I dealt with it. So we're very different, but as we've gotten older,
00:48:46
Speaker
and started sort of talking to each other, especially when I started writing the book, I would say, do you remember when or, you know, and he's read a lot of the passages in it. And our mother, our grandpa, well, grandpa, granny and mom all passed away between 2015 and 2017. So in dealing with that, we've come together more. And so now that we,
00:49:14
Speaker
the book has really done this lovely thing where it sort of cracked him open a little bit. And he will start talking. You know, I'm very gentle with him because he was only two when all of this happened. So it affected him in a very different way than it did me, even though it was only a two year difference. And he's very shut down. But he's also very funny. And we use humor a lot to try to process
00:49:44
Speaker
things that happened to us. So we will retell the stories in a funny way, or he'll make a joke about the way my mother said something or did something and, and how outrageous it was. Um, and that, that helps that really, really helps. And so, um, that's one of the lovely things I like about this book is that I think it's helping my brother in a lovely way. He works at Apple and, uh, then,
00:50:13
Speaker
This is someone he knows really well as a work friend, but then the next day the work friend said, we gotta go to lunch, we gotta talk. Are you okay? And honestly, my brother told it in a way that he was impressed that someone would care that much about him and wanted to talk to him and sort of have a little mini therapy lunch with him. He was embarrassed by it, but I could tell he felt loved by it.
00:50:44
Speaker
And I like that the book is doing that for him and maybe it might help him. I also feel a little bad because, you know, I put his business out there, you know, that's the sort of the deal with memoir is, you know, sometimes when you're in one, you know, when you're in one, you never asked to be in it. So, you know, it honestly didn't dawn on me that
00:51:10
Speaker
in the same way that readers are talking to me about private stuff in my family and I find it strange, even though I wrote the dang thing, it's also gonna happen to my brother. Yeah, but he's really cool and supportive and he read a copy before it came out. I was worried that he would disagree with how I remembered things or wish that I hadn't written things
00:51:39
Speaker
And the only thing that he wanted me to change was some information about airplanes I got wrong. He's a pilot, just technical, things like that. Something I got wrong about the odometer on the truck. What scared you the most about writing this book? Oh my gosh, I got to pick one.
00:52:09
Speaker
my father actually my father yeah because you know he's he's not in the book very much because he wasn't uh physically there but he is very much in my longing for him and i worried that well i know he's very sensitive and feels very bad about um
00:52:37
Speaker
the way things turned out and that he wasn't there for our growing up. I'm close with my dad now and I was off and on growing up, but I just worried that he would be seen as a villain by other people because, you know, people would say woulda, coulda, shoulda. What happened is my dad remarried about
00:53:05
Speaker
five or six years after the divorce and started another family and had two sons. And we're all very close. I just worried people would criticize him. And it was hard. He helped me. I had foggy memories of living with him. I do remember the really volatile stuff. I remember dishes flying through the air. I remember
00:53:31
Speaker
just the sound of my mother's voice at a very high pitch. I remember him playing the Beatles. I remember things, and I remember certain moments, but I would run by what I remembered with him, and he would say, yeah, that's about right, but also this happened, or no, it was like this. But he could only go for about 15 minutes at a time, and then he'd start going, duh.
00:53:57
Speaker
I don't remember. It was just bad. I don't remember. It was just bad. I don't know. I don't want, you know, and so I had to just really delicately, um, approach him. I found out he, he was much easier with it. If it was over Facebook messenger, that's his preferred way of talking about this stuff. But so in my fears so far have been wrong. I mean, he, he, um, read the book before it came out and he was,
00:54:27
Speaker
He said that he really liked it. It made him cry, but he loved it. And he said, you got your mom spot on. I don't know how you remember those sentences, but anyway.
00:54:43
Speaker
Yeah, that's a tough nut to crack when you have to kind of interview a parent, especially if there's very sensitive matters. I've had that problem of late, and I'm on a 10-year memoir myself, and so it's been a challenge because the questions almost always come across as judgmental.
