Writer’s Workshop

My Life Changed When I Was Adopted

February 2, 2009

Ironically, my parents were tremendous animal lovers. And it was a mutual love affair. It was logical since my mother grew up on a farm where she learned to care for all kinds of animals. My father also grew up in South Dakota and worked on farms for many years. Still … when we were growing […]

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It All Began at Chuck E. Cheese’s

January 22, 2009

It all Began at … Chuck E. Cheese’s was the site of the blind date. I had no idea, as I walked down the steps of City Hall back to my car on my first full day living back in Lodi after having been gone for several years, that a woman I shall call “D1,” a high […]

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Writer’s Workshop: Happy New Year!

December 31, 2008

Describe a New Year’s where you would have been better off just staying home. Happy New Year from the great central valley of California where the weather is typical for this day of the year: Cold, overcast, dreary. The forecast for tonight? Dense fog. Visibility will drop to less than a tenth of a mile […]

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The Surprising End of My Innocence

September 2, 2007

Sometimes “the end is in sight” at the outset.

It was when he struck up a conversation with me at work. Six years older than me, he was different from any man I had known up to that point in my life. He was handsome, intriguing, charismatic … and, as my coworkers had to point out, flirting with me. He was someone I could never “take home to mother”. Besides, I was still pining for someone else.

We interacted casually for a few weeks, our conversations gradually becoming personal and revealing. I understood that he was recently divorced and had a three-year-old son.

I was naive, inexperienced and oblivious so a friend explained that he was pursuing me. I had never before been “chased”.

Eventually, my defenses worn down, I agreed to a date and the relationship progressed. I knew that it would, of necessity, end, but I didn’t know when so I told myself that, in the meantime, I could just relax and enjoy spending some time with him. We never talked about long-term commitment.

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