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Recent Blogs
From My Heart
Entries below appear in order of publication.
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For specific topics, please see Blog Subjects in the sidebar.
History - Family
Sackcloth and Ashes
by Brenda Wilbee
MY FAMILY moved to Meteor Ranch of Northern California in May of 1962. Back then, my sisters and I were eight, nine, and ten, me in the middle, Linda and I were about to turn ten and eleven.
The ranch was a family-run Christian Conference Center and Bible Camp, the mother in charge. She oversaw her husband, sons, and daughters-in-law, the staff, and whatever wards of the state she could take in for cash flow—to use and misuse we’d learn soon enough. I’d already pegged her for a sheep in wool’s clothes. After hiring Dad to come work for her at a pittance by bribing him with a “fully furnished house,” we discovered the house to be a stolen ranger station she’d had her sons saw in half and haul out of the hills.
Orchid and Dandelion
by Brenda Wilbee
—THAT I WAS AFRAID OF MY MOTHER is no secret, but I understood her struggles. Her life had been fraught with abandonment issues, unresolved and deeply buried. I seem to have been a lightning rod for her frustation. So how do I handle this in a memoir? When I don't wish to hurt her?
Hidden History and ADGD
by Brenda Wilbee
I CAN NEVER LEAVE WELL ENOUGH ALONE. When my father asked me to do something with his memoir nineteen years ago I could have just published it. But no, ever the over-achiever and infinitely curious, I am two decades later thick in the hidden history of "the Wilbees."
If Dad writes of memory lane, I write the landscape. Maps, photos, sidebars, history dating back to 1694. I'm currently finishing up his chapter on Little Grandpa, a real character who, before his life was over, created a bit of tension in the family—and sometimes down at the police station.
If Dad writes of memory lane, I write the landscape. Maps, photos, sidebars, history dating back to 1694. I'm currently finishing up his chapter on Little Grandpa, a real character who, before his life was over, created a bit of tension in the family—and sometimes down at the police station.