Runaway
Mom
By Cara Sue Achterberg
If you’re a mom, at some point or another (or maybe every
day) you’ve wanted to run away. I know this is true like I know that the sun
will come up tomorrow, my incorrigible dog will never come when I call her, and
that it’s highly unlikely my kids will ever empty out the sink strainer or
replace a toilet paper roll.
When I first moved to our little hillside farm in our small
town in south-central Pennsylvania, I hated it. Not the farm, but the backward,
seemingly judgmental community harboring mean people who did things like steal
my yard signs supporting an enlightened candidate who could change everything, threw their yard
trash, broken computers and worn out furniture down the embankment at the far
end of our road, and filled the lines of the ten (count ‘em) fast food
restaurant drive-thrus that passed for fine dining in our little town.
I spent my days dealing with an elementary-aged child who
was “different” and drove his first grade teacher to dump the contents of his
messy desk almost daily, a preschooler who was ready to move out and get her
own apartment where she could make the rules, and a toddler who, while
adorable, required constant monitoring as he was prone to do things like shove
a screw driver in a wall socket or use it to poke holes in the back of the
couch.
Plus, there were stalls to muck, chickens to feed, gardens overrun
with weeds, and a living room with dark brown carpet that showcased every white
dog hair, cracker crumb, and piece of fuzz from the slowly leaking couch
cushions (per aforementioned holey couch). I worked two part-time “jobs” – one
as an awkward Mary Kay lady and one pitching articles to magazines who
inevitably either declined them or offered to publish them for little or no
compensation.
Top the whole life off with a husband who traveled to China
for weeks at a time and when he was in the country spent the better part of
every day in the office. Fun times.
Not.
Now wouldn’t YOU want to run away?
Me, too.
So, I did.
Every afternoon, during the two precious hours of “quiet
time” (Read: one child stuck in his crib next
to a box fan running so I couldn’t hear his complaints and one child plopped in
front of the TV for an endless loop of Dora the Explorer.) I would sit at
my laptop and run away. Or at least, live vicariously through three moms who
did exactly that. Dani, Meg, and Charlotte went away for a girls’ weekend and
didn’t come back for 90,000 words.
The book literally spun out of me. It kept me sane. All
those things I worried about – was I wasting my life home with kids? Would
fears about my kids’ safety and sanity always rule my life? Did I marry the
right person? Would my life ever “start?” I wrote through them.
Thirteen years later, my nest is beginning to empty. I’ve
learned to love (some of these) backward people and even appreciate the small
town that still has no real restaurants, and - my second novel, Girls’ Weekend is published!
It’s very hard to see past the yogurt smeared on the fridge
and the sticky hands demanding your attention, but motherhood does get better.
Still, it doesn’t mean you can’t run away, if only in your mind.
Being a mom and being a writer has been a win-win for me.
The kids have provided me with plenty of writing material for articles, essays,
blog posts, and fiction. And writing about them has documented our lives.
I imagine someday (hopefully very long from now) I will be a
grandmother. My kids will finally respect the efforts I made at mothering well
while following my writing dreams. And they will ask, “How did you do it?”
And I will tell them, “I wrote through it,” and hand them my
laptop loaded with the stories of their lives.
Inside the Book:
Title: Girls' Weekend
Author: Cara Sue Achterberg
Release Date: May 3, 2016
Publisher: The Story Plant
Genre: Women's Fiction
Format: Ebook/Paperback
Harried Dani can't explain why she feels so discontented until she meets a young gallery owner who inspires her to rediscover the art that once made her happy.
Dependable Meg faces up to a grief that threatens to swallow her whole and confronts a marriage built on expectations.
Flamboyant Charlotte, frustrated with her stagnated life and marriage, pursues a playboy Irish singer and beachside business opportunities.
All three of these women thought they would be different. None of them thought they'd be facing down forty and still wondering when life starts. What they do when they realize where they're headed is both inspiring and wildly entertaining.
GIRLS' WEEKEND is a fun, yet poignant romp through the universal search of who we are, why we love, and what makes us happy by an author who is quickly emerging as one of our most incisive storytellers.
Meet the Author:
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