A Bird in the House

Here’s who I am... Although I attended four high schools: Ferndale, Michigan-seven months, Palo Alto, California-four months; Birmingham Michigan-two years; and San Mateo, California-three months. I’m a high school drop out. Before I was twenty-four, I had moved twenty-one times. Don’t feel sorry for me. It’s all food for the laptop. I’ve had two husbands-both named John (which prevents confusion). The first one was nice, the second one’s a keeper. I have a daughter, a son, two stepdaughters, six grandchildren, a daughter-in-law, and two sons-in-law. In grade school I wanted to be an architect, a justification for chopping up cardboard boxes. In high school I wanted to be illustrator, or a writer, or a painter, or a wife and mom. After I was a wife and mom, I also wanted to be smart, so I took night classes and spent several hundred credit hours at Oakland Community College, Wayne State University and The College For Creative Studies. I was good at writing and good at art (my teachers said so). I wrote newspaper articles and a children’s book that were published. And two novels and ten children’s books that weren’t. Once I had a job as an editor, but I wanted to be in the art department, so I became a graphic designer. I did that for a long time-years and years and years. Decades. I loved the work and handled the stress. Then I got breast cancer, decided life might be short, and started painting full time. There were art galleries, and art shows, and art fairs. When I got tired of doing that, I went back to writing. This time around: novels and memoirs. And that’s what I’m doing now. For two weeks in the summer I write in an old trailer at the family farm in Wisconsin. The rest of the time I write in Michigan, a little outside Detroit, where I can see the Detroit Zoo water tower from my window.