Who Are These People?

Image by Pacholek-cz from Pixabay

 Many, many moons ago, I had to write a thesis to earn my master's degree. I zoomed in on the concept of identity, and it's a topic that still resonates for me decades later. My work-in-progress has the theme of identity at its center. So did the one before that and the one before that, though I'm not sure I realized it at the time.

Most of my readers haven't yet met Genevieve (my last project) or Kelsey the one before that) -- something I hope to change soon. Readers of what I've come to call the "MAC (Marita, Angel, and Charli) Books," however, might have recognized these themes in those novels even before I did.

Marita is, first and foremost, a mom. That's the role we see her in first, and the one she works hardest at. She has a professional role, but it's mostly to pay the bills, and whether her poor relationship with her own mother stems from their constant head-butting, the fact that she puts no work into it, or some combination of the two, or something else entirely is something I'll leave up to the reader (although I have my theories). :-) At the center of the conflict in these books is Marita's attempt to balance her identity as a mother with her identity as a woman, something she has "back-burnered" in an effort to be a better mother to her daughter that her mother was to her. But as that long-neglected part of her identity begins to resurface, she needs to come to terms with how to balance the two.

Her best friend Bets is, on the other hand, completely comfortable in her own skin, and brings a "take me or leave me" attitude to, well, pretty much everything. Still, as Marita's life, responsibilities, and priorities change, Bets works hard to remain a supportive friend, despite having little-to-no first-hand understanding of what Marita is up against. In the process, she grows up a bit, too, as she works to find a way to maintain the "fun" that has always been a driving force in their relationship.

Marita's daughter's stepmother is similarly sure of who she is and who she wants to be. She's accomplished much of the latter but when a significant portion of her desired identity fails to fall into place, she's forced to do some reconsidering of her own as well.

When my daughter was in high school, she and I and one of her friends had a discussion about how much of the stuff we dig out of books in literature classes was actually put there intentionally by the author. As I look back on my own writing, I wonder the same thing. Sure, I knew some of this, but it was only in seeking recurring themes in my own work that I was able to couch it in these terms.

If you've read any of the MAC books, what do you think? Do you see Marita, Bets, and Angel in the same way?