Isolation x Six & Birdbrain

Happy Easter to all ya’ll.   Rejoice! Christ Has Risen, He Has Risen Indeed!

It’s the day before Easter. We’re all hunkered down here in Lockhart—six of us in the same house where only four of us have ever lived together before now. The Plague didn’t cause it though, we invited Todd, Maggie, Jackson and Teddy to move in with us through the spring and summer months while their new home is being built. We love them dearly, and knew they would all be gone to work and preschool from 7 in the morning until 6 at night on weekdays until sometime in June, so Nita and I would still have our quiet times during the days.  Now, we all are here all day, every day, as Nita said, caught up in the movie Groundhog Day.

Nita and I are replaying a bit of our early days of parenting, this time as backups to Todd and Maggie. Privacy is a rare treasure. Smiles are sometimes pasted on, and a couple of grandparents bite our tongues every now and then.

Yesterday we and our neighbors all stood at the curb of a house across the street and sang Happy Birthday to a pretty girl named Emma who turned 18 yesterday. And today we six will celebrate grandson Teddy’s 2^nd birthday in-house. And tomorrow, grandson Jackson and Teddy will hunt for candy-filled eggs in the yard.

Earlier this week, Todd and I replaced a big piece of sheetrock in the garage ceiling. Not as dangerous to familial love as Nita and I hanging wallpaper, but we had our moments. Still and all, honestly, life together is going well, better than well. The four TV’s, untold phones, i-pads, computers, and happy hours on the back porch don’t hurt, I suspect.

Besides doing a sloppy job of hanging sheetrock, what I have done is finish Birdbrain, my somewhat fictionalized tale of growing up in Longview, Texas from 1958 until 1963.  I wrote it for the five grandkids as a purpose-driven story of a boy’s ‘awakening’. It’s from the point of view of me as a 13-year-old looking back at my prior five years.

 It starts with the trauma of moving across town and changing schools. There’s grade school bullying and junior high slam books, trading disks with a girl, and the temptations of cheating at school. Two different and mostly true encounters with snakes falling from above add some spice. Confronting just-a-rock eight feet underwater becomes my highest bar to hurdle. There’s rocket-men, Tony’s Sporting Goods Store, and real-life murders on the TV. And more.

I can’t wait for our oldest granddaughter Eva to read it as she is turning 10 this summer. Even if it’s written with junior high kids’ vocabulary, my critiquing circle and my wife like it and tell me it’s a good book for us grown-ups too.  I hope you might give it a look. It’s not Civil War. 😊

Here’s the link to Birdbrain on Amazon.  https://www.amazon.com/s?k=philip+mcbride+birdbrain&i=stripbooks&ref=nb_sb_noss