(p. 50) DID YOU EVER HAVE A SPECIAL HIDEAWAY OR PLAYHOUSE? WHAT MADE IT SPECIAL?

There was a spot in the woods on the bank of the canal that divided Miami Springs and Hialeah, in an adjacent poor town called Medley. I would ride my bike out there on Saturdays, with a picnic and enjoy the day.

Ever since I was 10. I’ve loved to go to Big Rock in the Smokey Mountain National Park.

(p. 51) WHAT EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES WERE YOU INVOLVED IN DURING HIGH SCHOOL?

The most prestigious was Honoria, a service club. The day I was "tapped" I felt so privileged. Maria Prado was my friend Marta's first cousin; Maria was a year ahead of me, a really wonderful person. She was the only person in the club I knew, so I always felt grateful to her for helping me get in. It was like a sorority, only service-oriented, not snobby. My pin is in the strongbox. Mary Fellman was in my class; we became friends when we joined Honoria together. She lives here in NW DC now, poor in material goods, richer than anyone I know in spirit.
I was in chorus. How I loved chorus! We did a lot of performing and a competition in the spring. The coolest group was called "Chorus and Drama" they did musicals. I was accepted to be in that my senior year, but we moved.
I also joined the Pep Squad. We had uniforms - red vests and navy pleated skirts- that we wore to football games. We were supposed to sit together. By 11th grade I had started hanging with the Methodist Church kids and preferred to sit with them. I got in trouble with the Pep Squad, maybe I even dropped out. They weren't my good friends like the girls in Honoria and the church group.

(p. 52) WHAT WAS THE HARDEST THING YOU EVER HAD TO DO?

In chronological order:

Moving from Miami Springs to Dallas the summer of 1962

Basic programmer training at IBM in early 1968. The instructor was a nasty man named John Glennon, a drill sergeant

My first job as a nurse at Greater Southeast Community Hospital in the stepdown unit., 1978. None of the patients were well enough to talk, except for a few heart attack patients who left right away. There was a woman named Thelma, I think, who had been there on a ventilator for over a year when I came along. She would usually give me an angry look no matter how hard I tried to give her good care. I sure would be angry too if I had to live like that, so don't let me.

Losing Scott, 1979. I haven't told you much about Scott, and now I know he wasn't right for me, but that's the only time in my life that I cried frequently and uncontrollably. I think some of it was unexpressed grief over losing Daddy.

Working in the ICU at Columbia Hospital, 1995-98. My boss encouraged me to keep at it, she believed I had the right stuff. An early harrowing experience was a patient who had hemorrhaged after having her first baby, then went into kidney and respiratory failure. We were doing so many procedures to keep her alive that I couldn't show her any love. Too much performance anxiety. Because most of our patients at Columbia weren't critical, I enjoyed much more than I dreaded in the ICU. Never got comfortable with ventilators though.

I just read a book The Best of Catherine Marshall. She was the wife of Peter Marshall, a well-known Presbyterian preacher in Washington in the 50s. When he died in his 40s, she wrote A Man Called Peter, which was a big movie. Anyway, Catherine eventually married again and continued writing. She describes her time on a ventilator, about 15 days, as her crucifixion experience. I am still processing this.

(p. 53) WHAT CRAZY FADS DO YOU REMEMBER IN GRADE SCHOOL?

Slam books. A notebook circulated in 6th grade. Each page was numbered 1 thru 25 and folder over so you couldn’t see the entries. The first page was for signing in. Each page had a question at the top. some were innocent, like “What is your favorite song?” or “What do you want to be when you grow up?” But more were asking for nasty comments, like “What do you think of (someone at school)?” Inviting us to slam one another.

(p. 54) WHEN DID YOU HAVE YOUR FIRST DATE? TELL ME ABOUT IT.

In fifth or sixth grade, when I was doing the cotillion thing. I went to their formal dance with Donnie Mathis. We had a nice time, but we were too young to be dating. It was more an exercise in social graces. He was a nice kid. I do remember feeling very happy and normal about this outing.

I remember his handwriting; he did flourishes at the end of his cursive words. I don’t think we went to the same Junior High - don’t remember seeing him after grade school. Any way formals were big in those days. Mom made me a dress out of salmon pink taffeta with a net overskirt with sequins sewn on.

In Bryson City in 1960 and 1962, I thought of Doug as my boyfriend. His brother Ross was Sara’s boyfriend. We went to the movies at the Gem theater, back when they showed movies. The movies I remember most were Glory (a Margaret O’Brien picture about a young girl and her horse) and Old Yeller.