00:55:10
Speaker
Whereas you know you and I were journalists so but we're just asking questions to get the information But when but if you say like oh, why why did this happen? What were you thinking? They're immediately hackles go up And so maybe that's why Facebook messenger kind of worked you can kind of temper it a little bit versus the phone Yeah, how did you navigate? Navigate those tricky questions with with your dad that are incredibly sensitive Yeah, I think
00:55:39
Speaker
Um, yeah, your approach that you mentioned works really like, help me remember this. I have a sketchy memory. Is this how this happened? Or, you know, that's a great point. Yeah. You know, like that, that helped. I think, you know, I was kind of sneaky now that I think about it, like in the beginning of this process, when I was just, yeah, when I was at Goucher, I, that's where I wrote my first sentence.
00:56:07
Speaker
of this book was a couch. It was so funny because I came without anything to share in workshop. And Tom French said, okay, on the first day, everybody come back to next class with 10 pages to workshop. And I'm like, workshop, isn't that a noun? Like, what does he mean, workshop? I was so naive. And then when someone explained it to me, oh, great, I guess what I'm doing tonight, and I just started like,
00:56:37
Speaker
writing this memoir. And so in the beginning, I was fumbling along and when I would, I wasn't sure if this was ever going to be a book. I didn't
00:56:51
Speaker
I didn't even understand how books got made. I didn't know what an agent was. I was really, really naive. That surprises me, given your track record as a reporter and writing long form stuff that is probably almost book length. I'm not calling you an idiot by any stretch. That kind of surprises me. Yeah, I was just really focused on journalism.
00:57:19
Speaker
I, I really like when we, uh, gasher was wonderful because they do that senior trip. I don't know if they do it anymore, but they take you to, um, publishing houses and you, you meet with agents and you pitch your book right there, you know, and, um, that blew my mind. I'm like, Oh, this is where books get me. But, um, wait, I'm trying to answer what your question was about. Oh, so in the beginning, um,
00:57:48
Speaker
I wanted information from my dad, but I was so scared that he would not want me writing a book about it that I didn't tell him I was working on a book. I'd just be like, so bad. Remember that time? And I could tell he was always like, why is she always bringing this stuff up? Um, so I was a little sneaky about it, I think, or maybe I wasn't sneaky. I just thought I was, but I was terrified that he wouldn't approve of what I was doing. And, um,
00:58:18
Speaker
I think, you know, another tactic I would use, he's a photographer and he has all these old Kodachrome slides and I'd want to see what he had of my childhood. And that always sparked conversation. Like, what am I doing there? Where was that taken? What's Mom doing? Why did we go here? And that was another sneaky poo way for me to get some intel. And then, you know, I think I,
00:58:46
Speaker
you know a couple of years into it when when oh when I finally got an agent and and she was starting to send the book around that's when I said dad I'm working on a book you know I thought okay I wasn't gonna tell him unless it was starting to actually happen and then I should say starting to actually maybe happen then
00:59:10
Speaker
I told him and he was like, yeah, I think he already knew, you know, but yeah, I share with you that like, it's weird, you know, this terror we have of hurting our parents or, or what they're gonna think even after even when we're adults ourselves, I don't it's this, it's bizarre, but it's there. It's a real thing. The interesting thing about memoir is I for me is
00:59:39
Speaker
You know, I'm not exactly sure while I'm doing it why I'm doing it or what the larger thing or what it's about. I'm just, you just need to do it, right? It's an uncontrollable thing. And then after you write it, people tell you what your memoir is about. And you're like, Oh, okay. And you know, sometimes it's on and sometimes it's off, but that's,
Reader Interpretation and Portrayal of Family
01:00:07
Speaker
been a really interesting, rewarding part of it is to see, you know, especially when people write like reviews on Goodreads or, you know, and they sort of analyze your book and talk about what the themes are. And, and you're like, okay, now I get what my book, you know, people sort of reflect back to you, their experience and how they've absorbed their book based on their history. And they find their parallels with your story and then give them back to you.
01:00:37
Speaker
And you feel less weird in the process, and they feel less weird because they've been able to connect in some way with you. And you're right, it doesn't matter if the character's names are, you know, it doesn't at all, really. So, yeah, I think people get pretty hyped up about memoir and being exposed, but there's a certain invisibility in being exposed.
