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Mothers Who Dream |
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About the Author
Click the title above to purchase Mona Vanek's book.
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Mona Vanek -- Writer Like many dreamers,
mother, grandmother and writer Mona Vanek’s aspirations were at one
time squashed. “When I was in the
eighth grade,” says Vanek, “I won a silver dollar in an essay
contest about drinking milk.” But
the teacher kept Vanek in at recess to give her the prize, insinuating
that since the teen was new to the school she may have cheated. “So
she killed any joy in writing,” Vanek says. A
voracious reader who conjured up fantasy worlds where she was a famous
ice skater like Sonja Heine, a dancer like Ginger Rogers and a swimmer
like Esther Williams, Vanek says, “I tried hard to emulate them!”
She may not have gone on to skate, swim and dance like these famous
women, but by dreaming that she could, she nurtured her imagination--a
practice that helped her when she finally went back to what won her that
silver dollar in the eighth grade. Mona’s
Twisting Path Several
years later, an accident in the office where Vanek worked as Clerk of
the School Board resulted in severe lumbar spine damage. Vanek spent
three weeks in the hospital recovering from spinal-fusion surgery. Her
kids, then 15, 13 and 11 took over the canning, laundry and
housecleaning on top of their regular chores. Vanek couldn’t do a
thing, and she admits to some wavering confidence: “I felt like a
useless vegetable; like a drugged zombie most of the time. I hated
life!” Vanek’s family rallied. One day, when she complained, her
husband proved all over again one of the reasons she fell in love with
him. He didn’t give in to her self-pity. “Well, we eat
vegetables,” he told her. “So they aren’t useless. Neither are
you.” Overwhelmed
with guilt that her family had taken over all her duties, Vanek got her
head on straight and realized there was no time to whine. Her kids
needed her, and Vanek mothered them with support, guidance and applause.
“My kids had to give up a lot of things,” says Vanek of that time.
“We barely scraped by and didn’t lose our home or car. That was the
best we could do.” Needing
to contribute financially, Vanek figured she could use her writing
skills to make puzzles she could sell.
Her husband and kids would leave her on the sofa each day with a
Scrabble board, a pile of dictionaries and paper that had been ruled
into squares. “I was alone in my empty house, hating every minute of
confinement,” says Vanek. “Determined to stay happy for my family, I
forced my drug-dulled mind to create crossword puzzles.” The
puzzle writing didn’t bring much income, but it kept Vanek’s spirits
up and her mind busy--good practice for another “confinement.” After
a second surgery from which Vanek recovered enough to begin resuming
household chores and find paying outlets for her writing, a traffic
accident on a snowy road one bleak January morning left her with a
broken neck. “Five years of
medications that interfered with thought processes followed before the
pains eased,” says Vanek. During the years she describes as the
“yuckiest” in her life, she would lay in the back of the station
wagon and watch the passing scenery while her husband chauffeured her
around. At home, with a board
propped against her knees she could write. “I spent far more time
prone than I did on my feet or able to sit,” she says. “But I
wasn’t brain-dead, and although I often felt like a medicated zombie,
my determination wasn’t diminished.” Vanek’s output,
however, was turtle slow. “I started collecting turtles, as a tribute
to my writing speed!” she quips. “Thanks to my kids, grandkids and
hubby, I have hundreds of them now.” Vanek goes on, “The minimal
time I was able to sit up, I spent at my typewriter. So I also have
hundreds of published articles and stories.” For
a time, Vanek sent stories “over the transom” to the editor of the
Missoulian, a daily newspaper she says needed a “correspondent” in
her area. Vanek would take her tape recorder and visit neighbors. She
would ask the homesteaders who’d first settled in the poverty-stricken
area of Montana where she lived why they stayed and where they’d come
from. “From that, I’d get these marvelous stories,” says Vanek.
“I gained a great admiration for them.”
She also sold their interesting history to the newspaper. By
combining her talent for dreaming up images with her ability to bring
these true tales to life on paper, Vanek compiled her collection of
homesteader stories into a 3-book series. The book collection titled
BEHIND THESE MOUNTAINS won the 1992 Idaho Writer of the Year Award. Vanek
is still bringing history to life. Her essays and articles appear in
magazines that include Mother Earth News, Montana Magazine, Good Old
Days and many, many others. Vanek has also created and produced three
videos: RANGER UNDER THE INFLUENCE, IDAHO’S GRIM JOKE, and AUNT LENA,
CABINET FOREST’S UNSUNG HEROINE. Vanek
discovered that by focusing on writing--something that is interesting
and challenging--she could tune out enormous amounts of pain. Find and
follow your dream by working toward your goals, and everything
unpleasant recedes to the background--at least for the time you spend
doing it. Slow
and Steady |
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