A few of the places I’ve called home.

 

South of Ordinary: a reinvented memoir

 

I self-published this story in 2019. Responses from readers brought me some regrets. “It is not every day that you get a bird’s eye view of your parent’s dysfunction.”— “Dave was a jerk.”—“You did not present yourself in a good light.” —“You appeared like a victim. I hate victim stories.”

Alrighty then. I wouldn’t be bothered by these comments if they didn’t ring true. It was not my intention to make Dave look like a jerk. I was broken hearted when I first wrote the book. Recently divorced, I had a hard time remembering the love story and didn’t really look favorably on our year and a half trip to south america.

There was a lot of fear and angst for me during the adventures that Dave invented. I didn’t like the tone of the book with a focus on Dave’s adrenaline seeking ways at my expense, so I unpublished it. The book was true then and it is true now, but since I wrote those first words, I have changed. I realized it could be a better story if I looked through a different lens.

Now for the past four years, I have been rewriting. I have found a theme that gives the book an understory, not a mere travel adventure book. Through the re-write I have found forgiveness and acceptance for who Dave is and I have allowed myself to remember our beginnings, our love story. The book is shaking out in a way that is more true to what I want to say. I realize everywhere we went I was trying to set up roots and a home, to gather moss. As we rolled along ,this longing for home continued to be a recurring theme. I also wondered about the cost of love and what things I compromised in myself as a result of my culture in the 70’s and my belief system that said a woman should support her man and allow him his dreams. Stay tuned for a better story…coming September 2023

On our wedding day, we stood in the mountain meadow bordered by the snow sprinkled peaks of the Rockies, and shared not rings, but sips of water. He thought we could be water brothers like the martians in the book, Stranger in a Strange Land.  I might have liked a wedding ring, but that was what everyone did and we were re-inventing ourselves.  

One thing I knew for sure was that we would last forever. How did I know this?  I knew it because I ached for his attention. The chamomile flowers smelled sweeter, their buds a buttery yellow, and the sky more radiant blue when he looked at me.  

We were married on 7-11, 1970. After Mom realized it was going to happen in spite of her misgivings, she called it good luck because it was 7 come 11—the winning throw of the dice at Vegas. 

Our marriage was a crapshoot since Dave and I came from opposite ends of the social spectrum….