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Writing "SHE"

11/7/2018

7 Comments

 
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(Unless otherwise noted, the Kathryn Tucker Windham blog is written by her daughter, Dilcy Windham Hilley.)

When Mother got really old, she decided to write a book about getting really old.


Mother was a prolific writer with more than two dozen books in publication when, at 92, she decided to take on this new subject matter.  She’d always written about the places, people and topics she’d known best, and old age was no exception. She said she would write about the burdens and mishaps of having to deal with the visitor that life’s December delivers to your door.  She would call it SHE: The Old Woman Who Took Over My Life.


As she always did when she wrote, Mother sat at the dining room table with a yellow legal pad and began in longhand.  She was not especially well at the time, but she chose to ignore her failing heart and to get on with a project that seemed to energize her.  She was in and out of the hospital and physical therapy in those months, but still she wrote.


When I went to Selma to visit, she was eager to share new chapters with me.  She read aloud to me about her visit to the ophthalmologist who was aghast to learn that Mother had driven herself to his office.  She read to me the chapter about repeatedly dialing her prescription number instead of the number for the pharmacy.  I cackled out loud about her quest to stay fit by goose stepping through the house while arm-pumping cans of Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup.  


It was good writing.  It was hard work.  And then one day it came to an end.  


Mother was back in the hospital.  She’d hit a particularly rough patch, and her spirit was damaged.  I went to see about her, and I asked how “SHE” was coming along.


“I’ve given up on it,” she told me.  “It’s no good.”  Mother died within weeks.   


Her editor and good friend, Randall Williams of NewSouth Books, wouldn’t let the project die with her.  By some miraculous turn, he took the barely legible manuscript and pieced it together with pages she had already given him, and he made a book.


I wish Mother had lived to see it published.  It was on the local bestseller list for weeks and weeks.  So many people have told me what joy they’ve gotten from that slender little volume.  Now in paperback, it remains a strong seller.  It was good. 


7 Comments
Mary Pat Riley
11/7/2018 09:41:34 am

SHE is one of my all time favorite books. I can hear her voice reading it and sympathize with her surprise at each new level of age difficulties. And still she found life and humor in her plight...and shared it with all of us. Miss her

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Dilcy
11/7/2018 12:45:22 pm

Thank you for those sweet comments....

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Mary Linda White née Baker
11/12/2018 08:30:38 am

Loved being her across-street-neighbor on Royal those many, many years ago. She was a hoot!

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Carol Nimrod
11/16/2018 08:35:36 am

I so admired Kathryn Tucker Windham when I was young and reading her ghosts books. Over the years, I appreciated her other writings on folklore. Through friends, I have even enjoyed her company on occasion. She was a talented and dear lady. I’m discovering, as time passes, just how accurate and insightful her book “ She” is! Thanks for this blog.

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Susan DuBose
11/16/2018 02:35:00 pm

It was an honor to know your mother while I was working at the Archives. She was truly one of my favorite authors and I rushed to the radio in the car each Friday morning to hear her tell stories!
"She" was a particularly meaningful book to me. My parents always came to see your mother and to hear her and the three of them grew old together. When my mother started declining in health, I read the book aloud to her and to my daddy on my every afternoon visits. They laughed and said that she had "nailed it!" Once again, your mother had provided some laughter and joy to the three of us who were struggling to come to grips with our life's journey. I am so grateful for the happy memories that her willingness to laugh at herself and her age have given me through this experience with her book!

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Roberta Stephens
1/3/2019 12:37:04 am

Fell in love with your Mom and her stories. We met several times, my daughter was young then and was a ‘helper’! She’d be so proud of my children, Corpsman 5 years, a srtaway from getting pinned in nursing! My youngest, 1/8th a pharmacists! My 3yr old deans loves books. Will be glad when I can share your mom’s books!

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Dilcy
3/6/2019 09:22:05 pm

Thank you, Roberta!

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"Some people are important to intellectuals, journalists, or politicians, but Kathryn Tucker Windham is probably the only person I know in Alabama who is important to everybody."      

​–
Wayne Flynt, Professor Emeritus in the Department of History at Auburn University. 
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​Ben Windham & Dilcy Windham Hilley
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dhilley@inbirmingham.com

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  • Home
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