01:01:06
Speaker
there's when your story can hit someone universally. Yeah, and when I was reading Liz Gilbert's Big Magic, it's a book I reread every now and again. There's a part in there where a woman who read Eat, Pray, Love came up to Liz at a reading or a signing or whatever and said, oh, when you experienced this in the story, it made me feel less alone. And then like, you know, Liz writing later, she's like,
01:01:35
Speaker
That never happened in the book. It just straight up did not happen to me. But that woman projected a certain experience onto Eat, Pray, Love that really helped her. And that's great. It's the perfect illustration of when the memoir is really humming, it's really not about the writer anymore. It's about the reader. Oh, that is so funny. Yeah, I'm thinking somebody said something about my book that
01:02:03
Speaker
My mother was a raging alcoholic, and there's even like a section in the book where I wished she were because that would explain her behavior. You itemize classic excuses for her behavior, and she checks none of those boxes. It just comes back to her incredibly abusive childhood, and I hope that's not a spoiler, but I think
01:02:30
Speaker
And that's, but that's ultimately the, the violent, you know, the, her inner rage and her inability to love can stem from, from that. So, but it has, yeah, she doesn't check any of the drug abuser, alcoholic boxes at all. It just came from that. Yeah. And, and she was a fascinating and a complex woman. And therefore she was difficult to write about as a character because
01:02:59
Speaker
You know, her main transgression was that she didn't do anything. And so how do you write about a character who's not moving or acting in any scene? So that was actually one of my difficulties was trying to figure out
01:03:16
Speaker
how to make her a presence in the book when she's like asleep for most of the most of those years. I think you totally nailed it because I felt her presence throughout the whole thing like there was this there was a bad queen bee here that needed that was
01:03:33
Speaker
Not bad in the sense, like evil, but just like... Failing, but failing. But failing because she was definitely... had you not had a sort of cryptic Scout B conversation with... quite literally your mom would like pull you into her and she wanted... she would have inevitably pulled you down with her if you didn't have an escape hatch.
01:03:55
Speaker
And you felt, I know I felt that presence of her and how close you can get to her without getting too close and how much can you talk to her without saying too much or with the wrong tone. You navigated that incredibly well. So you feel that presence throughout the whole thing. I think what really works is, and my editor and my agent both helped me with this a lot because in the early versions, she was very two dimensional. What helps is writing about
01:04:25
Speaker
your emotions in relation to her and your constant, that fear of what she's going to do now. And then right about the moments when she does something really great, which is so freaky and like, why is she being nice? Just sort of the reaction to it. And also I wanted a little bit of humor, even if it's dark humor, like there's a scene where
01:04:48
Speaker
I mean, she used to do some wacky things like go to the, she would purposely go to garage sales in rich neighborhoods and then come up with lies to get herself in the house. Like she had to pee or whatever, or she wanted to check a piece of art or look at those stained glass windows. Cause she was thinking of getting the same kind and her Chateau and, um, just so she could snoop, you know, and,
01:05:14
Speaker
they're, they're darkly funny, but they're also incredibly, incredibly sad because you can see the, the wishing, the wishing for what could have been. And it's, you know, it's a way of humor is a way is how my brother and I deal with things, but it's a way of trying to skate over the top of a really hurt, big hurt. Um, so I think those kinds of things worked really well as scenes. So I, I just spent a lot of time thinking about, you know,
01:05:43
Speaker
It's not mommy dearest. It's not like, you know, glass castle. It's not, she's not like rip-roaring through every scene, but she's just doing things that have an edge to them and they can be small like that and still be really powerful. My mother was the role reversal, you know, she, she,
01:06:11
Speaker
forced me and my brother and actually anyone who came in her orbit to parent her. And it was just a really confusing thing as a kid and where the mom needs comfort that she can never get and she's just, she doesn't even see her child as a child. This is
01:06:36
Speaker
someone who needs to help her right now get through something she can only get through on her own and just unable to keep these things from their kids. It's just like your kids are tools, not things to protect. They're tools for you. Yeah, that was a constant theme.
