Going out to dinner. Are there any more magical words in the English language…especially for women? There’s little that compares with the pleasure of scanning a crisp menu, choosing exactly what appeals to you, having someone else cook and serve it to you–and then clean up afterward. We used to do it less than we do now, when restaurants of all kinds are packed with families nearly every night of the week. With so many mothers working these days, eating out has become more common, a necessity, in some cases, so Mom can juggle multiple roles and still keep her sanity.

But eating out was a rare occurrence during my childhood. My parents were always pinching their pennies. Dining out was a luxury, no matter how ordinary the restaurant, and those glorious rare occasions still shimmer in my memory. It was always on a Friday, Dad’s pay day, when my parents felt a little flush. I remember the excitement of getting cleaned up after school and eagerly waiting Dad’s arrival, when we’d pile into our one car, usually a Ford or  Chevy, and head to Don’s Chili, The Memory House, or Cinco de Mayo’s, three of our favorites. What a treat. I tasted my first crunchy taco at Cinco de Mayo’s in Inglewood and still remember listening to “It’s Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White” playing on the jukebox at Don’s Chili in Fullerton. What simple memories stay with us through the years.

Of course, all this serves as a lead in for the delicious story that follows, written by Judy Clifford, a new student this term. Judy recounts with exquisite detail the special occasions her parents treated her and her sister to unforgettable evenings at Chez Cary, then one of Orange County’s landmark posh eating establishments. Reading about the culinary experience Judy so beautifully describes makes me want to use words like eating establishment, and culinary, and posh. You’ll see. Read on with pleasure, and “Bon Apetit!”

Canard aux Petits Pois
by Judy Clifford 

Whenever my sister Lisa or I won an award in school, achieved a challenging goal, or celebrated a milestone birthday, my mother gussied us up and my father treated us to dinner at the Chez Carey restaurant on Main Street in Santa Ana.

Somehow the contrast between the bright Southern California sky and the dusky, romantic interior never failed to enchant me. As soon as I settled into the soft, red velvet booth, and placed my clumsy feet on the footstool, I became a princess, a role that clearly belonged to my older sister at home. Now, in this dreamy place, the Chez Careeeee, which was the French way of pronouncing it, the playing field was at last leveled.

Lisa had long blonde hair, even thicker and glossier than Marcia Brady’s. And that made her a royal figure, at least in my estimation. I sported a different hairstyle then.  It was called a pixie cut. I wasn’t quite sure what pixies had done or what they even were, but it was obvious that they had been very, very bad and had to be punished in order to regain whatever status they had once held.

Pixie cuts had become an instant hit when Twiggy, a young model from England, was photographed wearing the hairdo. She had long beautiful legs and short, stubby hair.

My parents decided the short, stubby hair would look super on me. It didn’t. I had none of Twiggy’s style, let alone her—well—maturity. She had bumps in places that actually seemed to cave in on me. I was only nine, after all. My short brown hair accentuated my cowlicks, and had led to one horrific incident in which a shop owner had called me “son.”   My parents called me “adorable,” and that meant that I was going to have the dreaded hairstyle for a very long time.

But the Chez Carey made all of my worries vanish. Even the air was glorious. It was filled with scents so varied I could hardly distinguish them. But I learned that garlic, brandy, and peppermint do mix, when they hang together, heavy and lush in the atmosphere of the most magnificent restaurant on earth.

“We can count on consistent service at the Chez Carey,” my father would say.  My mother would nod her perfectly coiffed blonde head, and beam up at him.

“I totally agree. And, the food is exquisite.” These were grown-up conversations, and I treasured being let into their secret world, because frankly, they left us out of it and stuck us with a baby sitter on Saturday nights.

One night, we went to celebrate my second-place finish in a piano contest. As I perched on my chair, my feet dangling and barely grazing the footstool beneath me, I waited in hushed wonder for the waiter to take our drink order. I knew the routine by heart.

“Would you care for anything to drink?” he asked, with his pad of paper and pen brandished and ready for action.

My mother said,  “Yes, I think we will. I’ll have a martini, dry with an olive.”

“Certainly,” the waiter responded as he scratched something quickly on his pad.  Then, he turned to us kids and asked, “And, Mademoiselles, for you?”

Together, Lisa and I chanted, “May I have a Shirley Temple, please?” There was no straying from the script. This was the correct way to order. No other wording was allowed.

Finally, the waiter turned his attention to my father, who ordered an “Old Fashioned,” or something that sounded like that, because I never had the guts to ask him the real name. If there was one thing I’d been taught, it was not to question authority.

The next part of the meal was my favorite. The waiter glided to our table and presented our menus to each of us with great flourish. I took a deep breath. I could almost taste the earthy scent of the leather embossed menu cover. As I opened the menu, I took my time to peruse it. My parents didn’t mind. They encouraged this. The food items were listed first in French, and then translated in English. The fun was in the learning. What could a “canard” possibly be? A duck. And yes, now I knew that “petits pois” meant plain old green peas.

