Roots

"Are you Catholic or Mormon?" Apparently, people only procreate for God. The answer is no. My parents just had a lot of kids. So it was 1975 and there was no farm work to be done in the city--they liked having babies, I guess. Mom isn't exactly forthcoming on any sort of reasoning here and Dad's only comment that I know of was, "Seems like they were all surprises back then."

Yeah, okay, so my parents never learned anything about biology in school and never had to take a health class about the miraculous of the body. Seems it couldn't have been too much of a surprise after, say, number 2? Regardless of why Bev and Chuck multiplied 3 to the 3rd power, here I am writing to tell you all about what a crazy idea it was. Welcome to Penny Jar: A heads up on being at the tail end.

This is my second blog and probably the more focused of the two. I have only been at this a week so far, but my enthusiasm should make up for the other shortcomings (most of which I am probably not aware of). My goal is to use Penny Jar as a catalyst for memoir writing. I have been threatening my family with a book for years and I believe this is the momentum I need.

There is a wonderful English professor at the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater named Alison Townsend. I studied under her for a course in Creative Nonfiction several years ago. She had us make a list of "The stories that you keep coming back to." Despite the fact that there are so many other things I would like to write about that don't involve my family, the story I keep coming back to is this: I am the youngest of 9 children. My parents divorced when I was seven. Nobody has ever called me an "accident" to my face, but I think the fact that I was born 9 years after my closest sister speaks for itself.

She has called me, "Afternoon Delight."