Three Years Ago

My Memory Trip to Missouri took me back to the summer of 2005 when I first began writing my thoughts online. In the early summer of that year, I had a phone call with my dear friend Keppy. I was living in Missouri, she was in Maine and dying of cancer. We talked every few months, but as she weakened I did most of the talking and she did most of the listening with the receiver on the pillow beside her. On what turned out to be our last phone call, I told her a story about a mutual friend and an eggplant. She roared with laughter. A big laugh. A before-she-got-sick laugh. “You should write a book,” she said. This echoed a refrain I had been hearing for a number of years, most recently at my High School 50th Reunion.

So was born the Blog and from that a book was eventually published. Down Home Musings was dedicated to Katrina “Keppy” Welles Swanson who died that August. It’s a collection of anecdotes about my life at Terrapin Station that last glorious summer before I left for Oregon. The book is available for purchase online at www.iuniverse.com. I’ve heard from several people that they are re-reading the book as lends itself to the feel of summer.

As I sit here in the dreary cold weather that passes for summer in Oregon, I do look back on those halcyon days on my porch watching the pair of cardinals who lived nearby, sipping my raspberry iced tea, and watching the grass grow.