​I didn’t have cats growing up, just chickens and guppies. The guppies ate their babies, and the chickens eventually met sad ends. My first pet chicken, Peachy, died when his nighttime cage came down on his neck—he was trying to get out for a little more petting which he got every evening at the dinner table. The others, a pair named by my dad Egg (Eager Eagle) and Fuff (fearless Falcon) had to be given away. They caused disturbances in our suburban California neighborhood, crowing and flying over the fence into the neighbors’ yards, and the rooster sometimes attacked guests who came into the back yard wearing bright clothing. Or maybe it was because my dad died and we had to move far away. Egg and Fuff were sent to a nice farm nearby, or at least that’s what I was told. Anyway, that was the last of my pets until I met my future husband, Jim, in college.

Jim and his roommate Larry lived in an upstairs room in Baker college at Rice University. Right before I got involved with Jim, a pregnant cat (named Mama Kitty) moved into their dorm room. Her pregnancy was likely the result of an encounter with Mr. Baker, the un-neutered male cat who wandered around the dorm and the grounds. Mr. Baker had a jowly face, the result of many skirmishes defended his territory as the feline master of the most historic and beautiful of the residential colleges on campus.
We enjoyed Mama Kitty and those kittens while we fell in love, and a year or two afterwards, we moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico and got the first of our own series of cats, a black male we named Kitty. Kitty enjoyed the same free masculine status as Mr. Baker. He had nightly catfights on Johnson Lane where we slept with the screenless windows open in the summer. Often the catfights came inside. I was not too far past the birth of our son, so I when the cats set up a howl in our living room I was jolted awake from much needed sleep. Eventually, Gabe, our newly mobile baby, started crawling after Kitty, catching his tail, lying on top of him, pinning him to the ground, squealing with delight. Kitty didn’t make a fuss about it. I suppose he had accepted his diminished status from Kitty Baby, to just plain bothersome cat.

After we moved to West Manhattan Ave., we adopted Pepper and Mittens. We didn't yet believe in spaying and neutering, so Mittens was impregnated by her brother. Poor Mittens was so hungry during her pregnancy that she once jumped up on the table and licked the frosting off the Easter Cake. Their  kittens were born in  our bedroom closet. Missy, the runt of the litter, stayed with us too. She enjoyed nursing, long after her kittenhood, mainly on Mittens, her mother, but sometimes on Pepper.
When we moved to a new house on Gonzales Rd, Pepper got caught in a car engine and had his leg burned and mangled. He had to go to the vet for some expensive and extensive kitty surgery and a long recovery before he came home again. Mittens ran away that same night, obviously scared off by the trauma in a new and terrifying neighborhood. She showed up two month’s later on West Manhattan Ave., skinny and purring. She had crossed several miles of city, hunting, and finding water where she could, navigating by some magical kitty radar. 

When adopting a cat, we believe in the interview process. We go down to the local animal shelter and take them to the special room to see how they behave. I have been known to respond to cats choosing me, as well. Our smaller cat, Rufus, definitely made a pitch to me every time I walked past his cage.
We got two black cats this time for safety sake. If out at night they are less visible to predators. Our friend, Barbara, Aamodt, a very special nonagenarian, says if she can keep a cat two years, she can keep him twenty. I hope that will be true with our beloved two.
Dexter is big, strong, lithe, and likeable. His companion, though not litter mate, step-brother, Rufus, is easily spooked, runs from most people, except me, whom he adores. He hunts quite well, but is definitely the submissive, and Dexter, the dominant cat. If Rufus is on my lap and Dexter comes anywhere near, Rufus will jump down and slide under the couch. Then Dexter jumps up for his petting.
 We have erected a very nice cat fence around a portion of the back yard with small openings in several places, so the cats can run in and out. I call them in at night to feed them a treat--wet cat food from a can--and lock the kitty door. Then I feel safe to go to sleep, even if I hear a pack of coyotes howling.
However, Jim has confessed that Dexter asks to go out every night, and Jim usually lets him. Dexter is his favorite, after all.
 
You got to love a man who loves a cat.

​If I were a painter, I could capture the moment. A young woman, a mother perhaps, perhaps younger, slight, wearing a flowered shirtwaist dress. She is leaning against a fencepost and her feet are hidden by the dry grasses. The perspective is distant, the figure suggested, her dress and hair pulled hard to one side by the wind. She seems to be bracing against the fence, against the sudden gust. She has one hand in her hair, forgetting her skirt.
 
