At a family function recently, a younger relative asked me what my story was. When, they clarified, did I meet my husband, Dave?
I was 14, I told them, about to turn 15.
Wow, was the reply, that’s so young.
I held off from telling them that by that Christmas I was pregnant.
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Yup, I said, it was 1991, and we started going out in May. By the school summer holidays we were separated as he went to his aunt’s for the summer, but we wrote all the time to each other.
Letters? The younger family member was amazed. They continued: I feel that letters create a connection. I wouldn’t even know how to write one. They’re nothing like texts, you know, you just send a text and it’s impersonal and instant and there’s nothing to it. Do you still have the letters you wrote to each other? What did you say in them?
Yes, I still have the letters, I told them, all of them – mine and his. We wrote silly things, replied to questions asked, said how good/bad/indifferent the weather was, shared jokes, the minutiae of our summer days, the gossip going on in our newly formed friend group. I love letter writing, and he always encouraged me to write – even though the most he ever read is probably my letters.
I then remembered how I’d been shocked to find that the boy I was crazy about didn’t read books – I remember weighing up that snippet of information because books and reading were one of the most important things in my life. Then he wrote me all summer long, and read every word I wrote him and I knew he was everything, this boy who didn’t read books, because he took time out of his summer, at the end of every day, to write to me.
Mad, the young family member said, interrupting my memories. Letters. Mad. And you were hardly 15, and you’re still together. Mad.
I shook my head because I hadn’t realised a few things, one that letters had lost out big time as emails and phones took their place, and two, that even family members didn’t know my story.
There’s no easy or right place to start my story. If I begin with my childhood it sounds idyllic, because it was. I was born in the ‘70s, and grew up in the ‘80s and despite the horrendous mortgage interest rates that saw my parents work themselves to the bone, it was indeed idyllic. I ran around all day long, fell off bikes, climbed trees, explored every inch of my neighbourhood and went home to a warm house where we’d read books with our feet on the range oven door.
I could start by telling you that I learned to read when I was three. My mother read to me every night, and soon I was head over heels for words and books became so important to me that I wanted to be a writer. But there were never enough words … I read the backs of shampoo bottles and Rennie packets and a fair chunk of those encyclopaedias that every ‘80s household seemed to have. The Google of my time.
I was inspired by Marie Curie, Florence Nightingale (I dressed as her one Hallowe’en), Pocahontas and Helen Keller. Birthday presents were always books and I devoured them as if they were all the sustenance I needed. Little House on the Prairie, Black Beauty, Bambi, The Secret Garden, Little Women. They all left a mark on me.
I wanted to build a log cabin, have a horse, talk to deer. I wanted to understand the Yorkshire accent. I wanted to write a book just like Jo did. What could be more fantastic than to write a book?
And I did. I’ve written five and a half (soon to be six).
And my very first will be published soon.
The Moonlight Gardening Club is a story about the unlikely friendship that blossoms between a young, single mother and a grieving widow. At the heart of the story is a warm, welcoming and supportive community that’s centred around the Moonlight Garden. It’s an important space where they all come together to garden under the stars, and learn about each other, and more importantly, about themselves.
As with everything in my life, it was my friends and family who had my back, and so it was with The Moonlight Gardening Club. Another wonderful writer, Hazel Gaynor, knowing how long and hard I’d been trying to get published, sent me a message about a call-out for an Irish writer who loved gardening. I answered the call and after some conversations, was offered a two-book deal with Avon HarperCollins. It still blows my mind to have my dream come true!
When I say it’s a dream come true I really mean it, because when I got pregnant in 1991 when I was 15 and a half, I saw that dream begin to slip away from me, like sand in an hour glass. Dave and I were terrified, but we were united and, despite everything, we managed to finish school, get married, start a business, renovate our home and have two more children. All with the support of our amazing, loving families and friends, and our absolute bull-headed determination to do what we’d talked about in those letters we’d sent to each other in the summer of 1991. One of which was me becoming a published writer.
So when published authors will tell you that they’ve been writing forever, that their overnight success is years of perseverance. You should believe them.
It’s taken me all my life to get published. And I’m loving every minute of this learning curve.
The Moonlight Gardening Club is written under my pen-name Rosie Hannigan, and is out as an ebook and in paperback
