Beth Ann and Tom were with me on one of the most important days of my life – the birth of my little girl Harper. Well, not really there in the hospital… let me explain.
In the fall of 2005 my wife Wendy became pregnant with our first child – my reaction was varied – freaked out, scared, happy… you know, the normal stuff. I also started reading parenting books as fast as I could. I read “how to” books and I also read daddy and mommy memoirs. Then came the announcement that Mississippi’s favorite poet Beth Ann Fennelly was publishing a parenting book of sorts. Great With Child is a book of letters that Beth Ann wrote to a pregnant friend about being an expecting mother. Beth Ann’s book signing was on May 25th of 2006 – the very next morning we were due in the hospital for a scheduled induction – around 5:00 in the afternoon of the 26th Harper was born.
So Beth Ann was an interesting part of that very special event, but Tom was there as well – Tom’s third book Smonk was due out later in 2006 and I had just gotten my advance copy before that trip to the Hospital. So there I am reading Smonk on May 26 of 2006 waiting for Harper. Poor Wendy had to endure me reading key passages out loud from Smonk during that part of the day when contractions are far apart and not much is happening.
You get the idea, one of the most important days of your life and you have to endure your husband reading stuff like: “She gazed at her belly and wondered how a girl got knocked up. She was as skinny as a skeleton and no matter how much she ate she couldn’t put on no fat. But you got fat when you got knocked up. Maybe it was a pill you bought or something you shot. She bet a doctor could tell her.” On second thought, reading that passage on that particular day may not have been such a great idea.
At any rate – Beth Ann and Tom are two of the finest writers we have and, I think, the only married couple in Neil White’s Mississippians.
Click here to see all of “Lemuria Reads Mississippians.”
Editor Neil White will be signing at Lemuria on Thursday, October 28th.
Reserve your copy online or call the bookstore 601/800.366.7619.
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