01:06:58
Speaker
you know, life's so easy for you, you know, you're thin, you're tall, like your dad, and like my mother always struggled with her weight. And so like, these little like biting asides would come out a lot that were super hard to deal with. But, you know, you can get really sort of bogged down in what you didn't have. And, you know, in certain ways, having,
01:07:29
Speaker
difficulty as a little kid, like really kind of made you, me, bold, you know, as a little, as a youngster and not afraid because you've, you've already had so much fear and so much scary in your life that things that are supposed to scare you don't, you know, and it makes you go out and try things. And I think, you know, journalism when they, you know, you get sent,
01:07:56
Speaker
to a new country. Maybe there's a war going on. Figure this out. Find out who to interview. Be careful you don't get shot. You move through the world with a boldness that brings you also a lot of great experience and great joy. Maybe I wouldn't have taken as many risks had I not had
01:08:22
Speaker
no scaffolding under me as a little kid. I walked away from my job at the Chronicle to try to write some books and I didn't have a plan B. Maybe I wouldn't have done that had I not been comfortable with being on shaky ground. There's all sorts of things I wonder about. I feel like I've gotten my life in a place where it's really rewarding right now.
01:08:52
Speaker
But I had to go through a lot of muck and take a lot of risks. And I just now feel super grateful for everything. I'm so happy that this book really is a love letter to my grandfather. And he's such an amazing person. And now he's in print. And so in a way, he's not really dead.
01:09:19
Speaker
And other people get to experience him and people in other countries. 11 countries have picked up this book. Think of people in South Korea reading about grandpa in Big Sur. It's like it gives him immortality. And that was worth it. That was worth everything for someone like him to be honored long after I'm gone and long
01:09:48
Speaker
into the future is just super, super great. Yeah. He's such a wonderful, warm presence in this book and much-needed ballast to everything else that was going on around you. And I think one of my favorite moments in this book was the sort of bring your father to work day. Yes. I love that part so much because you had just learned that he was your step-grandfather and not technically your real grandpa.
01:10:15
Speaker
And so you were worried that he was going to be too old and too dorky or nerdy, and then he just blew the class away. And you're like, yeah, that's my grandpa. I know. He was like, drop the mic. I mean, it was so I'll never forget that because, you know, he's scruffy and he's always got like plumber's putty drip down his shirt and his Levi's are sagging off his butt. And, you know, I'm like, take your dad to work day. OK.
01:10:42
Speaker
You know, grandpa doesn't really even work. He just fixes things. He fixes toilets and he goes and checks the bees. He makes honey. He doesn't really have a job. In my mind, that wasn't a workplace. And I thought, oh, great. I'm already like, I was having a hard time fitting in in school and probably because
01:11:04
Speaker
an odd kid, but kids could sense that something was different about me and being raised by grandparents at least at that time in that area of California was unusual in the 70s in Carl Valley. It wasn't as common as it is now, but all he did is get up there and start talking about putting his bare hands in a beehive and chasing swarms and
01:11:30
Speaker
partying at Nepenthe with Henry Miller and everybody was like, what? Who are you? Did he know, did a parent ask about Kerouac too? Am I remembering that right? Or is it another author? No, he, let's see. He asked about Henry Miller and he, and like someone said, did you know Henry Miller? Oh no, Steinbeck. Steinbeck, that's right.
01:12:00
Speaker
Yeah, Grandpa played ping pong with Henry Miller and Appenthe, but no, Steinbeck, it was so amazing because later, well, John Steinbeck was in Cannery Row in Monterey and in the area writing those books at that time. And so it's required reading at Carmel High School and Carmel Middle School, all Steinbeck. And I remember I was reading Cannery Row and
01:12:29
Speaker
telling grandpa at the dinner table about this great book I'm reading. And yeah, there's these characters. And I was telling him about the science, the marine biologist in the lab. And grandpa was like, oh yeah, that's doc, Ricketts. And we go catch frogs out of the Carmel Valley River. And we get like 10 cents apiece for his lab.
