This month marks the third anniversary of Cherries in Winter being published. It’s a very meaningful anniversary, too; if you’ve been following my Facebook posts and Tweets, you know that the area I live in got hit pretty hard by Sandy. Fortunately we didn’t lose much, but what we lost was very meaningful to us.
My Grandpa’s bowler hat from the 1920s. My Nana’s coat–the one I wrote about in Cherries, the one my mother put on one particularly dark night of the soul. She put her hand in the pocket and found a stash of cash we desperately needed. Even though the coat was very old, I held onto it because it had so much personal value. As did my husband Nathan’s photographs of people and things that are no longer here: his parents, the World Trade Center.
What the flood couldn’t destroy was what I wrote about in Cherries in Winter: the strength we get from family. Many of you have been writing to say you’re re-reading Cherries for a second, third, even a fourth time. Why? Because its message of resilient, strong hope is as needed today as it was when the book first came out in the height of the recession. Difficult times come, go, and come again; what keeps us going is the knowledge that our families got through challenges in the past, so we can, too. The book’s message can’t be washed away in a flood of water, or even a flood of tears.
To celebrate this third anniversary of Cherries, and to usher in some other exciting projects I’ll share with you soon, I have some gifts for you! Please check in here, on my Facebook page, and my Twitter feed for news about special holiday presents. I have so much to be grateful for, and I’m looking forward to sharing my gratitude with you.
And hey, let me know what you think of my spiffy revamped website!
xx,
S
