I lived in New Jersey, in the woods in New Jersey. I have two brothers, one on each side; I’m in the middle. And there was one house across the street that also had two boys. So I grew up as a tomboy in the woods and we did all the stuff you said. We went fishing and we played, we tried to play basketball and baseball. What else do little boys do? I tried to pee one time like…
I lived in the valley in southern California and I wouldn’t call that city, but it’s not small town. It’s kind of suburban, but L.A. is across the mountains, so, anyway, there was this little league field across the street and they had logs to tell the people where to park, you know? And we would run across those logs you know, for balance you have to, you can’t fall, the whole thing is to not fall off and get eaten…
I grew up all over Iowa. So we averaged about every two years or so moving. And, so I’ve lived in Des Moines as a second grader and a third grader, but mostly I lived in small towns. And when we moved from Des Moines we moved to a township consolidated school that was out in the country four miles north of Estherville. And that’s when I got my first introduction to horses, and I actually fell in love with…
We played outside a lot as kids. There were a lot of children in my neighborhood. And we played tag and hide and seek. I’m trying to think of the one where you go fast and the person on the end goes speeding off, crack the whip. Yeah. And we played a lot of jacks and I lived close to the creek and we were not supposed to go in it, but we did. Then if the, the bottom was slick…
I grew up in a very, very small town, population 299 it said on the sign. I don’t know that we ever made 300. And that’s a very different kind of life than people who grew up in larger places. We lived in a house on the end of a street where there was countryside. I’m too old to have had a childhood that included television, anything like that you know. So I wandered around among the trees and along…
My brother is a priest over in England, an Anglican priest. He once, before they had security at airports, walked me to the gate at the airport in London and said “I don’t have a gift for you.” And that was kind of odd, because we were a poor family and we didn’t share gifts. But he says, “I’ll give you something you can put in your heart. Actually, I’ll give you two things.” I’ll save the first thing, but…
My special person would probably be my auntie or my godmother and godfather. I call my godmother my auntie even though she’s not technically my aunt. She lives in Kansas City, and this [object] is a present from her. She is a very special person to me, and I don’t get to see her a lot. But when I do see her, it’s always really fun and we hang out and I really try to savor the moments because she’s…
My special person is my “uncle”; he was actually like a third cousin four times removed or something. My dad was an alcoholic, and I didn’t have much of a relationship with him growing up, but this man—we’d visit him in Iowa City and stay with him and play with his kids, and to me he was the epitome of a most excellent person and a role model. He was an organic farmer and an engineering professor at the University,…
My dad’s dad, every week when my dad was overseas in World War II, he [grandfather] wrote and sent to him [father] what he called the Daily Paragraph. It was like a magazine, and it was the news clippings from the paper, of course. Things like that that had been in this Ohio town. My grandfather to my dad, who was in the army. Father-son. And he was a great artist, so the covers are just incredible. There’s drawings and…
It’s interesting to me to what makes a person special to somebody. Clearly, your grandfather just had all of these talents that he shared so wonderfully, or a person who just out of the blue says something. What makes a person special to you? Yeah, and how it sticks. I mean, that one short moment he had with that guy. And people from your past, too. You might have a treasured possession from someone that’s gone but you also might…