Nancy Lamb

Nancy Lamb is an incredible author.  Witty, insightful, and fiercely funny, her writing is a tapestry of humor, poignancy, and intrigue.  She was also one of my mom's best friends.

On the afternoons when my mom didn't drive carpool, she would hunker down in her shed, banging away on her type writer, knocking out poetry and prose with power and precision.  As soon as I got dropped off, I'd scamper up the path to her make-shift office.  Pausing outside her door, I would smell the smoke that twirled through the open window.   Closing my eyes, I'd listen to the clackity clackity PING! -- her symphony in staccato.

Usually her only companion was Nebby, our geriatric black cat who would sit beside her on the metal desk, purring and purring and purring until he'd dodder into dreamland...  But sometimes, when I'd walk past her shed, I'd hear voices:  My mom's wheezy chuckle, and Nancy's throaty laugh would carry with the smoke out the window.

Some of my mom's best memories were made with Nancy.  Crammed into that tiny shed, they'd drink coffee, and argue over the nuance of a solitary sentence, or laugh over a cleverly crafted paragraph.  For hours and hours they'd work  until I'd come home, smelling like sneakers and melted crayons, clamouring for a snack.

(But since Nancy had started writing when she was a young mama with two young boys underfoot, she understood. )

And ever since my mom died, Nancy has become my close friend and confidant.  Her words are measured in the experience of life lived at full-tilt, and the spaces between the sounds are tempered with understanding.   She has helped me put my more scary feelings into words, which then makes them seem less insurmountable, and on more than one occasion, her sharp humor has needled me back from the edge of one or another nervous breakdown.

And, like my mom, I am lucky to know her.

I hope you will check out her website and blog .