Raising Daisy, A small story

Excerpt from Raising Daisy, A Patchwork Road
Copyright 1996

“She has decided that she should write an essay to me concerning what ever she wants, and the essay should weigh heavily towards my decision. I like the idea. Her first essay was on, “why I should have a bb gun.” Her arguments were clear and well stated. I think I will say yes on this one. The second one concerns how much time she and I spend together, and how she wants a new pair of shoes every other week (cheap shoes, she says) She used graphs to show the amount of time we spend together now, and how much time we will spend together if she gets the new shoes. The graph shows us spending a lot more time together if she gets the shoes, especially, on Fridays, the day we would go shoe shopping! “

Raising Daisy, A Patchwork Road

The day Daisy and I left home I strapped the bikes to the bike rack, stuffed the flokati, kilim, and rain stick, CD player, and clothes, and, of course, my hot water bottle into the car and headed north. When you don’t know where you are going, I felt instinctively, take what you love! I had $250.00 cash, and a limited Visa card in my billfold. We drove first to visit a friend who we stayed with for a week in Arlington, Texas. It was early June. Our lives had been tumultuous, hers from birth, and I only wanted a stable life for her. I wasn't happily married, but you know, you can't think of only yourself. Well some people do that. My ex did, and his girlfriend, the "Christian Home Wrecker". You all know the type. Talks like she is a Christian, but doesn't walk the talk.

She called one day out of the blue, pretending to find an old friend of my ex. (strike one, she was a liar). When I gave her my husbands phone number cause she was an old high school friend, and called my husband telling him she was still in love with him after all these years. (They knew each other month in high school), and he, I guess was taken back to his youth and had a thing, too, a fantasy about her being a perfect love, they immediately professed love for each other. He didn’t talk about it; we experienced silence for days until I asked, and his response (after 31 years since he had seen her, was that they were in love).

She got an 800 number at her work as a Realtor IN Chapel Hill NC, and began a phone affair with him. I was indignant, and angry with her because she just kept after him. "You gleefully enticed me into calling him, she rationalized. (Strike 2), she was rationalizing her home wrecking, making it ‘my’ fault. ( Now, after so many years have passed, no apologizes have occurred either, she is still professing to be innocent and a Christian.)

It was a year and a half or so later, my marriage was obviously over, I went to Japan to get a teaching job, I wanted to get as far away from these two lunatics as I could.

I m\ was at a friends home there In Japan, and He told me he was always in love with me, He asked me to marry him in a Castle in Japan. I said I would as soon as I was finished with this mess. The story of Japan is another story, a beautiful story, but I didn't marry this man after all. I think I was carried away a bit by the exotic culture. I knew once I came home I couldn't take Daisy away so far. I felt muddled as to what to do, I still hoped my marriage would be ok; my husband would arrive at his senses.

Instead, Kathleen (Kathleen Weston Belo) continued to call him at work, and he asked her several times not to call or write anymore, but you know the type. She wouldn't be satisfied until she had him in her clutches. She had a daughter, Elizabeth, and a husband Rob Belo, a lawyer in Chapel Hill. Rob, had raised her sons to a previous marriage, to thank him, she humiliated him. And when I spoke with him, he said in deep humility, "it is probably my fault." I doubt it was. I am sure it wasn’t. His embarrassment and humiliation ran deep, I could feel it, and it felt like my own.

She wrote "us " long letters, (can you believe that? Yeah...) and in them she tried to make it sound like she was such a good Christian person and her husband was so unkind. ( And , to top that off, “she was only trying to ‘help’ our marriage.” Haha..Yes, help it for herself.) Thing was, none of what she talked about Rob was actually unkind, just her imagination, and her imagination also that she was such a good person. A Drama Queen deluxe, histrionic, our counselor said.

I prayed every day then, on my knees, all days sometimes, but I couldn't ask for what I wanted to happen, I could only surrender.
On the other hand someone else was not surrendering, and she pushed until she got what she wanted.

On Easter, The day after my husbands father (Wyman Stewart) was diagnosed with Cancer and was they said he was dying, after church ( mass) with his Catholic family, and after we all had breakfast together, while I was waiting for Jerry to help me hide Easter Eggs for Daisy, he sat on the Dhurrie with me in the living room, and took out his billfold and he said, as he took out a portrait of her just photographed for him, " this is Kathleen, she is coming in June”.

