I was born in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1914. My father was a high school teacher. I had a sister, Marie, who was sixteen years older than I. Perhaps I was an accident; I don’t really know. At any rate, I had a hard time in the beginning. Mother was not well, even then, and my father saved my life by finally locating some prepared baby food which I could digest.
The struggle he made to keep me alive assured, of course, that we would have a special relationship. My sister was in high school at the time, preparing for college. She helped take care of me, but the main job was done by a professional live-in nurse, Florence Boston.
Those were tough years. Mother went to spend her last years with her parents in Indiana, and died when I was seven. Between Florence, Dad and Marie I was well cared for—until Dad made the mistake of marrying a 
woman who thought she wanted to be a mother to me. I soon changed her mind, I guess, as their marriage was not a success. Looking back, I feel forced to take some responsibility for that, though how much is questionable.
I scarcely remember my mother except, unfortunately, for her coffin in the corner of the living-room. Marie told me once that I was a “fighter from the beginning,” and I suppose it is true, for as I look back I can see evidences of someone (I have trouble believing it was me!) adventuring into strange territories of action and thought. I remember organizing groups of kids and telling them what to do, of bossing them around, of riding the streetcar alone to go ice-skating or swimming, of befriending kids in school who were otherwise outcast for reasons I did not care to understand. I remember not doing as I was told and doing as I was not told, beginning in kindergarten, for which I showed my disdain by leaving several times the moment the teacher turned her back on me, and slamming the door behind me. Once I succeeded in breaking the glass. Many times I promised “not to do it again.”
I lived with my sister and her family during my high school and half my college years in Indiana. There I “took” the lead in any drama, in school or out. Other kids regarded me as “different.” “You talk funny!” they said. Kids from the “wrong side of the tracks” befriended me.
This kind of miscreance has followed me as a life pattern, more or less. I have conformed enough to get by, but no more than necessary. I think I was a fairly good mother to my three boys, and my husband, Bryson Gerard and I, were in tune in many ways. He was liberal enough to tolerate my ventures and we cooperated to become good parents. He has passed on, and my boys are the joy of my life. I am living with my middle son, John, now in Cambria, California.
I’ve made children’s dresses, jackets, worked in publishing, served as an administrator in the peace movement, sold books by mail, worked as an office secretary – whatever job was available, either part-time or full-time. After teaching college English at PCC (Pasadena City College) I spent a decade teaching in Japan. I retired from my last job ten years ago to write full time. My main interest has always been in the arts and I truly believe that if the human race is saved from itself, the arts will be the agent of delivery. Enjoy my website. It’s my current effort to speak up.
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