Margaret Dilloway, American Housewife

About Me:

Welcome to my world!  I’m a stay-home mom and writer who recently relocated to Hawaii with my three kids and my husband.  No, it was not a military move. No, there was no relocation allowance. Yes, we sold everything and moved across the ocean.  Yes, Hawaii really as expensive as you’ve heard. Yes, it is fun, especially if you like the water. And I totally took the header picture. However, this is not the view from our home. The view from our home is the back of another home from the back and at the front, usually the city bus going by.

I’m a writer and have wanted to be a writer since I was 5.  Actually, first I wanted to be an artist, but upon asking my parents for rec-center art classes and being told it was too expensive, I decided I should be a writer.  Writers can write on napkins.  They don’t need pastels or oil colors.

My first book was Mary, The Loneliest Little Girl.  Or something to that effect.  It was about a kindergartner named Mary who wanted to learn how to read and go play with the big kids in first grade.  I put it together backwards, like a Japanese book.

However, I became an art major in college, satisfying that long-ago dream. After graduating, I rediscovered how much art supplies cost and became a substitute teacher. Still dabbling in writing (I thought) I wrote a play that got produced at a San Diego festival. Then I decided the best thing for an artist to do was to marry rich, so I married a guy who was enlisted in the Army Airborne Rangers instead. Yep, I always have to do things the hard way. After we moved to Washington, I got a temp job as a receptionist/bulk newspaper handler at a place that published two weeklies. I intercepted a faxed invitation to ride on a military airplane and asked the editor if I could cover it. Shortly thereafter, I got promoted to writer and contributing editor, with my very own orange cinderblock office. Then hubby got out of the Army and was set to be a U.S. Marshall, but there was some kind of budget freeze, so I got a job at a Bluetooth company while he waited (yeah, that never panned out). Once again, I started as an administrative assistant, but got bored and decided to write BLUETOOTH FOR DUMMIES, which was sold. September 11 happened, the company laid off most everyone, and the publishers decided to cancel the Bluetooth book. But I got to keep the advance money, which paid for much-needed LASIK. After that, I stayed at home with my two (now three) kids, freelance writing to keep a little food in the cupboard as my husband embarked on his new career in finance. Eventually, after one almost-successful try, I figured out how to write a novel.

The novel was inspired by a book called THE AMERICAN WAY OF HOUSEKEEPING. I found it at my parent’s house after my mom passed away. Written in Japanese with English translations, the book is actually intended for housekeepers; it tells the reader encouraging things like NOT TO GIVE the white people’s kids any of “your” food, for sanitary reasons. Obviously the writers were not aware of the Japanese fondness for plastic-wrapping everything and taking shoes off in the home and general germ-phobia. Anyway, my dad thought it was for housewives, but it was for maids. Nonetheless, it was often used as a “housewife guide” because there was nothing else out there to inform the new servicemen-wed Japanese brides on how to run an American house.

My mother’s book was barely cracked open. I imagine that she took one look at that and threw it to the back of her cookbook drawer, which explains why my snoopy-self never found it for the first 20 years of my life.

Anyway, the book inspired me to imagine my mother’s life all over again. As a daughter-child, you don’t necessarily think about your mom having much of a personal life or hopes and dreams; all you care about is whether you get your way about things and whether you have food to eat. My relationship with her was further strained by language and cultural barriers; she was also already in her 40s when she had me. The novel is heavily fictionalized, but there are a few incidents my mom told me about that made their way in. Like all the officers making passes at her when she was a housekeeper, or being strafed at when she was walking home from school, or how her family used to be rich and had a nanny that tried to steal her little brother.

Because my mother passed away when I was just 20, I never had much of a chance to get to know my mother as an adult friend. This book, in essence, gave me that chance. It gives me a chance to rewrite her life with the happy ending she wished for and wanted so badly for me.