I was confused. I asked, “well, are you leaving us?
He replied, no, and I asked where she would live, and he said, "we could all live together."
By then I was simply amazed, and couldn't believe my ears. “Ah, well, will she have the guest room, or will I?”
I asked to see what would come out of his mouth next. "We could all sleep together," he announced.

Um hmm.. I said, "well, it's Easter Sunday, Jerry, (My husbands name, Jerry Stewart), we just went to church with your family, and to breakfast, uh, what will we do on such occasions? "

He replied, " we can all go to church together."
I just sat there wondering when he had finally flipped out completely.
He added, “her daughter will come too, and we can all go for bicycle rides together.

I didn't get mad; it was all too bizarre to get angry about. It was not fathomable.

The story goes on, but I won't tell it here. I filed the next week after his family left to go home from being there because his Dad was in the hospital being diagnosed and because of Easter Break.
When they left, I filed for divorce; I asked if he wanted the papers delivered at work or if he wanted to pick them up. He said he would pick them up.
Yeah, I guess so!

I washed clothes, and ironed them, burned all my college papers, essays, got rid of clothes, packed suitcases and bought a bike rack. My family were all-dead, so I had no place to go, I had a daughter in MO, but you can't go to your kids. They were struggling anyway.

I took the flokati, and kilim and bikes, left with the only money he would give me 250.00 cash. I had a credit card, but didn't feel very safe to use it. Before a few months passed he would cancel my card, and probably because of Kathleen’s imagination. As a result, Daisy and I would sleep in parking lots while we traveled cross country in my Galant because sometimes we couldn’t get a room ahead a night without one. Especially when the Pope was in Denver, there was no way to get a room. Daisy was terrified, and I couldn’t sleep. He still doesn’t know this, but my thought is, he wouldn’t care.

So, as I departed after filing and packing our few suitcases, leaving my home and furnishings and everything I owned behind, we drove away, not knowing where we were going. Getting out of Dodge, tho, getting out of Dodge. My 250.00 tucked safely in the pocket of my 501 jeans. I drove to Arlington TX, and stayed with Diane my friend there for a few weeks. Later, we went to MO, and in July drove to Seattle area. My Japanese friend, (Iichiro) came to drive us. Daisy asked him if he would ask me to marry him, He did again, I said Yes again, but I wasn't at all sure it was possible for me to go through with it, I had doubts daily, I told him, and before the trip was over I had broken up with him again. (Iichiro is another story, a love story in an exotic land)

I was beginning to struggle with feelings that were very complex; I had no idea where they were coming from. The basement of my soul, I learned about a year later, where my dead family was stored, waiting to be grieved. ‘This’ death was triggering that horror. The death’s happened close together, and were tragic mostly. I hadn't been able to process that. I guess I had stayed in a state of shock. No more, now there was a steel door to the basement. It was bowing in the middle. Grief was coming to get me. I couldn't eat or sleep. I worked but was always afraid I wouldn't be able to work I was so sick with whatever it was, grief, was it grief?

It was unendurable pain, I was swirling and couldn't be present, my mind swirled and I lost sleep, night after sleepless night, and day time tried to pretend I was normal because no one understood, not even me.

We moved again, to San Antonio to stay with a girlfriend Kathy, I was so sick now I looked like a rail, I weighed 89 pounds. I was obviously sick, emotionally drained and broken. After 3 months, we went to the town we had lived in while I was married, ( West Texas, not my home just where my family moved from PA, a cultural shock for me) and we were homeless.

I stayed here and there while Jerry and Kathleen lived in my home I got in the divorce. A year had passed, After My divorce, that day, Kathleen invited me to my own home, I passed. She was just being nice Jerry said. What a load of crap that was. Love must be mighty blind. And extremely crude, I thought. Well, Texas had always seemed crude to me, and my husband was a Texan after all.

He never knew we were homeless then, I wouldn’t have asked him for help for anything. I didn't have enough money to pay to live anywhere, I stayed first house sitting for Paul Love, an old friend and professor at The University, I remembered Paul coming over after I filed for divorce asking if there was any chance for him and I, he had always liked me. I barely knew Paul though; He had been a friend of my older brother, Danny, who died in 1978, after my young brother was killed 2 months earlier. Besides, as I told Paul, I was getting a divorce. He had remarried by now, and Daisy and I stayed at their home while he they went on vacation. No One knew we were homeless. I left out each day wondering where we would stay that night, I never told Daisy I didn’t know where we’d stay, It always worked out. Then finally a kind woman offered us to stay with her, She was a Travel agent I had met long ago. We stopped by to visit her and she asked where we were staying. I was taken by surprise, and hesitated, She said, " You have no place to stay do you? You're staying with me."

