To Blog or Not to Blog....

To Not To Blog is evidently, not really an option- unless I committed suicide I guess. Morbid! Anyway, Greg, Okay, I'm blogging buddy!

Look forward to my upcoming "HGL Emeritus" column that will chronicle the "what are they doing now?" of past Higher Ground 'alumni' as we like to call them- students and teachers alike. But for now, I am going to post something a little about me. I am writing this piece for a Canadian anthology, should they include me, about being adopted. Matt Webster, I am thinking of you as I write this: I began writing this story this morning and stopped when the coffee got cold, so here Part I of Draft 1:

1969

The year 1969 has some impact. Walking my 75-pound Newfoundland dog, I have plenty of time to think – he is fourteen now, a little grumpy, stoic and off-leash as pulling him by the neck, even gently, would be an insult to his seniority. He has arthritis along his spine and a bad right hip, and he coughs as he walks, like he is choking on a fur ball. Needless to say he dictates the pace. So we walk, very, very slowly, through the long and wide blocks of Salt Lake City, leaving me with plenty of time to think. I think a lot about the future: how could I do this; how could I do that? And sometimes my ideas trail to things in the category banal: I dwell on ideas of consumerism and postulate my own trendy, kitschy twist that would assail my fellow ladies and cajole them into purchasing my, well my idea. For instance, for awhile I was bent over for months soldering tiny silver balls to tiny silver loops- a manifestation of an earring idea that I wanted to pilot…. and then on to making a line of poodle skirts, as my boyfriend likes to call them: I truly believe you could take any skirt and attach a small decal of a cute pink poodle to it and people will fall all over it in bliss. And, for that matter, just screen-print 1969, strategically, on anything, and BAM! You have yourself a ringer.

According to this faded green rectangular piece of weathered paper I am holding, I was born at the Osteopathic General Hospital in Cranston, state of Rhode Island, in 1969. This document is officially sealed by the State Office in Providence and contains a 10-digit state file number that perhaps one day will serve to unlock the gate to my heritage. I think this is the first time I have even taken a serious look at this document. My mother, Norma Jean Sturm, passed me this envelope a few years ago in one of those archetypal moments when a mother sheds her responsibilities as vigilante, so to speak, and you find yourself tucking away a handful of documents and heirlooms that come with this implicit message that your history now belongs to you. My proof-of-adoption papers now sit in my cedar box along with other proofs and tellings of my life: my Canadian citizenship papers, my dual(ing) passports, old recipes for wine-making from my late father, proof of paying off my U of A student loans over 15 years ago should ‘they’ ever come back one day and ask me for ‘that’ money, and multifarious ID’s that chronicle my aging process and provide me with tangible metaphor for where I have been all these years. I am no pack-rat, ask my mother who says I throw out everything, but to these I hold on rather tightly-this scant recollection of me and of my famous disappearing act……

to be continued