Today the Blog Ring of Power interviews me on my latest novel, The Star Family.
Interview Part 3
My interview with “The Blog Ring of Power” Part 3: The Creative Process.
Miss Essig’s House
My cousin asked me if Miss Essig is based on a real music teacher and if her house exists. Here are the answers.
No. I did have a voice teacher named Miss Star who lived in that little green house in Old Salem on West Street (for those of you who know the area). Miss Star is not really Miss Essig, though. They’re quite different. I made Miss Essig up completely. I took her name from my family tree. Most of the names in The Star Family are family or famous Moravian names. Mr. Mueller, whom David and Jane discuss as their music theory teacher, was a real professor at Salem College and did teach me piano.
Yes, Miss Essig’s house does exist. My father built his house on a plot of land right across the street from this English Tudor and one of my best childhood friends lived in it. When we first moved in, she was standing behind the hedge watching. I didn’t even go inside, but walked across the then tar-covered street and made friends. My mother had to drag me inside later, “Don’t you want to see your new room?” They could tell I wanted to move into the English Tudor. My mother tried to make me be more appreciative of my father’s hard work to make money to build this new house, but he just laughed and said, “When I was a kid, I wanted that house, too.” He’d grown up only two blocks away from it. It’s beautiful, calling forth exclamations from people when they pass it by for the first time.
I’m told it’s changed some since my childhood days. There’s a fish pond where one branch of the driveway was. The hedge is taller now. But it will always live in my memory as it was then. My friend and I climbed the tallest evergreens on the property, played in the rose garden, and picked pears off the ground, then ran from the yellow jackets that would come buzzing out. The gang of girls had many a sleep-over. We played the grand piano in the living room and explored the attic.
She told me there was a hidden staircase in the walk-in closet in her parents’ bedroom. I don’t know if it’s true, because she wouldn’t let me look. That imaginary (or not) staircase is now an intricate part of the mystery.
There is no church in the neighborhood, but the Sisters’ House does exist. It’s a big brick mansion overlooking Washington Park. One of the other large houses does exist, but not in the place I put it. The fourth house I made up completely.
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The Advent Star
As a child growing up in Winston-Salem, I looked forward to the Advent season when the Moravian Star would be displayed. I remember we were driving down Cascade Avenue remarking about how Christmas kept coming earlier (this was after Thanksgiving by the way), and I pointed to the Moravian Music Foundation and said it was too early for them to have the star up.
My father corrected me, saying that the Moravians knew the right time to put it up. I learned it marked the beginning of Advent, the season of expectation, the time of preparing for the arrival of the Christ Child. I have since learned this child appears in other traditions as the Divine Child, the Redeemer, the one who will live a human life but remain in contact with the Divine Source and bring that promise all humans hear whispered in their hearts to fruition.
The Moravian Star originated as a geometry project in the Moravian Boys’ School in Niesky, Germany. This was some time in the 1830s. Peter Verbeek began making them to sell around 1880. His son created the Herrnhut Star Factory. The store selling them in Herrnhut was the first Moravian landmark we saw driving into town. The star represents the Star of Bethlehem, the promise of Light, the coming of the Divine to our little earth, which is so much more in need of this than I ever imagined as a child.
My favorite one was the enormous one that hung in Trinity Moravian Church. It struck me with awe. One year I was honored to sing the hymn “Morning Star” beneath its light. The second line of the hymn is, “Ere thou cam’st, how dark Earth’s night.”
I’ve named my novel after this star. In The Star Family, I give the Advent Star thirteen points. I think it was Dr. Atwood who told me that one of the original stars had thirteen points, but I can’t find the email, so I might be wrong. Thirteen is, believe it or not, considered a sacred number. There are thirteen full moons in a year. We have twelve disciples plus one, the Master Teacher, Christ. We have twelve constellations in the zodiac, but a thirteenth esoteric or hidden one, Ophiuchus, tucked between Scorpio and Sagittarius. Named the serpent bearer, it could represent the spine which supports the rise of the kundalini energy, or serpent, bringing enlightenment to the individual.
I’ve also heard the star might be older than the 1830s. There might be some research published about this in the future. I don’t know more than that. In the novel, I made the star much older, tracing it back to the 1500s and suggesting it goes back way farther than that. I made this part up. But it is built using sacred geometry, the angles and proportions Mother Nature uses as building blocks, so it could be true. No wonder it creates such a feeling of harmony and joy.