So we stayed at Travlin Tex for the rest of the time until I realized we had no friends there anymore to speak of and it was like a ghost town, all my family buried, so I took my car and traveled to the Seattle area again, me and Daisy, alone.

I am glad I had been there that first summer with her when she met Kathleen Belo and Elizabeth, however, because future meetings weren't very nice for her. Kathleen was a monster who expected more of little hurt Daisy than she expected of herself. I was alone during this first time, completely alone, just waiting for her to come back from visiting them, but I had little to offer her at Lanelle Manuel’s.

I went to Dallas once to meet with Iichiro again, he had business in Ft Worth, that was the extent of my company. He hoped we'd make it, but I still wasn't ready to imagine being with anyone. We had a short visit. My grief was horrible. I couldn’t stop crying. For awhile a woman who worked with hospice learned of my intense losses and had me meet her 3 times a week, She was very kind and helpful, I will never forget her kindness, and her skilled ways of helping me find my anger. She had me write letters to my dead brothers and family, and the anger emerged as I read them back to her. I wadded them up and threw them across the floor, and she retrieved them and asked if I would like to tear them up. What happened surprised me; I literally pulled them apart with my hands.

Daisy and I left now, we had no reason to stay, all my friends were gone, and the only people left for the most part were fair weather friends, and people I should never have tried to befriend, Like my ignorant neighbor Carol Albrecht, who only knew how to keep her nose against the window glass gossiping about neighbors. Shallow as a dime.

We took the scenic route, and drove through Muleshoe Texas and at the bank there I got $50.00 for Daisy to be my navigator and look at the map. She was delighted; She was the best traveling companion anyone could have. We played games, name three cars that begin with A, B, C, etc, Three fruits or vegetables that start with A, B C, etc.

She was glorious. But we were both hurting. I had a home share waiting in Mukilteo, It was supposed to be 400.00 a month, a day light basement near the water. Daisy was excited, she said, “ we won’t have to be alone anymore.” Read it and weep Jerry Stewart.

Kathleen and Jerry married soon after. They stayed together a total of three years. (strike 3) How long does infatuation last, Jerry’s Brother, Tommy, said to me.

That was 5 years ago, and in retrospect, these 5 years living in the Northwest have been beautiful, revealing, and insightful. The pain of leaving a marriage of 28 years and not having a family of origin to turn to, was pain filled, grievous. There were times when I felt life was like a jungle, and my survival as a single person was questionable. I watched couples who were buying new homes and furnishings and planning families, and it seemed that to be mated was to insure a better chance of survival, and sometimes, even though I knew it wasn’t so, It felt as though I was the only unmated person on earth.

The first years my head reeled with memories, of a family that had passed on, and a marriage that was over, but yet still very much alive in me. I felt as though I had been cut off from my roots, hewn down like a tree. I wondered if I would ever sprout new roots, and stand upright again.

I remember sitting on the couch at Diane’s home in Arlington beside the window that first time we left after I filed for divorce. It was raining, and a droplet of water was traveling down a small leaf on the rose bush outside the window, and dropping onto another leaf and another, and yet another as it spiraled down to the earth. I think I felt a sense of being like that drop of water, refreshing, and refreshed, but on a slight downward spiral. I had no idea how rough it was to become. Leaving wasn’t that easy, but I knew what to expect, I thought at the time, though not experientially, and this was what I decided to do, in a situation where I really didn’t have any choice in the matter. It was either leave, and begin a new life, or wait around to meet my replacement who was on her way to live in my home, with us!

Think I should have stayed and fought? I guess it was fight or flight, and I decided on the latter. I wasn’t going to fight when, I thought, I could stand on my own! Some things are just out of your control at times, and all you can do is pull up stakes. I left with my liberal arts degree in hand, and idealistic nature intact, setting out for a new life...somewhere. It would be less certain, more adventurous, and would require change as change was needed to satisfy the requirements of our souls. We didn’t know where we were going, but the poverty level seemed certain, and we did arrive there. There are worse things in life than living at the poverty level!

