Category Archives: Marlow Murder Club

Sep1

summer camp for adults

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I’ve watched this real estate video more times than I can count. It’s been on YT for over 6 years now, and I return to it every so often, just to get re-inspired.

Deep down inside, don’t we all want to live at “summer camp for adults?” Where the living is slow and easy. I’ve only been to Nantucket once. I instantly felt completely at home, as though I’d always been there. One night waiting to eat dinner at a bar, I met a young woman resident who made her living as a decorative painter. It’s a good thing a table became available quickly – I was just about to ask her for a job…never to return to America, as the locals call the mainland. I could just as easily have stayed and never looked back.

That is where all of my fantasy novels start. As a child the books I wrote (literally, on folded used paper that I sewed together) were all about horses and farms and life at the lake and solving mysteries. But all of the novels I’ve written as an adult still remain in my head. And they all begin with a woman disappearing from her life and beginning anew in a strange place. Like Anne Tyler’s Breathing Lessons, or Silvio Soldoni”s Bread and Tulips, the protagonist woman has become invisible to her family and friends. It’s depicted perfectly in the series The Marlow Murder Club, but this time Becks Starling finds a new life when she discovers a new calling as a sleuth.

New calling or new location, every woman who has ever been responsible to and for anyone else- in other words, every woman – soon discovers that she is invisible to those she cares for. Innocently most of the time, they have slipped into being dependent on her. The more responsibility she handles, the more responsibility they lay at her feet. She becomes the invisible cog that keeps the machine running smoothly. And she begins to fantasize about a different life, one where she is free...

Believe me, I’ve planned my escape to the nth degree. I’d be far less happenstance about it than any fictional character. No one would ever find me. I know myself just well enough to know how to disappear from here and reappear elsewhere unrecognizable.

But here’s a big clue: as far as location is concerned, I’m right at home where I am living now. A small village on the west coast of Michigan is as close to the NE coast of the country as I’m likely to get in this life. And other than those 2 places, I might feel at home in Great Britain or Ireland. Give me vast deep water, a cold, damp climate and pine trees. You can have the rest of the planet.

And to further dispel any mystery about me: my dream life is single and my dream home is shingled. An old Cape with wide pine floorboards. Collections of dishes and colorful artwork. I entertain friends and family at Sunday brunch while the dog and cat sleep on the hearth. As I’ve always been fascinated with architecture and the fine art of interior design, there are inspirational stacks of design books in every room for spontaneous perusal. And I almost forgot – every bathroom has a window, for Heaven’s sake! Who thought it was okay to omit windows from bathrooms?! Same plonker who thinks open floor plans are acceptable for humans, maybe. One more detail: there will always be rock and roll. Okay, that’s it for today. Carry on…

Dec21

spell check and repetitive nightmares

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Recently, in my never ending search for more input, I stumbled upon the PBS Masterpiece Mystery called The Marlow Murder Club. I’m obsessed, for several reasons. I’ve watched the existing 4 episodes of season 1 twice now. I almost always watch every episode at least twice of any show that I enjoy – certainly any mystery. I have terrible anxiety watching the first time. I cannot stand not knowing what will happen. And so, sitting on the edge of my seat fretting, I miss a lot of details. I pick them up the second time through, when I can relax because I already know the outcome. Yep, I’m one of those people who always reads the last chapter before starting the book.

The protagonist of the series is Judith Potts, my new imaginary best friend. Do try to live up. One of the things I related to is her job. Or perhaps her advocation. She is a crossword puzzle setter. As a child, when I wasn’t drawing my own paper dolls (anatomically correct, of course), I was creating crossword puzzles. I made them up for my friends and siblings. Honestly, I think I only stopped because for some inexplainable reason they weren’t interested! It was my idea of fun. Apparently not theirs.

Did I ever tell you about the nightmare I had repeatedly as a child? I walked home from school, into the house, found my Mom at the kitchen sink…and when she turned around to greet me, it wasn’t my mother. The woman asked me my address. This was it, so I must have remembered it wrong. But I didn’t know any other address. I went out and retraced my steps all the way back to school and home again. But it was a stranger’s house, and when I had no way to find my way home I woke terrified.

