A Writer's Journey
My First Book (revised newsletter)
This story turned up unexpectedly on my page, so I’ve revised and resent it. A few days ago, I attended my youngest brother’s funeral online. Someone sent me a recording of the memorial speeches. I was happily surprised to hear one speaker quote stories of my brother’s childhood from my first book - forty years after its publication.
I knew nothing about writing a book in 1983. My mother’s letters to her family were in Swedish, a language I had never studied. All my formal education from age five to twenty-one was in British English. So when I received the box of my mother’s correspondence, I was surprised at how easily I could take in not just the words and sentences in the Swedish language but also her feelings when she wrote those letters. The oldest letter was registered in England in 1931. The last was in Indonesia in 1977.
As I flipped through the letters, I’m not sure I even planned to write a book at the time. Instead, I typed out the most familiar stories she had shared. I had forgotten many of her spoken stories, but as I read, they came alive. I realized I had received a priceless treasure through her correspondence.
Since both my mother and I lived in Helsinki at the time, I took along some pages each time I visited her. I realized I must write a book about her life. She was reluctant at first when I suggested writing that book. She said she had done nothing worth noting about. I persuaded her to let me write it as I had found so much value worth sharing. Finally, she agreed, on the condition that everything I wrote must pass through three gates. Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary?
She added, “Nothing can pass through the third gate. It is not necessary to write my story.”
I insisted, “It is necessary! I must write your story.”
At last, she gave her permission and helped me by providing more information, where some stories in the letters led to new questions.
The cover of my first book, Anna’s Lamp, about my mother, was published in 1984.
Some letters brought tears to my eyes more than once. One of them was from 1952. My grandpa had died in Finland, but our family lived in Ceylon (Sri Lanka). My mother wrote to Grandma; Lisa cried when she understood Grandpa had died. She asked, “Why didn’t we go to Finland earlier so I could have met him, too?”
After reading those words the next day, I felt comforted by the thought that Grandpa had followed us with his prayers through the many years of our journey. He read my mother’s detailed letters regularly. He could see and feel what I saw and felt from her words.
Then, the reality of the words in Psalms 121:8 became more evident.
“The Lord keeps watch over you as you come and go,
both now and forever.”
God watched over us all the time, exactly where we were.
(The story of my mother’s journey around the world with five kids can be ordered from https://booklocker.com/books/8211.html and all Webb bookstores worldwide.)