On the other side of the frame, a man sits on a concrete step in front of a dilapidated structure, perhaps an old tool shed. He is long-limbed, lean, wearing blue jeans, a leather jacket, and cowboy boots. He holds his hat, which he was wearing a moment ago, against his long slim legs, stretched out in front of him. A longish piece of his hair, dark with a slight wave, perhaps uncombed, perhaps mussed by the hat, lifts in the wind. He is darkly handsome, a Western man, concentrating, squinting, as he stares at the girl. His gaze is unflinching, razor sharp, penetrating her secrets. His lips part.
 
Enjoy this moment for it catches the essence, the seductive stare, the girl, conscious of being watched. Nothing more passes between them, just the acknowledgement of her prettiness, his desire, her thrill to be seen that way for one brief moment out of an ordinary day of work.
 
Now superimpose the Gas-a-mat on St. Francis Drive, a Subaru, not a fencepost, and Sam Shepard the actor, famous, handsome, knowing it, waiting on the step outside the carwash. The year? Possibly 1986, the windy month of March. I was that young mother holding my hair instead of my skirt while I pumped my gas. He got a glimpse of my stockinged legs, and his lips parted.
 
Sam Shepard, dead at 73 in the summer of 2017. Thanks for the thrill.
 

​It took guts.
 
It took guts to sign up to write a book in a weekend. It took guts to show up at the end of a work week and begin writing full speed. It took guts to keep that ink flowing, the pen moving, to keep on when tired and sore, to not let up on the speed, never let up on the speed, to get to that emotional point and say the unsaid. It took guts to give up caffeine, noon lunchtime, weekend naptime, to sit back down, and go again as hard and fast as you could. It took guts to reach inside and find story that you knew was there all along.
 
Tom Bird’s workshop is based on the premise that the soul knows the book that wants to be written, and that by letting the right brain have its way that book will come out fast and full of heart.
 
About thirty of us met on a Thursday evening at Body Café in Santa Fe, were guided into a meditative state and began writing longhand on unlined pads. We were elbow to elbow, a group of strangers, some experienced writers like me, some novices, and a group of Unity clergy Tom had invited.
 
We wrote in fifteen minute increments, taking one minute breaks in between to count our words, sip some water, or eat a little of the snacks we’d been encouraged to bring. All the while the CD of soothing music, punctuated by a coyote’s howl, and subliminal encouraging messages played non-stop.
 
I had the idea that I would not make it because it had taken me 30 years to complete my first book. Good for me, I’d persevered around raising a child, doing bookkeeping for my husband’s business, starting a couple accounting consulting enterprises of my own, and working careers from real estate to landscaping design to stone masonry. All the while, I found stolen mornings to write that 1200 page first draft, to figure out I needed to break it into a trilogy or more, to attend writers conferences to pitch the book to agents in terrifying 10 minute sessions, to rewrite and rewrite and rewrite, and finally publish Incarnation.
 
With a little help from my friends.
 
The second day we met at 7:30 and continued longhand until about 10 AM when we switched to computer. I used a spreadsheet to calculate my word count and clocked in at up to 664 words in each 15 minute session. We broke for a 45 minute breakfast at 10:30, and that’s when we started talking to each other. People had traveled to get here, some were locals, everyone friendly and determined. Then we were back at it. A brutal session that lasted until a second break for lunch at 2:30.
 
All this was well organized, by the way, with the staff of Body Café delivering our food orders to our places at the appointed hour.
 
I was writing at a wobbly table with a man sweet-faced man named Mike who always said bless you if I sneezed, who accommodated me with gentlemanly politeness and a few well placed comments. We had a balance going, bracing the table with our feet and knees, Mike often standing to work, me on my pillow with my back support, Mike with his trail mix, me with my cheese and apple and protein bars. Neither of us stopped or took a break except that one minute to count our words.
 
It took guts.
 
Somewhere in that long session I got the tittle to my book, the sequel to the sequel to Incarnation, a story that had been in my head (or my body, or more likely my soul) for a really long time. Rain. I typed that in at the head of my document and kept writing.
 
I was in an altered state when we stopped to eat again. The community table was full, so I found a little two-top and sat down. That’s when Jen joined me. I was light headed, weepy, open, and when we started talking, and I realized Jen was a therapist who did past life regressions, and I had written a whole novel about past lives, and that now writing about Atlantis and star-seed beings called, Ari, we were in the same zone. Little by little I came down to earth and made a new friend.
 
