THE SMELL OF VICKS, BEN-GAY, DUSTY BOXES AND OLD DRIED FLOWERS

I am back working on my life history, which sounds so dramatic, but in reality is me just chatting in Tahoma font size 12 about extremely unselective memories over 52 years of life. Names may not be complete, dates may be off by a.... decade or two, but it’s fun to reminisce about events in my life ("events" being translated as not the year I was born, where I have lived and gone to school, but important stuff like discovering the perfect chocolate-chip cookie recipe (well, inventing it, really), the first day my first child got on a bus by herself going to kindergarten, and the death of a cat).

It helps that I know my oldest child will read these recollections, and probably no one else for quite a while. They’ll be stored in a box, which with a military life will travel a few far-flung places. Her kids will ask her sometime about what’s in the box - maybe use it for a history class ("These are things my grandma did in the 1970's - without a personal computer"). Throughout more moves, it should be condensed a couple of times ("Great-Grandma Hope must have been tired when she wrote that one"), and finally whittled down to one shining entry that reflects her folksy wisdom and the economic, political and environmental whirlwinds affecting her life (HA!).

Besides, I need to get this done before my brain injury and rapidly-approaching senior dementia latch on, and I begin forgetting everything or elaborately ‘enlarge’ these stories in the manner of my mother until the stories all involve name-personalities, saving the world, and putting myself center stage in everything.

So... to work I GO!