I readily admit to being a mess. I was born in Connecticut, spent all of my growing up summers somewhere in New England, went to college in New York, and have lived in Colorado, Alabama, and South Dakota. I have been a Republican, an Independent, and a Democrat. I have been married three times – to a politician, then a history buff, and finally my high school sweetheart, a college professor who looked me up after forty-five years and who passed away after only seven years of a very happy time together. I currently reside with a Golden Retriever who doesn’t retrieve anything but is a very nice person. I have three grown children and four teenaged grandchildren who are perfect in every way.

 

Before I retired, I had an assortment of jobs. I taught piano for ten years, was a church organist, headed up a political organization, and then managed a retirement home, an arts in education program, and a dinner theater. None of them was financially satisfying, but all of them put me in touch with a wide variety of people – children who didn’t practice, people who argued about funeral hymns, women who stuffed envelopes and put up lawn signs, old people who played bridge and ate soft food, and poets, dancers, sculptors, and actors who made me laugh and cry and think.

 

I like classical music, opera, and jazz. I listen to Nina Simone, the amazing Tony Bennett, and younger music when I’m in the car with one of the teenagers. And about the car: I drive a nineteen-year-old Saab that lives in a one-car garage attached to a Spanish bungalow with stair railings made out of galvanized plumbing pipe and a fifteen-foot waterfall in the back yard. Nothing in my house matches. I don’t have matching lamps, cookware, or curtain rods. I have landscapes, abstracts, still lifes, and a piece done with paints made from plants by a young boy I met on a beach at Puerto Vallarta. I also have a huge poster of the cowboys from The Magnificent Seven and a portrait of Beethoven done by my older son.

 

I do not smoke but I enjoy a nightly aperitif and I love good food of every ethnic origin, hence my weight is the subject of discussion every year at my annual checkup. I also love Christmas and have had up to six trees in my house. I enjoy the change of seasons but I hate the heat. I dye my hair brown and wear purple glasses to drive and watch television. I’m allergic to penicillin, a lot of cosmetics, and metal. I wear comfortable clothes, sleep with my dog, and pray every night for my late husband, my family and friends, people who are sick or injured, and world peace. I need all the help I can get, mess that I am.