Daisy is my 13 year old granddaughter who just now brought a cup of sleepy time tea to me at the computer in my room where I am typing this, she is on her way out to catch the school bus. It is a lovely spring morning in May. We live now, in this home share on a 5 acre farm Northeast of Seattle with 5 others. We have a view of Mt. Rainier from the kitchen window. When it snowed this winter the farm became a winter wonderland, the boughs of the large evergreens that surround the perimeter of the farm were laden heavily with snow, the Snohomish valley was all white off in the distance.

On this rare snowy day everyone was home, we were snowed in. So after chopping kindling, and starting a new fire in the wood stove in the large kitchen, we all decided we had to introduce our newest roommate, Yumiko, from Japan to an American snowball fight! It was fun, and refreshing, and after it was over, and we were all laughing, she and, Daisy, who came out of the house armed to the teeth, ski goggles, snowsuit, helmet, boots, gloves, and sled, headed for the hill in the back of the house to sled ride. I made breakfast, and we all sat down to eat. A rare occurrence since it is seldom we are all here at once.

It ‘s spring now, the days are stretching out from 4:30 AM to 9:00 PM. The farm is all green from the winter drizzle, the ferns are thick, and new and light green, and flowers are blooming in the garden, large red poppies, and calla lilies, daisies, and forget me nots! It is an appropriate time to reflect upon the winter of our years since leaving our old home. The winter seems to have passed, for us. Time and experience have a way of healing wounds. Just as the ferns were trampled by the cold arm of winter, the new growth hidden under the perfect white snow, so we were during that time, covered with a a certain cold numbness, as essentially beautiful as the snow during that time.

I worked very hard to make beauty a part of my life, our lives. And, now, it even seems that my sense of beauty was magnified, my instincts, which I thought were rusty, were really sharp, and all the decisions I was faced with having to make alone, seem now so glorious, at least, I was the one making them. There is a lot to be said for that! The struggle isn’t over by any means. You don’t leave home, with no family to offer support, no career, and no place to go, after all those years of being married and figure it all out in a few years. It just doesn’t happen. Especially if you an unconventional, artist, entrepreneur. You do your survival therapy, and then you decide that you have to find your own personal direction. Idealists are like that! I think!

Once I began looking for my direction, I found it was there all along, dictating what our needs were, and how to provide for them. I quickly gravitated to a home share kind of environment for us, it worked for several reasons, one, it provided us with less of a sense of isolation. I felt that was very important. And it was slightly less expensive than living alone. We only lived in an apartment for a short period of time, it seemed an unstable place, a step down, and so many children were there who were going through the same instability. I thought it was unhealthy for us.

First I was able to arrange a situation where we lived in a nice home in a nice neighborhood, with a woman who due to divorce needed some financial stability. I knew then I would search for a larger sharing situation so we could be a part of a family. The first home was in a sunny spot in the banana belt with a view of Puget Sound. (Carolyn’s)We had the whole downstairs of the home to ourselves, so we could just be alone, and lick our wounds, and still know there were others milling around. It was the best situation for us at the time. And I felt a sense of pride that we might be poor, but managing to live a better quality of life anyway. It was important to me to keep that sense of standard of living from going down, even though we weren’t building any kind of financial security towards the future. I pressured myself to do more than I could do at the time, I knew Rome wasn’t built in a day, but I expected myself to do it anyway. Daisy was my first priority, but I think she may not see that for a long time, if ever, Because I was having a hard time, and even tho doing my best, I made mistakes.

I awoke early each morning at Carolyn’s, at about 3:00 Am, crawled out of the small twin bed Daisy and I shared in the living room where we were most comfy. I sat at my bistro table writing while the beta swam in the large bowl resting under the glass top of the table, and while Daisy slept, the moon lit up Puget Sound and the ferry sometimes moved back and forth across the water, all lit up..

I climbed back into the little snug bed there in the living room with her again sometime in the morning around 6:00, and caught a few winks before our new day began. We got up, and I would get her off to school, go for a run on the steep hills around our home, and then shower, and go to work. Everything I did then was deliberate, I had to push myself, nothing came easy.

