So many exciting things have happened in my life that I am
not sure where to begin. I guess
childhood. In second grade I was in a
spelling bee. My word was “pants”. I repeated the word but pronounced it as “paints”. My teacher corrected me and told me the word
was pants and not paints. I spelled it
correctly, but I remember that was the first time I realized that I had an
accent and would try my hardest to pronounce words correctly after that. The beginning of my unending quest to lose my
accent.
In eighth grade I was voted to be on the junior varsity
cheerleading squad. My parents were
horrified. I was thrilled to oblivion. I had four years of cheering in high school
and two years in college and they were some of the best times of my life.
I met my husband and he certainly changed my life. He took me on our honeymoon to Devil’s Lake,
Wisconsin which is one of my very favorite places in the world. We swam in a crystal clean lake and lay in
the sun on these humungous rocks by the shore.
I got one of the worst sun burns in my life, which didn’t help the
honeymoon, but we had a great time.
Years later he would convince me to take Scuba Diving in my
college classes. Never in my dreams would
I have believed that I would scuba dive.
I wouldn’t have passed the physics had it not been for him. I had to miss my checkout dive as I had just
found out that I was pregnant.
The next year I did pass my checkout dive and we dove all
over Ohio in various quarries and had such a wonderful time. He took me to Jamaica for our twentieth
anniversary and we snorkeled in the Caribbean.
In later years, we did scuba dive the Caribbean several times.
When Jess was in junior high she became obsessed with hot
air balloons. She and her dad made a
model of a balloon and she did her science project on hot air balloons. That summer we were invited to the local hot
air balloon rally and we got to crew for one of the entrants.
Some years later, one of my girlfriends married a gentleman
from Holland who had a hot air balloon and we crewed for him. I have ridden in a hot air balloon more times
than I can remember. Being afraid of
heights, the first ride with Jess along, was pretty scary but Jess was so
excited that I had to calm down. I
hunkered in the balloon basket until we set off and then I stood, looked down
and fell in love.
A lot of our close friends were musicians. The hubster picked his guitar back up and
started to relearn to play. I sang harmony
with some of the singers and we had such fun on our deck playing music. We had parties and would stay up all
night. We would do a song and then
someone would say, “just one more.” We
saw the sun rise many of those nights.
The group formed a band and called ourselves, “Front Porch
Jam.” We practiced in our garage and all of our neighbors would set up lounge
chairs in the driveways and listen to us play. In 1999, the band performed on stage at “On
the Waterfront” in Rockford, Illinois in front of a huge crowd. It was the happiest day of my life.
I also had two of the best children who grew up to be wonderful
adults. Addi read the play in Kindergarten
and we were so proud of her. She was also Salutatorian of her high school
class. Jess won the “Young Authors” contest at her elementary school one year. They were both just outstanding people.
And now I have a grandchild.
I never imagined that I would become a grandmother. He is adorable, beautiful and so sweet. He lives very far away but I plan to visit,
and they are coming for a week in June.
Now that is exciting!
Peace be with you.
