Beginnings

     It's common for most girls to think that life will begin when they get married. I spent most of my own girlhood dreaming about who I might marry, where I'd live, and how many kids I might have, along with what I'd name them. My dad, in true fatherly fashion, and also after having me read Letters to Karen (a book of letters by a father to his daughter on the topic of marriage and how to be a good wife),  told me to take secretarial classes in high school just in case I didn't get married. I loved shorthand (it seemed like writing in secret code), hated typing (we still had manual typewriters at our school in the early 70s!), and discovered for certain that I never wanted to be a secretary! I also knew one other thing--I hated babysitting too (one of the few available jobs for young girls in school who wanted to make some legitimate cash). I got paid the going rate of 50 cents per hour, and by the time I was 15, I boldly declared to my mother in true young feminist fashion that if she ever got me another babysitting job I would never, ever have any kids when I grew up! Matter settled; another potential career (one as a stay-at-home mom) that I knew I wasn't suited for, marked off my list. I was still considering whether or not I was too tall to be an airline stewardess, though it was my poor eyesight and glasses that ended that career before it ever had a chance of getting off the ground (pun intended). I thought the whole flying and traveling thing sounded really fun!  Oh well, sigh! I didn't know if any girl could actually make money being a detective (I was a huge Nancy Drew fan), and so marriage seemed like the most viable option, though maybe with only one kid. So this was my plan right up until my parents got divorced.  End all plans!!
     Now, since this story is not about my parents' divorce and how screwed up I became, I'm going to make a long emotional story very short: I swore I would never get married. Okay, I did get married a year after graduating from high school, but that's only because I still didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. I was not at all in love with the guy. He wanted to marry me, I had become temporarily homeless, plus I was only 19 (and a little screwed up). That marriage lasted one year. It was after that that I swore off ever getting married again! And I stood my ground until I was 34. (Though I had a baby sans marriage when I was 23; but again, another thing this story is not about.)
     So I became a single mom for eleven years.  But here's the thing: I got motivated! I figured out what I wanted to be, and where I wanted my life to go, at least for the most part. I started school and then kept going. I began reading, not sappy love stories where the women got married and lived happily ever after, keeping house and doing who knows what else; I read the kind of literature that opened my eyes to a past that I had not up to then learned anything about, and to an understanding of the human condition of peoples back in time and around the globe that I might not ever be able to fully appreciate. At the same time I was also studying literary criticism, and while it also definitely expanded and challenged my thinking, I knew that I never wanted to be a critic, nor could I ever be a true academic. But I did want a bigger life! I still wanted adventure and travel, but I also wanted the chance to really experience other cultures and people. I didn't want to "sit out" life. I wanted to dance! And this is when my heart began to open up enough to let a certain young(ish) graduate student working on his PhD in ancient history take hold of my imagination so that I might eventually once again consider marriage.