I made $8.00 an hour doing data processing and bookkeeping, this after myriad other temporary jobs from painting houses to working at a wholesale gift shop. I saved money somehow; I think it was fear which motivated my savings. And I managed to take us skiing, and buy skis for Christmas (used) and we went to see Maurice Sendak’s Nutcracker, too, and to see Cats. Things that I had thought about, and wanted to do for years. Other than these planned special events,we didn’t spend money on anything else ,just did free stuff, hiking and going to the beach, rollerblading, riding our bikes .Daisy was on the basketball team, and my social life was basketball practice, and games, and doing art with her class when I could. When she finally began leaving to visit Texas summers, I didn’t have a social life, and didn’t know how to start one up that quickly. I usually floundered when she left. I would have great plans, but they never seemed to materialize, and I would find myself writing by the window at three in the morning, going back to bed for awhile, running, going to work, and coming home and heating my hot water bottle, putting it behind my painful shoulders, and resting.

Sometimes I would go to the beach where Daisy and I spent so much time, but it wasn’t the same without her there. Often when we were at the beach, she would just be lost in exploration, and I would be lost in my own world, thoughts spinning in my head, and she would want me to come and play with her, but I was immobilized at times, trying to decide what to do next. I was there with her though, watching her play and explore, and have playmates.

Now, I was alone, I’d go to the coffee shop and have a latte, and read the paper, looking for a better job, but I knew I was locked into this one because it allowed me the flexibility to take care of her, She was my first priority, but I admit that I was afraid that by the time she was old enough to be more independent, I would be too old to begin a career.

I already felt too old! My husband’s career took a good twenty years to get going, and he had all my support. How was I going to be able to build anything starting so late, and alone? No one cared that I had started two businesses of my own, or that I had a degree in English, and Political Science, or that I had a National show record as a ceramic artist, or that I used to read the New York Times book review from cover to cover, along with a good 24 books a week for years. No one cared who I was. Did I type well,..no, not really! I could write; edit, communicate intelligently, had traveled to Japan, and Mexico, all over the country in fact, but I was only worth $8.00 an hour. I had gone to Japan to find a job before I left my marriage, I am not at all practical, most people don’t go that far looking for work. I was offered a good job there, but the hours were not conducive to taking care of Daisy, so I passed on that. It was something I wanted to do with my life, live in other cultures. I tried, and at least I’ve been there!

I knew from the beginning that we would eventually try to find a place to live that was more of a shared living arrangement than we had at first, but I felt we needed time to acclimate, so to speak. Almost two years ago, we came to live on this farm, where we have shared our lives with 10 others over time. Five people live here together, and I think the legacy my extended family left me with was knowledge of how well this kind of life could work to benefit us.

It may sound hectic to others, or crowded, but it isn’t. You can get lonely here! This house is large, and everyone has a life going on. People come and go, and really no one tries to control others, except Daisy, she’s 13 now! No one has to answer to anyone, but everyone seems to be considerate. We all try to meet new potential house mates, and decide together who will work, and who won’t, and I manage the house, take the calls, and have two votes, so I still get to make a lot of decisions! The workload is supposed to be shared here, and as a result of often finding younger people for Daisy to relate to, I end up doing the lion’s share of the work. They do pick up after themselves, and do occasional chores to benefit the household. I would prefer not to clean house so much, but I figure it's a tradeoff.

Daisy has benefited incredibly from being able to watch others live, and to develop relationships with them. She was angry once, now, however, she just acts angry, at times, out of habit, and she handles herself socially very well. She is strong willed, but her friends and the people who have lived, and do live here like her a lot. She is entertaining, and has a great social life going, and is in a laptop computer program in her school, only one of 30 programs offered in the country. She is smart and creative, they haven’t yet figured out how to motivate her, because she is a very creative person. It’s a teachers job to that! But I am afraid the schools don’t know much about creative gifted children.

My attempts to give her a family have paid off, I feel. She has been very close to almost everyone who has lived here, eventually. Abby took her to meetings where she learned about the Native American culture, (Daisy was adopted by the Lakota). Abby spent a lot of time with Daisy. She was a teacher, and she loved children, and she had a great sense of humor, and she and Daisy would go to get groceries and come home laughing about speaking with a British accent all the way through the store!

