Welcome to a new series of posts that will spotlight all of the characters of Depending on the Morning Sun!
For each spotlight post you will get:
- a list of my favorite stories with the character—and the reasons why
- a brief bio
Let’s begin with our favorite special-needs-mom-fighter, Carrie Reese! 🙂
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My favorite stories with Carrie
It’s all about Carrie’s family, but mostly her autistic son; the good and the bad, encapsulated in this little glimpse of a standard evening in their lives.
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This one, at its heart, is about the determination to move on and the love for our children. That combination can weather much, even an anxiety attack at 30,000 feet.
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It starts with another bad day and a lot of longing for the past which always seems simpler, but I feel strongly for the hopeful tone in this one. It’s like a lifeline you always have to throw yourself.
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It’s all about raw emotions you feel as a special needs parent and what you have to do to cope. Every single day. It’s one of my most unfiltered pieces.
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A portrait of Carrie’s failed aspirations as an artist, her past relations and a philosophical reflection about life all in one. This one was a lot of fun writing, even if the subject is serious!
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That Bio
Born Caroline McDonnell on the Isle of Skye, 9 March 1979, Carrie was supposed to have been the love-child of ex-hippie world traveler, Deborah Sawyer, and Scottish ranger, Calum McDonnell. But the marriage fractured after Calum started drinking in the wake of his experiences in the Falklands War and it ended in divorce in 1995.
Deborah moved back to her native Ohio later the same year and Carrie was thrown into a local high school. Carrie always professed her love for art, but ended up in law school next because she thought it was the ‘safest’ thing to do.
Her brief attempt at getting an academic degree, however, was cut short by the tragic death of her friend, Lin Kouris, which led Carrie to an even more self-destructive journey into substance and other kinds of abuse, while traveling aimlessly in the Americas.
It took another death, that of Carrie’s brother, who was killed by af mine while stationed in Afghanistan, to shake Carrie out of her self-made misery, get clean and begin rebuilding her life.
Soon after Carrie got a second chance when she met newly minted state trooper, Jonathan Reese, while working as a waitress in Flagstaff, AZ, in 2005.
It wasn’t entirely planned, but the year after that came Emma Reese, their daughter, followed by her little brother, Michael in late 2008.
With support from Deborah and her new husband (Carrie’s stepfather), Carrie and Jon defied the odds and got their family to work, despite Michael’s autism diagnosis, and constant problems with money, health and finding time and energy for anything resembling romance.
The backside of that coin, however, is that their family life almost all of the time is just that … work. Will that ever change? Can it change? We’ll have to see in future stories.
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And that’s it for this time – next up: Carrie’s rock – her husband, Jonathan Reese.
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Song: New Order – “True Faith”
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Photo by Katie Moum on Unsplash
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Thanks for reading! Feel free to share your thoughts, comments or experiences!
Comments
9 responses to “Loss and Redemption: Carrie”
I have long wanted to do these posts and told myself not to. Who cares if it’s not a story? Well, maybe … but I’m 50 today, so maybe I am at an age where I should care less and just do things. Here goes.
A list of my favorite Carrie-stories and a little bio for her.
More posts like this to follow, as said.
Incidentally today is also 50 years ago that Stephen King, one of my favorite authors published his first novel – also called “Carrie”.
About a high school girl who gets abused and kills her classmates with psychic powers. Ahem.
I only discovered this strange fact a couple of years ago. I’m sure there is absolutely no cause for concern …
I hope you are well whereever you are. And that you may find one or two stories on my list here that you haven’t read so far and might want to check out.
I’ll be back soon,
Chris
Fifty years for King’s Carrie!
And fifty years for and in you.
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Everyone else is privilege-blind, of course.
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And law school had its own dangers for Carrie.
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Lately, especially after reading TOMORROW’s LIGHT, I have wanted Lin to live five years longer.
Like, in the 21st century or its beginning.
Thanks, Adelaide 🙂
Always good to hear from you!
Shadeofthemorningsun.com is under renovation at this time but if you haven’t read “Boats Against the Current” and “Like Blood in a Darkroom” – two of my best stories with Lin, Carrie (and Lars and Alan) – I can put them online again and leave a link.
Let me know. And thanks for reading.
I think I have read BLOOD IN A DARKROOM.
I am not sure about BOATS AGAINST THE CURRENT.
Good luck with the renovation of SHADE OF THE MORNING SUN.
Is the new arrangement related to the characters?
Or is it more of a backend thing?
Alan I seemed to know the least of the four.
He did seem solid and reliable.
Earworm of the moment: SAY HELLO TO THE SUN from a Baby Sensory video/link.
Please do put them online – for the sake of the people who haven’t read them before.
Thanks and thanks for the music tip.
The renovation is for the front-end.
I have for a some time now thought that Shade should be mostly longer, pre-2015 stories and maybe redesigned in a more online reader-friendly format. I also wanted to polish the prose in some older stories.
Overall I feel Shade should clearly stand out as an offer to those, like you, who want to dive deeper than the relatively short ‘present day’ pieces I aim to keep putting out here.
It shouldn’t just be an archive-site for everything any longer!
And … as usual I underestimated how little time I have.
But I will put as many ‘past’ stories as I can back online in the coming week or two, with very few edits. And then take it from there.
Let’s start with:
https://www.shadeofthemorningsun.com/boats-against-the-current/
https://www.shadeofthemorningsun.com/like-blood-in-a-darkroom/
These are the two best stories I have about those youthful years but they are kind of an odd couple. Because they are from the beginning of the high school years and the end, with nothing in between (nothing public anyway).
Originally – like 10 years ago or so – I wanted to start by telling all of these stories about ‘The Gang of Four’ and I ended up writing half a dozen not very good short pieces about Carrie and Lin and half a novella about Alan and Lars and another half about how they met the girls.
And then life happened and I changed the focus to the ‘middle generation’ which is the adult Carrie and her family in Yuma.
My vision is one day to have a LOT of stories from the entire period 1968-2068 which will then encompass what you see here on the site AND Emma and Michael’s adult future (mid 2020s and onward) AND the youth of their grandparents, Deborah and Calum and Sam and Ellen (1960s-1980s).
I hope I can make that vision a reality before we actually get to 2068!
Enjoy the stories and let me know what you think, and what you would like to see more of.
Good post.I subscribed. Have a nice day🍀☘️⭐️💝
So many of the parents I work with are struggling with how they feel about struggling with their kiddos at times. They’re so incredibly strong and hard working . They’re inspiring people. I give them so much credit
As a special needs parent, I can tell you that is probably the one thing we need to hear most. Thanks. 🙂
Any time ☺️😊