As I inspected the menu, my parents engaged us in a game of  “Name that Tune.” The background music was just that: in the background. I don’t remember if it was live or not. And all of the songs were standards by Sinatra or Dean Martin. This was the most enjoyable time of the evening. My father smiled at my sister and me as though he were proud of everything we had done up to that moment. I sucked down my Shirley Temple as fast as I could, just so I get another round of the sticky-sweet maraschino cherries. My mother was her stunning self, laughing out loud, and charming each and every person with whom she had contact. She even had a smile for the people we saw on our way to visit “the little girl’s room,” as my father called it. And there seemed to be an easiness in the chatter among the four of us that didn’t always happen at home. Such was the magic of the Chez Carey restaurant.  Such is the magic of childhood memories.

She walked into my class about eight years ago, Gene and her daughter, Mia. Gene was in her mid-eighties then, and she wanted to enroll in one of my memoir writing classes. “I think she belongs in your advanced class,” Mia said. “She’s pretty good.” Little did I know just how good. When she read her first story in class several weeks later, I could have jumped for joy, for clearly Gene had a gift for writing, something I’ve run across less than a dozen times in all my years of teaching. Some students are good writers, in the way that some pianists are good musicians because they’ve spent years taking lessons and practicing. But there are always a few that have that certain spark, that gift that makes them stand out in a crowd of other talented people.

Gene’s writing was like that, and she quickly became a star in class, a role model who showed others how stories should be told. And we all learned a lot from Gene over the years. Every time she stood to read her stories in class, we knew we were in for something special. We hung on her every word, and afterward we analyzed what she did to make her stories resonate so much with us. It had something to do with honesty…she didn’t shirk from telling it like it was. She didn’t shy away from admitting her own weaknesses and past mistakes. Consequently, her stories felt real and powerful, often grabbing us in the gut. I posted one of those gut-grabbing stories on my blog earlier. It can be found HERE.

Gene was also a keen observer of people and understood the subtleties of human nature. When you spoke to her, she looked you directly in the eye with those clear blue eyes of hers. I always felt like she was listening with all her heart, that she could see right into my soul. Gene brought that trait to her writing, infusing her stories with tiny details that individualized and brought to life the people in her stories.

And Gene, like all good writers, was a master of language. But she worked at it. She struggled for the right word that would convey the tone she was looking for. She searched for the right verb, the right noun, the right arrangement of words to create the right affect. I never had the feeling she just dashed something off, figuring it would be OK, as is. No, she always wanted perfection.

Gene regretted she didn’t have more education, and much of her writing skill was self-taught. Early in her marriage when she still had children at home, she rose at 5:30 a.m. and wrote for an hour before awakening her husband and children for breakfast. She continued this habit for years, despite her husband’s belittling taunts about writing being a waste of time. Her daughter said recently, “I really didn’t think anything about Mom getting up early to write. It was just something she did.”

After attending my class for several years, Gene received a bombshell. Her doctor diagnosed her with congestive heart failure and gave her six months to live. I remember her coming to class and reporting the news to us. Within a short time she wrote a heartfelt, inspiring story about what it feels like to learn you only have a short time to live. What happened then was amazing, generating a response Gene never could have imagined.

You see, Gene never considered herself a WRITER because she had never officially published anything. When her hospice worker, MaryLo Yetkee (also a writer) read some of Gene’s stories and heard about her lifelong desire to be published, she contacted the Dream Foundation, an organization that grants the wishes of terminally ill adults. The Foundation took the reins and contacted Beliefnet.com, who published Gene’s story on its website. From there, other organizations (asamanthinketh.net, insightsoftheday.com), picked up her story. Dream Foundation later informed Gene that her story generated more email responses than any they had published (at last count more than 2500). Eventually, even Time magazine referenced Gene’s story and her wish to be published in an article appearing in October 2006 called “A Dream Before Dying.” (You can read Gene’s story in its entirety HERE.)

As it turned out, Gene got more than her diagnosed six months. She lived for another five and a half years, finally passing away on November 27, at the age of 94. Gene lived with Mia and her family during all that time, and even before her diagnosis. They remodeled their home to create a second-floor suite for Gene with a kitchen, bedroom, and office area and installed a motorized chair that transported Gene up and down the stairway. I’ve always believed Gene’s life was extended because of the devoted care of her family.

In the years after her diagnosis, she came to class when she could, in a wheelchair and toting an oxygen tank. Mia drove her both ways, helping her out of the car and pushing her wheelchair into the classroom. When she was up to it, Gene continued to write stories that always inspired us and taught us something. In Gene’s last months, Mia arranged with a local publisher to compile all of Gene’s stories into a book that will be available for family members at Gene’s memorial service in January.

I visited Gene a couple of weeks before she passed away. Her attention span had diminished since I’d last seen her. She had difficulty following the conversation that was going on around her and finding the right words when she tried to speak. However, when I told her I was leaving, she took my hand, looked deeply in my eyes in that old way of hers, and said, “I’m so damned glad you came to see me.” I burst into laughter, shocked at these startling, frank words coming from this frail, genteel, little lady. I shouldn’t have been surprised: Gene’s words always had a way of getting to me.

