A LITTLE HISTORY

Writers have stories as much as they write them. We come from somewhere...

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I was raised a farm girl.

 

Once upon a time, I had horses and could saddle up and brush down the assorted Quarter horses and misfit ponies that peopled the acreage where I grew up.

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We were poor.

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Largely stuck in the house with my sister, I became a voracious reader populating my mind with impossible fairy lands, Oz princesses, and equine science. Every month I would beg my mother to buy me Western Horseman magazine at the grocery store. I checked out many more books at one time than policy permitted from the regional library. Librarians can recognize a lonely child.

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We moved off of the farm when I was fourteen or fifteen. We sold my mare and moved into the tiny town where I went to school. By then I was singing in choir and traveling to speech and debate events and science and math bowls. The farm faded as I focused on things of teenage importance. I dated. I came out to myself, my boyfriend at the time, and then my mother.

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And then I flew on a plane into a city where not a single person knew me and went to college and kissed girls and saw the ocean.

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And so on.

 

But there is still Ozark misfit in me deep down. It's in there. Somewhere.