My Curriculum Vitae

 Curriculum Vitae

Born in rural Missouri, head first almost arriving before the doctor.

Her birth year saw a “Purple Haze” of the Hendrix’s kind; Oscar was “A Man for All Seasons;” and PBS was born.

Her father walked high on steel beams across the Gateway to the West.

We moved East to The Bay State, the place of my father’s childhood.

We returned to the State of Misery

5th birthday party, kindergarten classmates were invited but no one came.

Sundays were filled with the sounds of an arm-chair football coach for Cardinals and their giants, Dierdorf and Hart, but the Steelers of Pittsburgh with Bradshaw and Swan were a steel curtain.

After 2nd grade, another house, a new school, no friends

4th Grade saw the arrival of the Fat Fairy and Mr. Alcorn, which made a little girl who loved school, hate school.

After 4th Grade, they moved to the house of my inheritance. New school ... now parochial, not public ... with superficial friendships.

Her father often slept at the kitchen table or on the back porch in his lawn chair induced by the intake of Budweiser. There were arguments...threats to leave.

We traveled to Iran, “to where???” many said....to return 6 months later because of a revolution, Islam, and Khomeini to questions of “Where did you go?” “Iran” “Oh, my, there????”

8th grade came with the Big C...Cancer that is. Innocence is ripped away, a little girl skips being a teenager and is forced into adulthood.

Her body becomes the canvas for insurance-paid tattoos. The burn of 3300 RADs of radiation a day, 5 days a week 4 weeks long. The stares, mostly from adults. The smells, the burn, the ice, the vomit....all chemo, 2 times a month for 6 months. NO PIZZA! How will a 13-year-old live?

1985, She knew Stacy’s mom but not the one that they sang about...graduated high school and then college, away from home to the land of Sycamore Trees. Anti-sorority sorority girl… joins alpha sigma alpha sorority and sisters were made for life.

1991, the first year of teaching....not much older than her students. She learned from them more than they probably learned from her. 24 years later, they are some of her true and best friends.

1997, she married at 30 to a man and his son. 1998, she adopted her oldest son. 1999, she gave birth to her son, a toddler-size blessing.

2001, 9-11 A marriage starts to be enveloped in mental illness, and verbal and emotional abuse, the strength of the girl that became a woman was slowly dismantled. 

2007, The Big C comes again... she tells her parents and her mother says, "they said this could happen." ... so why wasn't she told of this.

2008, her world was rocked to the core with the KIA of a former student and the daddy’s girl lost her daddy on this earth to her Father in Heaven... 2 guardian angels she knows they were made.

2012, the marriage implodes...she realizes that she is dead to herself, her family, her friends, and her students. She says it is time to bury the marriage and heal.

November 2012, her Destiny became her Forever 16 Guardian Angel...her heart was broken, her son’s heart was broken, it was so dark, so desolate, there was no light.

January 2013, the marriage is legally dissolved and she returns to her father’s name…a name of strength.

20 May 2013, an F5 Tornado destroys Moore, Oklahoma. She was led by a group of veterans and responded to aid a community she had no ties to. In the wreckage, the destruction, the death, there were glimpses of beauty...it was a spiritual, cathartic, and humbling experience that would mark her

12 August 2013 … the fourth day of school … fear, threats, a school district is almost completely shut down because the mental illness of her marriage was still at rage…she was the target.

Her career is changing, not the students but the structure...becoming an industry expecting cogs to fit into a tight system. Things she fought to get out of the system have returned. She continues to fight the system as a teacher that does what is best for students and not what looks pretty on a chart or graph.

Her world continued to spiral until one day, she saw a light.....faint light....but the little girl....that skipped her adolescence....the woman she has slowly begun to emerge...

October 2015...30 years since high school graduation...she has made the decision to return to the security of her childhood home. A house that was completed in 1876. She knows the brick and mortar, she talks to it as if it was human. To her, it is because there are the writings of her father on the walls.

Summer 2016...she reconnects with her future...a former neighbor...he says “I love you” first.

October 23, 2016 ... almost a year to the day...a tailspin of mammoth proportion is set in motion...a pale yellow butterfly flutters all day around her...without any notice, it encircles her and flies upward to the heavens...her mother had left this earth for her heavenly journey.

August 2017, she leaves her son at his new home in Mule Country pursuing his zoology dream...tears stream down her face...she is alone...truly alone.

There is no longer the excitement when school supplies are all she sees...the passion for teaching has begun to extinguish...she begins questioning her purpose.

September 15, 2019...her 52nd birthday...she accepts his proposal

COVID changes the world, and her career...teaching isn’t teaching through a computer screen to black boxes...she misses the connection...she misses the relationships...she misses her tribe.

Labor Day 2020...she makes a life-altering decision...files the paperwork...In June 2021 she will retire from the career that has defined her...she drops the bomb on her tribe with tears but pride for thinking of herself for the first time in 53 years.

They begin to plan a wedding ... in the middle of a pandemic...COVID marks the joyous event taking her beloved Doughboy at 29...the day before the wedding, she supports her best friend, her sister of 30 years as she buries her oldest, her only son.

She and her heartbroken best friend leave teaching together...they continue to grieve their Doughboy...they decide to honor him with 2 Moms and a Jeep...his jeep. It brings joy, laughter, and tears.

March 7, 2022 ... 2022 hours...God takes her gnomie home... shock, and heartbroken, 2 young-adult daughters are now without their mother, a husband without his rock of 31 years...she without the soul that has grounded her for the past 30 years...the tailspin begins again...she is lost...the air has been sucked out of her lungs but yet she is still breathing...

Angry...sad...heartbroken...where to from here?

Therapy…by choice starts over a year after…what is her purpose?

Where does she go from here?

Where has she been on this inspired journey?  

Where does it go from here?