Not long into the final session of the afternoon, I got the last line of my book. “And then it rained.”
 
I was stunned. I got up and went into the bathroom. Alone in the stall, I thought of my two year-old granddaughter Gemma, who, when she does something new or brave, like jumping off the couch says, “ I do dat.” I do dat, I thought, and then I wept. I had not only done it, I’d done it before the halfway mark of the weekend.
 
I reported to Mary, Tom’s ultra-capable assistant who was writing her own book and keeping the timer going, that I’d finished. She sent me to Tom who told me to take a 5 minute walk and see if I was really done. I was not the first to finish by any means. We all met in a yoga room at the back of the spa and Tom taught us the emotional mapping method of book design. Here’s where the pink, blue, yellow, and orange post-its and the poster board we’d been told to bring came in. His proprietary method involved re-designing the story along screenplay lines, pulling the emotionally laden sections to the top of each of five columns (designated by pink post-its), following by the cool blue narrative, back-story, expository, then building back up with yellow and orange. Tom gave this speech multiple times during the last two days and each time it sank in a little more. We set to work taming the monster, writing the cryptic notes designating scenes onto the post-its and arranging them on the board. In between, we went back to the writing room and started in on our 2nd book, using the same method, the CD playing, the timer, Mary calling us to write down our work counts.
 
The last afternoon, Tom talked to us, had us write, encouraged our process, looked at boards. Unexpectedly, it started raining. As we left, covering our boards so as not to ruin them, I felt the wash of that rain, reflected in the title of my new book and the cleansing effect of getting it out.
 
I came out of the workshop with a mess of book, a plan for putting it into shape, and daily inspirational thoughts of how it would connect, what it would mean, things to put into it. I’m feeling the dance my new book will make with its predecessor, Chosen. I came out with a huge respect for everyone involved, from Tom and Mary, to the Unity group, to the writers who were delving into their deepest wounds to tell there stories. All that time Mike, standing across from me, typing into his computer, was writing about the death of his child. Oh, my God.
 
It took guts.

My not-yet husband and I moved to Santa Fe in November of 1973, shortly after spending Thanksgiving with my Mother in San Antonio, Texas. I’d lived in San Antonio for the last three years of high school; my mother, a widow, had sought out family in our series of moves from California, my home state. We’d gone first to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where she’d grown up the seventh child of Finnish immigrants, and then to San Antonio, where my father’s father had a post-retirement career teaching math at Trinity University, and had established a press in order to publish a number of his own books.



I, too, followed my passions from mathematics to writing.  When I landed over my head at Rice University, I turned the math major into a double major in psychology, with a lot of English Literature thrown in. That was the start of my shift away from becoming a scientist like Gramps and Daddy.

Baby-boomers on the tail end of the flower child movement, Jim, my future and present husband, and I abandoned our likely big oil opportunities in Houston. Over the protests of his parents, we left the city driving a bomb of car, our 1963 Ford Galaxy, and pulling a U-Haul trailer. Our plan was to head to Santa Fe where we’d heard one could get good-paying jobs in restaurants. As we drove away, a double rainbow formed behind us. Encouraged by this omen, we pulled into Santa Fe two days later and searched the want ads for a place to live.

At that point, Guadalupe street (today a thriving neighborhood full of restaurants, boutiques, and alternative cinemas) was dirt, lined with auto body shops, and the area west of it was clearly non-gentrified. Anglo residents were a rarity. We were young enough not to worry much about infiltrating the old Hispanic neighborhood, and the price of a rental was right. Fifty-five dollars a month.

This picture was taken in 1977, a month after our son was born. By then we’d gotten married in a mountain meadow, cleaned up the condemned upstairs portion of the house, and I’d given birth there by kerosene light. We’d probably already been told we needed to move out, infant or no. The improvements we’d made, such as the carpeted ladder set in a downstairs closet that led to the still primitive upstairs where we slept, the murals on the fireplace, painted by Marek, an English artist we’d met on the plaza and temporarily adopted, the plastic solar greenhouse on the upstairs balcony—Jim’s first—and the vegetable garden, dirt improved with truckloads of manure and compost and double digging, were all left behind.

All but the garden dirt, that is. Jim filled his pickup and hauled it away to our new home. The landlord was not amused. He threatened to kill Jim if he ever set foot on the property again.