Another New Year's Exercise

My online message board group came up with a challenge to list memorable years in our lives.


1960 -1969 - abuse by neighborhood boys in Houston in 1960 - escaped to camp, then moved to California where I felt safe and was happy, eventually found a wonderful group of friends in a magnet arts and liberal arts school, thrived

1969 - high school graduation, craziness around threatened kidnap and threat on Daddy's life. I left my protected California princess world for the University of Texas where, within two weeks I met my future husband and by best friend to this day - also the year I first felt for sure that my father was proud of me.

1974 - graduated from college, married Kerry against my mother's furious objections and learned that she was big enough to admit she had been wrong, started graduate school

1975-1985 - the pink bubble decade - so happy, in grad school and loving it but going slow enough to mostly be home with my girls , crazy in love with Kerry, improved relationship with my mother - all was well

1985-1986 - bubble burst - house fire and remodel, Kerry diagnosed with cancer and died within nine months, started practice at The Listening Tree, began single mother period, expected too much of my girls, put one foot in front of the other , made it through

1990 - met (reintroduced to) and fell in love with and married Bob - so much good and hard in creating a blended family, learned or began to about birding and hiking the New Mexico mountains

1996 - Joanna's wedding and I became a grandmother for the first time (K.K. on the ten year anniversary of Kerry's death), a blessing repeated in 1998 (Danny) and 2001 (Zachary)

1997 on - decline of my mother's health, her death in 1999 and my Dad's in 2000, Ruth's wedding in 2000,

2001 - wrote my novel

2003 - present - Bob completed career change to education and got job in Corpus Christi, we learned that we could live apart and still be strong as a couple -I hit my stride as therapist and grandmother - Bob his as a teacher (nominated for teacher of the year this year), new bubble years - not pink- fall colors - maybe a russet bubble. Golden sounds too cheesy.