I am currently thinking about the parents of the protagonists of my novel they are very much occupying my head..... their names are Lizzie & Gloria and they met when they were 19 and both pregnant with the same man’s babies (for very complicated reasons I will not go into right now) and they fell deeply in love. The first time they met Lizzie had glitter in her hair and was wearing only one stiletto, and Gloria had almost burned the house down that morning trying to make toast while crying. Lizzie moved into Gloria’s house in a small town in coastal Maine and together they refurbished it and set it up with second-hand furniture and paintings Lizzie had gotten as gifts from her art school friends from college before she dropped out. Lizzie loves to cook and Gloria realized she loved her one day when she woke up at noon and came into the kitchen to find her humming a sea shanty, wooden spoon stirring away at lemons and honey in the big metal pot perched on the stove they’d drug in from Ames Hardware, her curls frizzing up in the steam. Lizzie realized she loved Gloria one day watching her kneel on the wraparound porch, brush methodically whitewashing the brand-new railing they’d found online, paint crusted in her long hair that had fallen out of its tie and smudged across her cheek as she ranted about how fucking annoying her college TA was and how she’d like to sock him in the jaw. Lizzie eventually becomes a mechanic and Gloria a community college Lit teacher and they send their daughters to Montessori school and their cupboards are full of jam and pickles and craft beer, and the shelves are full of poetry and Grateful Dead CDs and huge photo albums and weird rocks. They can’t get married until 2012 but they do as soon as it’s legal— they have a big summer wedding by the lake and nine-year-old Catarina and Natalie are the flower girls, and Lizzie wears daisies in her hair (Gloria’s favorite flower) and Gloria wears roses (Lizzie’s middle name is Rosaline) and there is lots of crying and they fill up a whole huge photo album with pictures, and they put it on the living room mantle that Lizzie built when they were 22 after they broke the original antique making out against it, and there are big trees full of heavy fruit in the backyard and there are always Mason jars of flowers on the dining room table, and their house is full of laughter and they love each other so much, so much, so much.