01:12:54
Speaker
You know, and there's a section in the book where there are homeless men living in the Del Monte forest. And what they're living in are like, there would be fires at the cannery, the sardine canneries. And afterwards, people would throw like broken pieces of equipment or burned out pieces of the sardine equipment, the shoots and stuff, the metal shoots into the forest.
01:13:23
Speaker
And so in the book, he talks, Simon talks about hobos who are living in these little make-to, lean-to shelters made out of old burned sardine factory equipment. And grandpa's like, oh yeah. And he was like, he called them the hobos. Yeah, the hobos in the forest. Yeah. And he knew them by name and he brought them honey. And I was like, what? I just remember my jaw dropping. Like grandpa was talking about people in my
01:13:50
Speaker
and my book was supposedly fiction and I was like so confused, but It just added to the this myth making your grandfather that much more of this mythic figure in the book who just It's awesome He used to be called the beekeeper of Big Sur and he is mythic in that area along the coast and I'll give you an example like all I have to do is say whenever I meet anybody in Big Sur I
01:14:20
Speaker
They say, oh, what's your name? Nice to meet you. I say, well, you might know my grandfather. And I say Franklin peace. And then they are like, he's your grandfather. And they'll go on and on and on and tell me this story about one time a Volkswagen bug ran off the road and rolled into a field and the couple inside got out screaming at each other and they were having a fight. And that's why they crashed. And my grandpa was on a porch across the street and ran over to them and
01:14:50
Speaker
did an impromptu therapy session, got them to kiss and make up and then got a winch and pulled their car out and got them back on their own. I'm not making this up. It's amazing. I was walking along Highway 1 going to brunch one day and I was with two friends who lived down there. There was a PG&E worker working on a pole.
01:15:18
Speaker
And they said, Hey, you know, Joe, you know, this, they knew each other. They're talking and then, Hey, Joe, this is Meredith. Nice to meet you. Um, and then they said, no, no, she's Frank pieces granddaughter. And he takes his hard hat and he throws it to the ground and he's like, he's really bear hug, like this burly guy. And I'm like, okay, we hug now, you know, and grandpa just has that. I don't know that like magic glue. He just.
01:15:48
Speaker
disarms people and he's so, um, pure. He doesn't give a fig about money or power or rank or anything. He is just there. And he has, I learned after he passed that he had all these private relationships with people and nobody knew about each other. They all thought they were like grandpa's best friend. And these came out of the woodwork afterwards and told me how much he meant to them. And
01:16:15
Speaker
I don't know when he had the time to do all this because I thought he was with me the whole time, right? So he's, he's my role model. I try to be like him a lot. And, you know, when I say, you know, not getting into the competition Olympics about writing and how well is my book doing and I think, okay, how much is that important versus
01:16:43
Speaker
when you die having a legacy like that. That's where I try to stay when I feel myself kind of getting off balance.
Legacy and Future Aspirations
01:16:52
Speaker
And with that in mind, trying to live up to that example, what have you put into practice so that you can similarly make a similar impact on the world and other people's lives in your orbit?