In retrospect I find the nightmare revealing. I knew I was amongst strangers by the time I was going to school. I never fit there, in my family. I never fit in my school. Town. World. I have never fit. And yet I have spent the better part of seventy years trying. And now I’m not.

Now I am exploring who I might really be, you know, if I am not trying to fit or be accepted. If I am not trying on others’ lives. So I’m going back to the wonderfully satisfying hobby of puzzle setting. For the shear joy of it, because it relaxes me…and I might take up writing murder mysteries, too. Spell check!

Dec12

cat lady

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My first cat was a calico kitten my Mom got me at around the age of four. I wouldn’t remember why, of course…perhaps I was grumpy about having a new sibling. I named her Patches. I do remember Mom and I sat very still on the floor peeking in to watch her giving birth to a litter of kittens in the bottom of my wardrobe, and being heartbroken when I couldn’t keep them all.

At the time my parents had a boxer named Duchess who kept getting out and terrorizing the neighborhood. She jumped through the living room picture window once and took off down the street. I remember the woman who came to pick her up when Mom found her a new home on a farm. But I was very sad. She was soon replaced with a Cocker Spaniel I named Blackie, because, well, black. Apparently my imagination was not yet fully developed. And so began my life-long love of animals. Growing up in a family with five children we always had cats and dogs and birds and fish and my sister had a horse. Most of our pets lived long luxurious lives I’m happy to report.

Many years ago I lost my beloved cat Polly (Polly Wolly Doodle All the Day) and I was devastated. It doesn’t get easier to lose a pet as you get older; it gets harder. I would never replace her – she wasn’t replaceable. Now I know that. I didn’t think my heart could survive much more loss. I was wrong.

But I did get a puppy a few years later. A Pembroke Welsh Corgi, precisely because I was unfamiliar with the breed. She wouldn’t remind me of the dogs I had loved and lost. When she became older and was slowing down my husband and I adopted a rescue Corgi looking for a forever home, Oliver. And when we lost Christie and were still grieving a year on, my vet insisted I adopt another Corgi rescue in need of a loving home, and we brought home Hariat. With each loss, still devastated and depressed months later, I would adopt another dog hoping to help my aging dog cope and find a new lease on life. My last was Odie, a miniature Beagle from the Kent County Animal Shelter; he was the first Beagle I had ever known. I couldn’t open my heart for another Corgi.

Hariat and Odie are the reason I live where I am now. I bought a house for my elderly dogs. Priority requirement: no steps out into the yard. We had been here several months when I was asked if I could help out a family member by cat sitting Chewy. The dogs have been gone for a few years now, but I still have Chew-chew.

The name has never suited him. He is regal, probably mostly Maine Coon. He deserves a sophisticated moniker befitting his royal presence, but I would never change it. He was already several years old when he came to my house. There was no period of adjustment necessary. He immediately became one of the dogs. He’s a cat-dog.

Is he actually quite different from cats I have known in my past, or am I different now? It’s the latter, of course. The longer I have interacted with animals, both wild and domestic, the more they have taught me over the decades. Not only are they sentient, but incredibly intelligent.

Feline Chewy and canine Odie were inseparable until we lost Odie to cancer shortly after the pandemic began. Since, I’ve begun to suspect that Chewy has felt he carries sole responsibility for my well being, and has had to become my assist animal. He will often wake me at night when I am having a nightmare or my breathing is erratic. Last night he was buggin’ me buggin’ me buggin’ me, as he often does in the middle of the night. Wake up! Did he want food? No. In a weirdly unusual move, he tried to knock my water glass off the nightstand. I poured some fresh cold water and he took a sip, sat back and gave me “the look.” It’s intensely judgmental and rather implies my utter lack of understanding; the telepathic message is one of impatience.

Then he jumped off the bed and walked over to his water bowl, sat and looked down at it, and then looked back at me. I said, “I will if you will.” And we both drank water at the same time. We hoomans are dim-witted and hard to train, aren’t we?!

So, I am a cat lady for life. I miss the dogs terribly. But it’s just going to be Chewy and I for as long as I can possibly keep him healthy and alive. We are a team. Are you a cat lady? If you know what a privilege that is, you just know. Judith Potts knows. She has her confidant, Jasper.