Writing is a difficult, lonely occupation, one that resurrects all kinds of insecurities. Is our writing any good, or are we just laboring under some self-delusion? Do we have anything interesting to say? Does the world need one more book? Surely our time be better spent doing something else…anything else. I have these thoughts, and I know my students struggle with with similar issues.

Even professional writers who have every reason to feel confident wrestle with niggling doubts. I read an interview of award-winning novelist Ivan Doig in today’s Salt Lake Tribune. (I’m in Utah this month presenting some seminars.)  Doig has recently published his latest book, Work Song. After Doig explains that he hits the keyboard by 6:30 each morning and tries to write a “couple of hundred words a day,” the interviewer says, “[Y]ou’ve been publishing books for more than 30 years. Does it get any easier?” Doig answers simply, “No. I wish.” Hmmmm.

I write all this as background for sharing the recent accomplishments of some of my students who have garnered accolades in writing competitions. I encourage them to submit their stories to contests because it motivates them to polish their pieces and gives them something to shoot for. Most of my students are of retirement age. Entering a contest is therapeutic, a good way to show the world (and themselves) that they still have something to contribute. Besides all the psychological benefits, entering contests is just plain fun.

Marta Sarkissian, a talented writer who attends my classes, explained her participation in contests this way:  I think these two prizes have given me validation as a writer and helped me to believe I am a writer. When I think I am, then it become ok to spend more time at it. I have stopped worrying about taking time from my writing for contests, for I realize that the added scrutiny and effort make a better piece of writing….it is an exercise. I have been surprised and delighted by the warm reception I have received.

I take pride in the fact that my students have done well in past competitions. A year or so ago, several students took nearly all the top prizes in the Southern California Genealogy Society writing competition, a prestigious contest that draws submissions from all over the world. I’ve been informed of more awards recently and couldn’t be happier for these students. I know what this recognition means to them and to their confidence as writers, and I’m certain that this recognition will spur them on to further achievement. I tip my hat to the following students for accomplishments of various kinds:

• Marta Sarkissian, who won second place for her story ”Love Demands” in the Soul Making Literary Competition sponsored by Washington, D.C.’s National League of American Pen Women this spring, AND third prize in Sheila Bender’s Writing It Real contest for her story ”Searching for Mother in the Cochise Stronghold.” You can read her award-winning “Searching”story HERE.  Marta had this to say about her participation in writing contests:  “I think these two prizes have given me validation as a writer and helped me to believe I am a writer. When I think I am, then it becomes ok to spend more time at it. I have stopped worrying about taking time from my writing for contests, for I realize that the added scrutiny and effort make a better piece of writing….it is an exercise. I have been surprised and delighted by the warm reception I have received.”
• Carol Enos, who garnered TWO prizes in the 2009 Southern California Genealogy Society Writing Competition: third place for her story, “The Hessians,” and honorable mention for her story, “The Cursed War.” I posted Carol’s “The Hessians”on my blog earlier HERE.
• Mary (Betty) Nelson, who received an honorable mention award by the Southern California Genealogy Society for her story, “Acceptance,” published earlier on my blog HERE.
• Diana Kightlinger, who received an honorable mention award for her story “My Dad, Sam,” in the Sheila Bender “Righting it Real” essay competition.
• Jean Lechner, who had her story “Spring Cleaning” published in the quarterly journal of the Story Circle Network.
• Linda Missouri, who was selected “member of the month” in June by the National Association of Memoir Writers. Read her insightful NAMW interview HERE.
• Students, if I missed anyone, please let me know.

FYI, I have several workshop scheduled in the next few months. I will be giving a four-day seminar at Brigham Young University from August 16 to 20. You can find more information about this seminar HERE.

On Saturday, September 18 I’ll be presenting at the Chino Valley Family History and Genealogy Seminar in Chino Hills, California. For more information about this worthwhile, all-day event, go HERE.

Those who live in the Salt Lake City area should be aware of the fine all-day conference sponsored by the Utah chapter of the Association of Personal Historians, held at Westminster College on Friday, October 15. The conference is titled “Saving Lives, One Story at a Time.” I will teach two classes that day, joining many other instructors who will cover various aspects of writing, interviewing, publishing, creating family history videos, and more. You’ll find more information about this conference HERE.

Finally, the National Association of Memoir Writers honored me as “Member of the Month” for July. Check out my interview HERE.

Thirty-nine of my students wrote stories last spring that have been published in an anthology called A Place Called Home. All of the stories focus on some aspect of home and are organized in the book under the following categories: My Childhood Home, Playing House, A Home Away from Home, Homes through the Years, Making a Home of My Own, and Returning Home. I am proud of the fine work displayed in these stories. If you’re interested in learning more about this collection, contact me at Dawn@MemoirMentor.com.

–Memoir Mentor

Congratulations to two more of my students who each took first place awards in the Santiago Canyon College Writing Contest, open to all students of the college. Marta Sarkissian took top honors in the short story division with her story, “Reunion with Mother,” and Meada Ouzounian won first prize in the poetry division with her clever poem, “The Clone.” They both should be proud of this fine achievement.