In 1966 after the no-kiss fiasco in 1962, doug asked me to go to the movies again. Ronnie Nelson, my romantic but alas platonic hero at the time, had just been up with his parents to visit. Word somehow got to Doug. He must have thought he would succeed this time in his quest to make out, but he went about it in the wrong way. He asked me to a drive-in movie to see “The Sound of Music.” Still naive, I failed to see the incongruity there. (I have no idea where this drive-in theater was; it must be long gone now.) When we got there, the movie being shown was “Look in Any Window”, basically teenage porn. To make matters worse, the lead actor was Paul Anka, my favorite singer who had always been such a good guy. I was so disgusted! We left, I was forever the prude, and so ended my hopes of romance with Doug Sterns.

He went on to become a Presbyterian minister. I went on to have a lot of confusion about sex. When I was growing up, abstinence until marriage was a real goal. But marriage without knowing whether there is sexual compatibility, has potential for disaster. And too much sex without commitment makes commitment harder when one does marry.

(p. 55) WHAT DO YOU REMEMBER ABOUT YOUR FIRST KISS?

As Dooley might say. “Oh, mush!”
The kiss that didn’t happen, at age 12, had a devastating effect on my self-esteem. The first kiss that did happen shouldn’t have happened; that is, the person had no business kissing me.
So by the time I participated in normal kissing, I was a junior in college. The guy’s name was Richard Kopple. He was an engineer. Engineers had no social status at Vanderbilt. My roommates showed their disapproval by calling him Richard “Copulate”. He had a part-time job at the campus security police office, as a dispatcher. Somehow he had a lot of time alone there. That’s where we did most of our kissing. He was a good kisser, and for one wonderful spring I believed I had become a good kisser.

(p. 56) WHAT DID YOU DO TO CELEBRATE BIRTHDAYS WHEN YOU WERE GROWING UP?

In Florida we got to choose our dinner. Usually I wanted Lobster and Butch wanted duck. We usually had a small party with friends. When I was 8 ( in 1954) I was living with Jane and Agnes while mom was at Duke and Butch was in Bryson City. There was an amusement park called Ponyland at Bailey’s crossroads (Columbia Pike and route 7). I was allowed to invite four girls to have my party there. (When I moved back to the area in 1968, Ponyland was still there. We took Andy there on July 4, 1976. Shortly thereafter it was torn down) When I was in 6th grade (turning 11) I had a dance party. A lot of us were taking social dance lessons and the bop was in. Our house has a screened-in patio where we had the party. At that point I was optimistic about having a normal teenage life with parties and dancing.

(p. 57) RECORD HERE SOME GARDENING OR DECORATING TIPS THAT YOU HAVE FOUND HELPFUL

You know that I am a gardener much more than a decorator. In both, I follow the practice of using what I like, not following any particular style. Definitely I am informal, if not haphazard.
In the garden, soil preparation is worth a lot. Usually I've had a compost pile, or made humus out of fallen leaves. There's a saying that it's better to have a $100 hole for a cheap plant than vice versa. Lately, since I can't dig and carry humus around like I used to, I've been buying bags of planting soil at KMart (Martha Stewart's dirt bags) to plant seeds and to transplant seedlings.
A lot of my flowers like impatiens, marigolds, and portulacas, self-sow to produce volunteers the next year..
I do spend some effort deadheading - pinching or pruning off old flowers if I'm not trying to get volunteers. That way they branch and keep blooming.
Aunt Mary Nell's shamrock plant can be divided easily, as you know. I tried planting one in a deck planter box last year, to see if it would survive winter, as Sara's do in Plano. Mine died. However, this year I put my potted shamrock outside for a few weeks, then brought it back inside when it seemed to be getting sunburned. Now I have a volunteer shamrock plant growing in the box right by the sliding glass door. A seed must have blown over there.
Sunflower plants grow easily from birdseed - I've allowed or two to grow big each year.
I have day lilies from the orange house. Mom brought me a plant when we first got that house in 1970; she said it originally came from Grandmother Good's. I have white flowered liriope from the Dallas house, creeping phlox from Bryson City, and an salmon colored azalea from that Andy gave me when we lived in Fort Washington. Also creeping periwinkle from Fort Washington.
Decorating the house, I use a lot of family pictures and gifts. I use furniture that was never intended to go together, and coordinate somewhat with color. I don't buy accessories that have no personal meaning, nor do I update to keep up with trends. "What trends don't you like, Cynthia?" "Stainless steel appliances, granite countertops., and lots of elaborate window treatments. "
I do have a plan to redecorate the kitchen, if I ever get brave enough to let go of the bucks. Where the refrigerator is now will instead have a tall cabinet with an arched window. From that a peninsula will come out in the room about halfway, with storage under that. Somehow, a new fridge will go where the microwave is now. A new sink, Corian countertops, and a new oven would be cool too.