Ruth was a traveling sales person, and she would try to get Daisy to do her schoolwork, and would offer her rewards. She gave her horseback riding lessons for Christmas. Ruby was Ruth's dog, and we all tried to get Daisy to listen as well as Ruby, but it never worked! : )

Yumiko, empathized with Daisy’s frustration about school work, and told her about her own frustrations as a kid, and managed to instill a sense that all would be well, after all, here she was in America, going to college, when she was the worst student in her English class when she was Daisy’s age. She planned to apply to Rhode Island School of Design and study graphic art. I admit that I encouraged the move to Rhode Island, I felt it was a great school for her. She and I worked long nights on her essays together, and she learned fast, and was able to make a’s. I miss her now, very much.

Daisy has chickens; porcelains, barred rock, red producers, Rhode Island Reds, and leghorns, and the landlord, Jim, buys quail each year and turns them loose. The Coyotes like that! They enjoy the chickens as well! Daisy has a cat, too, Megan, who brings moles to the front door, and Daisy has managed to talk Jim into paying her $1.00 per mole for each one she drags in. Mike says that sometimes she cuts the nose off a shrew to rake in some extra money!

Jim doesn’t live here, but this was his family home, and his shop is here. So he is around daily. He and I talk literature, and politics, whatever comes up, and we all have a good time teasing Daisy about her antics! Her friends like to come to the farm to play, and now, she is beginning to move out of my personal influence, out into the world of others. I find myself having to reel her back in a lot; she has plenty of time to be on her own.

Mike,( and Sarah, his daughter who visits), have become like family. The four of us hike, and camp, and go all kinds of places together. Mike has been a hiker from childhood, and is a native Washingtonian. He has taken us all over the Cascades, and Olympics hiking, and we haven’t seen the tip of the iceberg yet.

Last year when Daisy went to Texas, we ( Mike and Sarah and I) traveled to Alaska via the Inside Passage on the Alaska ferry, and we drove through the Yukon, and all down through British Columbia, and back home. We saw bear, and moose, and elk, fish, eagles, and whales, and beautiful lakes of turquoise waters that were large enough to float the,” Lone Star State.”

I had always wanted to experience,” The Last Frontier,” Alaska, when Married, and my husband thought I was crazy! Well, I’ve seen the northern lights, I’ve traveled the Alaska highway, it is a patchwork road, long, and bumpy, and full of surprises, and adventure, like our lives have become. I don’t know where this road ends, I seem to have come to the place in life where I realize as so many others have, that life is a journey, and while we can’t predict where you will end up, (no one ever does,) but somehow when you lead a conventional life, it is easier to become complacent, it seems to me.

This life we live is quite different, I can no longer take very much for granted. My vision is broader as a result of what I have been through, and as the result of people I have met who are going through changes, and seeing how they respond to those changes, this effects me in a very profound way. And as I reflect, and write about these experiences, a clear pattern emerges, it is a patchwork pattern, just like the Alaska Highway, undeniably, and the pattern shows me that my thoughts, desires, and wishes have brought me where I am.

I have every reason to believe that I will continue to experience what I want to experience, and that the conception of ideas will inevitably bear fruit. It is refreshing to be able to see how wishes can and will come true. I am encouraged, and I need encouragement. We all do, and I think we can find it by examining our lives, just a bit more closely. When we take those steps out into the unknown, and push ourselves to make a life, a life will eventually come into focus. For me, this experience reminds me that I cannot rest on yesterday’s accomplishments, that every day has got to be lived fully by pressing ahead. That is when I feel most alive, when I make myself leave the common comfort zone and move out into life. The experience is unnatural in so far as not having been experienced before, but in time a reward comes into your line of vision, and you realize that you have overcome, and accomplished. What a truly wonderful way to define life, overcome and accomplish.

Daisy has come to the point now that she, being always creative, has come upon a great idea to present me with her wants and needs. She has decided that she should write an essay to me concerning what ever she wants, and the essay should weigh heavily towards my decision. I like the idea. Her first essay was on, “why I should have a bb gun.” Her arguments were clear and well stated. I think I will say yes on this one. The second one concerns how much time she and I spend together, and how she wants a new pair of shoes every other week (cheap shoes, she says) She used graphs to show the amount of time we spend together now, and how much time we will spend together if she gets the new shoes. The graph shows us spending a lot more time together if she gets the shoes, especially, on Fridays, the day we would go shoe shopping! As the early teen years begin, come into my reality, I can easily see, that I am going to be overcome, and that she is going to,”accomplish.”

(2008, this is a work in progress, please tell me if you're interested in hearing more)