I’m telling Mom!
When you were small, those words were often enough to send a chill down your spine. One quick tattle to the woman who bore you, and you were in trouble. That simple phrase always kept you in line, at least until you were grown. By then, as in the new book, “A Soldier’s Wife” by Blair Underwood with Ylonda Gault, Mom had something to tell you.
Marilyn Underwood had kept every scrap of paper that ever passed through her fingers.
That, says her son, author and actor Blair Underwood, is how it seemed. After her death from multiple sclerosis nearly six years ago, Mrs. Underwood’s children found piles and piles of notes, notebooks, lists, random thoughts, and memories she’d written down. Paper was everywhere.
She’d said many times that she was “putting together a memoir of sorts,” and after looking over what she’d left, Underwood thought the collection would make a good children’s book. He was later convinced that his mother’s story was bigger than that.
Marilyn Ann Scales Underwood was an only child, and was raised to be independent. Born and reared in Buffalo, New York, she attended an all-girls school with a big dream to work in the fashion industry. She indicated that her mother was brave to let her go, but Underwood knew that her career was really in New York City. She was right; she thrived there.
Laser-focused on her work, Underwood was in no hurry to do as most late-1950s women did, and get married; though friends urged her to date, it was not a priority until she met the love of her life, Frank. She loved him instantly. They were engaged three weeks after meeting, and married three months later.
“One thing about me,” she wrote. “When I set my mind on something, you can believe it’s as good as done.”
There are really two ways to look at “A Soldier’s Wife.”
On one side, it feels almost random. Marilyn Underwood was a strong, independent woman, an inspiration to those who knew her – but most of us didn’t. While the writings author Blair Underwood compiles here are wise and funny, they’re not earth-shattering and there may be times when they won’t hold your interest.
But they’re exactly what you need, exactly when you need them.
Reading this book is like getting a letter from your grandma. The essays here are warm, with reminders to pray to a purposeful Higher Power, that life’s a struggle but it’s worth living, and that suffering happens. There’s love in this book – lots of it! – gratitude, gentleness, and old-fashioned values. It’s sweetly quaint, but firm. And yes, it’s random, but consider it as a hug from somebody’s mom when you’re down, because that’s rather what it is.
Just remember that no book has to be read cover-to-cover. You can skip around, and you’ll be fine with this one, whenever you need its comfort. “A Soldier’s Wife” could be meaningful or meaningless to you at various times, only you can tell.
