Why I Write

          When I was growing up I wanted to become an artist, a writer, a detective and then as I went away to college I added social worker.

  Life magazine ran a series of articles about a young teenage girl who was pregnant.  It followed her the whole nine months. If memory serves me right, her parents sent her to an unwed mother's home.  It was there that she had to make the decision about whether to give up her baby or keep him.  It was an agonizing time for her. Even though she had professional help, and the occasional visit from family, she and her baby were on their own.

  She grew to love her child. She was only 16 or 17 and was afraid she couldn't take care of him properly. She cried a lot -- and I cried with her.

The employees at the home where she stayed encourage her to give up her baby for adoption.  Pushed is more like it.  Her family totally agreed.  There was no one to step in and give her any encouragement that maybe, just maybe she could keep her child and still make a good life.

I still remember one quote from her,she is talking to her baby, rubbing her stomach and trying to decided what is best for both of them.  She said, "Right now it is you and me against the world, but one day soon when you are born--it will be you and me against each other."

    I cried so hard when I read those words, because I knew she had made up her mind to give her child up for adoption and it was breaking her heart.

    In hindsight it probably was the right decision, however to a young girl reading the article, and who knew this could easily happen to her, it was a horrible slap in the face.  I decided after following that article for months, I wanted to be a social worker. The young woman did give up her baby. The article ended and I don't know how their lives turned out. Hopefully, they had good lives and found happiness.

    This was during the 60's and at that time it was socially unacceptable to have a child out of wedlock.  I was outraged that people, family, could so easily turn their backs on their children, just to save face in their community.

    In communities that were riddled with sins of all kinds and with some of worst kept secrets. However, most of these secrets were known and were just ignored depending on who you were and how much money your family had. That is just how the South was in those days.

    I went to college that fall, and I majored in Art and Sociology.  I soon found out that art would always be a hobby and not a profession. I also realized that if I became a social worker, with my personality, I would never have a life or a family of my own, which I wanted. I am an all or nothing kind of person.

    My career would have been my life.  A life of trying to fix other peoples problems.  I switched majors to psychology. The mentally ill fascinated me.  It is hard enough living in a world as a moderately sane person, but to have to live as a mentally ill person---and survive is impressive and dangerous.

    I quit college to get married halfway through my junior year. I have never once regretted it. I have had the privilege to do a little of all my dreams in one form or another. My last employer of 20 years gave me all the mental illness, killers, rapist,and perverts I could handle.


    I had a wonderful family,that I adore and love beyond measure. When Tommy and I made our daughters--we made magic.

    I have been allowed to do all the things I wanted to do--just on a different path than I had planed.  A much better path than I ever imagined.

    And now I write.  It has almost become a new urgency in my life. My mother died of Alzheimer's disease almost 2 years ago. Since then I have been compelled to write.

    Life is over so fast and most people take their stories to the grave with them. And soon after, the generation that knew them dies, their stories die too.

    I don't want that to happen in our family. I want my great-great-great grandchildren to know our family....crazy as it is.

    I want them to know the adventures we had. The good times and the bad. Maybe it will help them see themselves in us and answer a few questions for them. I hope, as they read these stories, they will wish they had known us as real people.

    I hope they will be proud of the blood that runs through their veins, and will long to dig deeper into their history and our past.

    I know where I get my extreme love of coffee. I had a crazy Aunt Sadie,literally crazy. Each time she had to be committed to Hopkinsville Mental Hospital, she packed her suitcase with cans of Folgers coffee---which they promptly took away from her!! 

    Knowing about Aunt Sadie--well, let's just say it explains a lot. I also wish I had been nicer to her. Mental illness was not talked about then. After working with the mentally ill for 20 years, I can now understand Aunt Sadie.  Too bad it didn't happen while she was alive.