“The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet. His problem is to find that location.” —Flannery O’Connor
Certain objects are more than objects. When you look at them or touch them they conjure up visions of the people who might have owned them, used, them, and treasured them. I love to wander through little antique shops and speculate about the photographs, the pictures, and clothes, inspired by the aura of the past that clings to them. These often become symbols of a certain time and place, of a certain person. I search for artifacts that tell a story, that make me dream or remember.
When I found this silver brush and mirror set I was enchanted. I wanted to hold it, to gaze into the mirror and stroke the brush through my own hair. They called up memories that later inspired me to write a novel.
One summer a cousin I'd never met was sent from the city to stay on our farm while her parents divorced. She was lonely and lost and she clung to the objects she'd brought with her to an unfamiliar place. All of her clothes and small possessions, a jewelry box, a bracelet, seemed lovely and romantic to me, so unlike anything I owned. She used her silver brush each night before she went to sleep in a strange house in a world she didn't know.
Can you see a girl with golden hair seated at an old fashioned vanity slowly brushing her hair and counting out 100 strokes?
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