Since Day One
When my publisher released the MUMENTOUS audiobook last week, I hadn’t actually heard to it from start to finish.
Even before it had a name, MUMENTOUS has been my passion project from Day One. Day One was the moment I saw Texas homecoming mums for what they are: an expression of love between generations of women and girls.
Day Zero started the moment my mom died in 2011 and ended in 2016. During that sum total of time, my memories of Mom were primarily stuck on repeat, replaying her final years of slowly letting go of the earth. Like the way she’d slip an inexpensive piece of costume jewelry into my hand each time I traveled from Texas to visit her in Florida.
“I don’t wear this anymore,” she’d say. “Here, you take it.”
Five years later, in Fall 2016, I was taking photos of a group of Texas moms making homecoming mums for their kids’ high school marching band fundraiser. Suddenly, the space-time continuum shifted. I was instantly endowed with a superpower, a form of X-ray vision where I could see Mom’s reflection in things that weren’t actually her things. She was right there in those sparkly homecoming mums, even though she never made a mum in her life.
Day One.
Since then, homecoming mums have been a telescope, pointing my X-ray vision back, back, back to when my mom, dad, and I were living our daily lives together. It used to be that I’d remember myself attending Girl Scout camp, or bringing treats to school on my birthday, or going to the prom. Now, with my mum-enhanced superpower, I could clearly see images of Mom sewing patches onto my Girl Scout uniform, baking birthday cupcakes, and driving me all the way to the “good” mall to shop for my prom dress.
© mum hospital, by Amy J. Schultz
That’s why from Day One, I wanted to know all the secrets about the homecoming mum tradition. Ask all the why’s, and get all the answers. Research. Interviews. Photos. More research. More interviews. More photos. Until there was nothing left unsaid. No moment unnoticed or underappreciated.
When MUMENTOUS was published in April 2023, I thought it was all over but the marketing. Then came the creative rush of the Texas Lakes Trail’s MUMENTOUS cultural heritage exhibit. Then groups began inviting me to give talks about the history of homecoming mums in Texas. Then I started a blog. Then the 15 seconds of media frenzy. Then more chapters poured out of me. Then someone suggested a podcast. Then I wondered if the whole book was a podcast, which led to the idea of an audiobook.
Then it all came to a screeching halt. I came to a screeching halt. I absolutely could not decide if I should narrate the audiobook myself. I knew I could do it; I had, after all, been cast as John Adam’s understudy in my elementary school’s production of 1776. Friends kept telling me I should do it. My publisher, in their infuriatingly affable indie style, shrugged and said, “Whatever you think is best.”
Then I realized it. Mom was never one to read the same books over and over again. So why read her the same love story I had already written? There are new ones to write.
I took a really deep breath. Let’s go.
My publisher led me through the process of producing the audiobook. I gave creative direction, selected the voice actor, and provided phonetic pronunciation for words like “mumtrepreneur,” a ridiculous word of my invention which looks great on paper but is impossible to speak. I recorded two new chapters myself; namely, the author’s introduction and a “sound cloud” chapter. In seemingly no time, I had reviewed and happily approved the first 15 minutes of narration. Then I waited.
And then the wait was over. Suddenly, it seemed, the audiobook was out there. In the world. On every podcast app imaginable. Without any kind of final review where I might say something like, “No! Wait!” or even “Good luck, Little One.”
I took a really deep breath. Instead of freaking out or rifling through the fine print of my contract, I simply remembered that I had set the audiobook free well before then. Free, so that I can explore what’s next, guided by my X-ray vision that can see Mom in my future as surely as she was in my past.