In an earlier post I mentioned that my mother was a wacky, red-haired housewife named Lucy Ricardo. Well, some readers have questioned my right to claim the Queen of Comedy as my very own. The thing is, I never said I was an only child. But even though I understand my siblings are legion, I really cannot over-state the role my spiritual mother played in my early development. Without her, I would have been left with only that other wacky red-head\u2014the mother who gave birth to me\u2014who was often angry, unpredictable, scary, and sometimes downright cruel. <\/p>\n
I prefer Lucy. In fact, I love Lucy.<\/p>\n
I love Lucy because she\u2019s like me\u2014so unjustifiably convinced she\u2019s brilliant & talented, so eager to prove herself, so confident in her success, so inevitably doomed to failure, so good-humored about her endless mistakes, & so resilient about bouncing back from disaster every time. A girl could not possibly find a better role model.<\/p>\n
But the most important lesson I learned from my fictional mother was that as long as there are stories in this world, I don\u2019t have to be confined to the unpleasant realities of my \u201creal\u201d existence. From Lucy I learned that life is what you make it. I learned that I can dream, I can pretend, I can claim Lucy Ricardo as my very own. The story-telling skills of Lucille Ball taught me more about the power of myth than the droning lectures of Joseph Campbell ever could.<\/p>\n
And, okay, sure–I understand that Lucy Ricardo is not real. I know she\u2019s just a compilation of the creative energies of many people at many times & many places. But who the hell isn\u2019t? Aren\u2019t we all just a compilation of creative energies, a fleeting figment of our own imaginations?<\/p>\n
So, I guess this is yet another reason why I wrote The Spirit Keeper<\/em>. As long as I get to write the story of my life, then, by God, I wanted to make it an exciting one. I only hope Katie O\u2019Toole can inspire & comfort other people the same way Lucy Ricardo inspired & comforted me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In an earlier post I mentioned that my mother was a wacky, red-haired housewife named Lucy Ricardo. Well, some readers have questioned my right to claim the Queen of Comedy as my very own. The thing is, I never said I was an only child. But even though I understand my siblings are legion, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kblaugheed.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kblaugheed.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kblaugheed.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kblaugheed.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kblaugheed.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.kblaugheed.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":186,"href":"https:\/\/www.kblaugheed.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183\/revisions\/186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kblaugheed.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kblaugheed.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kblaugheed.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}