A few years ago, I was poking around on the internet and came across the website of my favorite authoress,
Faith Sullivan. She is the talented writer who turned out
The Cape Ann, the
Empress of One and
Gardenias, to name a few.
Cape Ann is one of my favorite novels, right up there with
To Kill a Mockingbird. I saw she had an email on her site, so I clicked on it and began to compose a message.
I had been thinking for a while about Faith’s characters from Cape Ann. Since I’m a doll designer, I had been tossing around the idea of possibly drawing up a couple cloth doll likeness’ of Lark, Beverly and Sally. I mentioned this in my email and asked her if she would give me permission to create these dolls. I signed off with my phone number and a link to my website so she could see the type of dolls I create.
One Saturday morning, just a few days later after my email, I awoke to the telephone ringing. I answered it with a groggy, “hello?” and on the other end was a woman’s voice I didn’t recognize. “Hello, is Emily there?” she queried. “Yes, this is her,” I answered. “Hello, Emily, this is Faith Sullivan, how are you?”
OMG, I almost dropped the phone….can you all just imagine how I felt? My heart was pounding and all I could say was, ” Oh, my God!” in a surprised, high pitched tone. I was so thrilled. She and I talked for about 5 minutes, and the reason for her call was, she wanted to tell me she of course, got my email and she took a peek at my website and thought my dolls were fun. She also told me she was very flattered that I wanted to make dolls out of her ficticious characters. She gave me her verbal blessing to go ahead and design the dolls, and after a little bit more of small talk, she gave me her phone number and home address and we said our goodbyes. I hung up the phone in stunned delight. Wow. Faith Sullivan just called me.
The reason I’m writing this is I am having one of those episodes of ‘talkers remorse.’ Did you ever say something, or promise something to someone and didn’t come through? Well, that’s what I did here. I led her to believe I would make those dolls, and although I thought about them, and drew them up in my head, they never came to fruition. Days turned into weeks and weeks into a couple years, and in the course of it all, we lost two family members and my life got side tracked for other things and I didn’t do a damned thing-and I had permission! I led her on and I feel like a heel. I’ve since talked to her a few months ago and she had that tone to her voice that made me feel like she thought I was a person who is all talk and no action. I’m a ”poo poo promiser,” as my hubby would say. I feel so bad about it, I almost feel like I can’t read her books anymore. I hate how I feel. I am a poo poo promiser, although I try so hard not to be.
I’m sitting here writing this because I’m being haunted once again by one of my personality flaws-my lack of following through. What can I do to rectify this situation? I can answer this myself. What I need to do is go back to that book and reacquaint myself with the three little girls in the story and begin again what I set out to do in the first place-design those dolls. Only then, I will be able to send Faith some photos and let her see, for once and for all, I accomplished what I set out to do in the first place, no matter how late I am. I will be able to prove to her I’m wasn’t just uttering a bunch of hoo haa when I initially proposed the idea to her.
Yep, it’s time to fess up. Just like the hubby says, don’t feel bad about things done in the past. If you’ve made a mistake, just learn from it and try not to do the same mistake twice. I also can add that I will make good on a promise, and that all this remorse will soon be a feeling in the past. After all, who wants to have ‘poo poo promiser’ as one of their labels? I sure as heck don’t.
Onward.
Why Jane 