01:17:09
Speaker
Uh, that's, that's a really good question. I, I try to be super generous and super giving and, um, I'll just, and it's hard, you know, cause it takes a lot of time to get a career off the ground and you have to be kind of, uh, focused on yourself, uh, and self-promotional and, you know, when we're talking about social media. So it's,
01:17:39
Speaker
I find myself doing too much of that and it feels icky so I try to just really stop and maintain my relationships and call my friends and see them or I do popovers or I call them on the phone and I try to do the old fashioned I'm coming over I've got the dog let's play with the puppy and have some tea
01:18:08
Speaker
and just like pull people back to human interaction. That's what I'm working on. I also have a special relationship with a girl that, well, she's not a girl anymore, but when I met her, when I was a reporter early starting and she,
01:18:36
Speaker
had a really difficult home life. She lived in Richmond, California, and really in a housing, federal housing project. It was a very dangerous crime-ridden kind of situation. And I sort of saw myself in her. She's sort of the spark in this very large family with not a lot of adult attention. And so I just started mentoring her, and we've maintained that relationship now. And so
01:19:06
Speaker
that I think my grandfather's, without me knowing it, inspired me to kind of take a step and reach out to her. And that's become a really lovely thing because now she teaches me more than I teach her about life. And so that's one other thing. I mean, I don't even like saying that's one thing I do because it sounds like it's a task or a project, but that's a friendship. I
01:19:34
Speaker
brought into my life without really needing to talk a lot about it to other people. That's special. She's really made my life so much better. Then this is really exciting. As part of the book tour, I'm going to my elementary school and I'm going to talk to the kids about bees and
01:20:03
Speaker
show them bees and just see if I can get them excited about that. So that's kind of cool. I sort of have this vision in the future of getting an old bus and like driving it to schools and having an observation hive and showing them how to make honey and doing kind of like the bookmobile, but like the bee mobile. Oh, you got it. You got it. Right? Doesn't that sound good? Yeah.
01:20:30
Speaker
You're the crazy bee lady of San Francisco. Totally. I will wear that cloak, yes. Let me ask you one last thing, Meredith, before I let you go. You've been incredibly generous with your time and it's been a ton of fun for me to talk with you for such an extended period of time. Yeah, let's do it. Yeah, so the last thing I gotta ask you about your puppy. What's going on with the puppy? What's that been like since you brought her into your life?
01:21:00
Speaker
Well, yeah, you know right in the middle of a book coming out we throw a puppy bomb, but yes Yes, her name is Edith. She's a golden retriever and Her full name is Edie Mae Jackson, which is a nice southern name and it's fun to yell down the beach She's great. She's almost six months and she just finished puppy to class yesterday night
01:21:30
Speaker
so she can sit and lay down. She's got like 60% recall. We're like the ridiculous, childless, over-parenting dog owners. She's got several beds in the house and toy boxes and filet mignon, freeze-dried treats. It's just silly. We're just spoiling the crap out of her. She's a little timid though.
01:21:59
Speaker
she's afraid to go on walks. She kind of freezes if there's a car or a barking dog or an umbrella or a bird or a shadow or a kid or you know it's like oh so we're trying to figure out ways to get her calm and you know teach her that we're gonna protect her and she can try and take a step so yeah we're getting some
01:22:28
Speaker
special education classes set up. Yeah, she's her own being. She's my third Golden Retriever and she's got her own little mind about things, but she's a ton of fun. Awesome. Where can people get more familiar with your work, Meredith? Online, social media, website and everything so they can get more familiar with the book and other things you've done.
01:22:58
Speaker
Yeah. Uh, the website is thehoneybus.com and I'm on Twitter at, at Meredith May S F and Instagram is the same and Facebook is also the same.
01:23:16
Speaker
Fantastic. Well, Meredith, thank you so much for carving out the time and, of course, writing this wonderful memoir that I can't recommend enough. So I wish you great success with it, and we'll have to have another one of these conversations sometime down the road. Yes, I would love that. Thank you so much. It's been a ton of fun. Excellent. All right, well, take care, and we'll be in touch.
01:23:42
Speaker
, and
01:24:00
Speaker
Thanks to Meredith. Go check her out on the Twittergram books and keep the conversation going on Twitter by joining me at Brendan O'Mara and at cnfpod. If you dig audiograms and quote cards, maybe even IGTV, head over to Insta and follow at cnfpod. Also email the show at creativenonfictionpodcast.gmail.com. Perhaps consider leaving a review on iTunes. What else?
01:24:29
Speaker
only as head over to brennanamerra.com hey for show notes and to subscribe to my monthly newsletter where i send out reading recommendations cool essays articles and what you might have missed from the world of the podcast
01:24:44
Speaker
I'm also in the midst of this 100 day project with my podcast Casualty of Words. It's a sub 3 minute show that gives you a shot of creativity in the arm every day for 100 days. I am 10 to 11 days into it depending on when you listen to this. Anything else? I think that's it. That's enough. That is quite, quite enough. So remember, if you can't do the interview, just say it.