We are kicking off this year’s Mother’s Day Author Blog series with Nita Prose, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Molly the Maid mysteries. Her latest novel, THE MAID’S SECRET, wraps up the series and reveals long-buried secrets as a daring art heist takes place at the Regency Grand Hotel, threatening Molly’s life. Nita’s mother, Jackie, was known for telling stories that stretched the imagination, though she never admitted to making them up. It wasn’t until Jackie passed away a few years ago that Nita gained more insight into these supposedly tall tales and realized the gift that her mother gave her as a writer.
My debut novel, THE MAID, is dedicated to my mother, Jackie. She was a wildly imaginative storyteller. If you’ve ever seen the movie Big Fish, in a way you’ve met my mother. In that film, Ewan McGregor plays an estranged son whose father (played by Albert Finney) is dying. For his entire life, the father has told his son tall tales about himself --- fantastical, far-fetched stories. All his son wants as his father is dying is an iota of truth about his father’s life --- a cold, hard fact --- but he never gets that from his dad. Instead, he gets fairy tales and allegories, mythologies and legends.
When I first saw that film, I thought, “Oh my god, that father is my mother. And that son is me!” My mother’s penchant for telling totally unbelievable stories she’d pass off as true used to infuriate me, especially when I was a teen.
Mom would make up some story about the backwater Quebec town she grew up in, and how a girl drowned in the river behind her house but came back to life two days later recognizing no one and speaking with a foreign accent. Then there was the story about how she went into the forest when she was a kid, picked up a skunk by the tail, and brought it right into the house. Last but far from least, there was the one about how she used to get tired of trudging to school in the deep winter snow, so she trained a pig, which she used to ride to school every day.
“That’s ridiculous,” I’d say when she’d try to pass off these tall tales as truth. “You can’t possibly think I’d believe that.”
“Why cannot it be true?” she’d reply in her thick French-Canadian accent. “Give me one good reason why it cannot be true.”
“Because it’s far-fetched,” I’d say. “It doesn’t even make sense. Mom, you’re making things up again. Just admit it.”
But my mother would never admit such a thing. Instead, she’d embellish with fantastical details --- how the drowned girl’s hair turned from blond to black when she came back to life; how the skunk winked at her when she let it go; how the pig’s name was Eugette and how it was eventually added to the teacher’s morning roll call.
The angrier I got with my mother’s stories, the funnier she thought it was…until I’d be so raging mad that I’d accuse her of being a liar, and she didn’t like that at all.
Several years ago, my mother died. Once she was gone, I asked my very no-nonsense aunt about her penchant for storytelling, fully expecting my aunt to commiserate with me about my mother’s annoying bad habit. I brought up the ridiculous story about the pig my mother insisted she used to ride to school.
“Oh,” said my aunt. “You mean Eugette.”
I couldn’t believe it. “No,” I said. “That can’t be true. Please tell me Eugette wasn’t real.”
“She was real,” my aunt insisted. “We grew up on a farm, you know. Eugette was a smart animal, easily trained. She was popular with the school children, but not so much with the teachers.”
That is how I discovered that while I couldn’t verify all of my mother’s outrageous stories, I knew one thing for sure --- that some of them weren’t entirely made up. That left a crucial door open in my mind, one that, in my mother’s honour, I’ve left open ever since. I no longer find the blurred line between fact and fiction as troubling as I once did. I consider this opacity my mother’s greatest gifts to me as a writer.
On this special day, Mother’s Day, let us recognize our mothers for all the lessons they taught us and for keeping stories alive.
