I just took a good friend back home today. I began to miss her as I came back home and sat at my computer. Lee Woodruff and I have been friends for only a little over a month. During our visit, she shared stories of her life, her children, her emotions about her husband and his recovery from a traumatic brain injury, and her wonderful sense of humor that made me laugh out loud. Her story about her dad had moved me to tears. She has been such good company!
A librarian’s offer for an extra week past Lee’s return date and two days of library fines had allowed me to keep her with me a few more days, but finally last night, I closed the last page of Perfectly Imperfect: A Life in Progress
So I came home from the library tonight and looked up Lee’s book on Amazon. I wanted her on my shelf for whenever I wanted a conversation–albeit a one-sided–with her. I had been disappointed at the library that In an Instant: A Family’s Journey of Love and Healing
There, on Amazon was a nice surprise….a video of Lee reading from one of my favorite chapters “The Jewelry Box.”
Lee Woodruff’s name stuck in my brain after I blogged last month about a really good post about writing and memoir that I saw in the Huffington Post called Writing as Therapy. In that post, Lee talks about memoir writing with three other writers. She describes how her book grew from the remnants of In An Instant: “And as these great stories got cut away I then knew exactly what I wanted the next book to be – the wonderful moments in life that hew us together and they were all cut out of this book so I decided to pick up all the broken pieces and recreate this other book.” As I walked by the new non-fiction shelf at the library, I saw her casual pose on the book’s cover and knew I wanted to get to know her. I’m glad I invited her home.
I discovered we have a lot in common, other than the fact that we each have four children. She loves to bargain shop for clothes, and when she and her husband appeared on Oprah and O commented on Lee’s boots during a break, Lee informed her that they had been only $99 on sale at Macy’s. That’s just like me–always qualifying a compliment. And imagine this–she doesn’t like being a sports mom or her saggy knees. I could totally relate to her parenting stories and her admission that she “had plunged into parenting with the look of an owl blinking in the bright light.” In fact, that description fit me for many years as I was raising my girls.
I shared two examples of Lee’s wonderful sensory detail in my Wise Women Write classes on “Minutes to Moments.” Examples from Lee’s 17 essays were perfect for this theme since she likes writing about the ordinary moments of her life as a “wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend.”
The subtitle of Perfectly Imperfect is “A Life in Progress.” I’m hoping that as Lee’s perfectly imperfect life continues to progress, she keeps writing about it so she can share with us.
Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in this post are “affiliate links.” If you click on the link and buy the item, I will receive a few pennies from Amazon. However, I only recommend books I believe will benefit my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”
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