Hello, Dear World
I’m introducing myself here so that the writers I follow will have a better sense of who I am and, perhaps, why I enjoy their writing. Whether I ever write more than this one post is anyone’s guess.
Whenever I have to introduce myself, I always stumble. Just who am I, besides someone who obviously likes purple hair?
I grew up in north-central New York, where there are (still) more cows than people. My hometown is very small, so small you often can’t find it on a map. Not only have people left over the years, but my hometown has also lost the few amenities I enjoyed during my childhood. It no longer has a post office, a school, a library, or a gas station. The post office was the last to go, along with my childhood home, destroyed by a flood that occurred several years ago. Literally, I can’t go home again because the house I grew up in is no longer there.
Long before the flood, when I was 21, I bought a ’66 Dodge van and drove to Oakland, California with a friend. It was 1978, the waning years of peace and love and hippies. My friend painted a beach and palm trees on one side of the van; our vision of California. Oakland was nothing like what we expected. For a long time I hated it, but I couldn’t leave. Urban living gave me an anonymity I never enjoyed back home where everyone knew you and your family’s business. I also had better opportunities for work; back home, all that was available was nursing, and I get dizzy at the sight of blood.
I met my future husband in San Francisco. Long story short (and, yes, it’s a long story), we married after a few years. We were eager to leave California. So much of it we loved, but the crush of humanity was more than we could bear on a daily basis. He had grown up in Florida, my mother and stepfather wintered in Florida while the rest of my family was still in New York. When I finished my B.A. in English, we decided to move to Tallahassee, Florida.
Thirty-plus years later, we’re still here. We started accumulating cats in our very first year. All told we’ve cared for eleven cats and buried seven. Our cats keep us here. They all have been strays. We have two remaining—Wendy and Raji. Wendy is technically middle-aged at about 11, and Raji is a youngster, at about three.
Besides writing, I knit, weave, and sew, with weaving potholders as my latest obsession.
I’m a lucky gardener.
So here I am. Writing, and connecting as best as a highly sensitive introvert can without imploding.
If you want to read more from me, I also blog irregularly at 1WriteWay.com.
If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading!