The necklace: explaination

     The last story that I posted feels a bit shoddy. My best explanation was that it is an effort to combine fiction and nonfiction. The necklace hangs with my other necklaces. It was a gift from my mom who knew I liked it. She was raised in Seal Harbor Maine. She wanted to get off the island and eventually took a job as a nanny and then joined the army to do so. Her background always amazed me. She had an accent and we used to give her a hard time for being a Maniac, but she left this small town in Maine by herself and created her own life when it wasn't a very common thing for women too do. Her father drove the school bus (a sled in the wintertime), worked maintaining roads on the Rockefeller estate, and worked on crab boats. I never knew my mothers parents. They were gone before I was born, but I see them as very hardworking people doing what it takes to survive. My mom learned sailboating from one of the Rockefeller boys, babysat for Dick Van Dyke (she can't stand him and we rarely saw him on tv) and was beautiful and had no problem finding dates. I couldn't understand why she would leave this area, known nationally for it's scenery. I traveled back with my mother a few years ago and I understood why she left. I have lived in small towns, but her town was smaller, both in physicality and in mentality. I can understand seclusion due to weather, but I can't imagine the level of seclusion Maine weather would create on an island. It is beautiful country, but I couldn't live there. I am glad that my mother left. I am proud of her level of independence, to leave at such a young age, to begin a life as a nanny and in the Army. She finally met a guy from Idaho and has been happy ever since.
    My character is Anne. I like to think that there are a few parallels, but I can't imagine my mom as as a character. I have problems with combining fiction and nonfiction. I think stories should be one or the other, but I can understand wanting tell a story that you didn't witness. This necklace is such a story. Mom told me that a boy had given it to her and she later heard from the girl that it was stolen from. I loved this story. It is the sort of story that you never hear from your parents. I love the necklace, but I love the connection that it has made more. Anne is not my mother my mother us far more interesting