Three curly tops and one crew cut poked their heads from under the blanket. Tucked besides my sister and brother we listened to Zelda read fairy tales of princes and princesses, witches and ghosts. When Zelda babysat, I looked forward to bedtime wrapped in the wonder of story. Sometimes scared, but mostly we giggled and snuggled against each other.
       When I was five-years-old we moved; I never saw Zelda again. Shortly after, I became lost in the middle of six children with parents too busy to read a book to themselves or us. We each had our own bedroom. We lived on top of a hill on five acres. Miles from another home.
       In fifth grade a librarian introduced me to a Newbury Book, The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth Speare. Books introduced a world beyond my family, school and myself; books became my friends. Linked to the writer, an invisible bond of intimacy was born between reader and writer. Once again I was wrapped in the comfort of story.
       During my adolescence my older sister handed me one book after another: The Caine Mutiny, Marjorie Mornighstar, and The Harrad Experiment along with many other unremembered titles. She also introduced me to writing. When I was fourteen she was a senior in high school, writing a paper on the seventeenth century American Indians. We spent hours in the library, taking notes on index cards. With enough information, we stacked the cards according to topic. Then she wrote. I was her first reader.
       Over ten years ago I visited my daughters in Boston, wandering through university bookstores was fun. I bought a notebook of blank pages, my first writing journal. It took courage to put words on the page: my joys, sorrows, hopes and fears. Writing was a way to understand my feelings along with personal and world events. Writing was a gift and hard work. My passion merged imagination with words, first scribbled,and then worked until the language took me where I needed to be.
       From childhood fairy tales to Omeros, the epic poem written by Derek Walcott, I found comfort reading Walcott's words:

to plunge into the foaming pagae. For three years,
phantom hearer, I kept wandering to a voice
hoarse as winter's echo into the throat of a vase!
................................this language caries its cure,
Its radiant affliction; reluctantly now,
Like Achilles, my craft slips the chain of its anchor.
...................................................

Lettered as simply, ribbed in our native timber,
Riding these last worried lines; its rhythm agrees

That all it forgot, a swift made it remember
Since that green sunrise of axes and laurel trees,
Til the sunset chars it, slowly to an ember.

        The poem evoked a spiritual journey home. I borrowed words from contemporary poets: Amy Clampitt, Elisabeth Bishshop, Donald Hall, Mary Oliver, Denise Leverton, John Hollander and Galway Kinnel. I enjoyed their precise language for a specific feeling or image masked in metaphor or simile. I appreciated the honesty and complexity of essays by Joan Didion, Annie Dillard, Edward Hoagland, Scott Russell Sanders, and Cynthia Ozick. I honored memoirs by Tobias Wolff, Frank McCourt, Simone de Beauvoir, Bell Hooks, and Mary Karr. I studied style and structure from stories written by Russ Rymer, Alex Kotlowitz, Jamaica Kincaid, Ursula Hegi, Stuart Dybek. I'm not married to one genre. Each has its' gift, ranging from the evocative to the simplistic, using words to tell a tale.
      I write for my soul first, then for a reader. Most of my writing is not meant for another to read. Now and then something special emerges, even if it's for self-discovery. Writing exposes my rage and anguish over a world I can't control. Once words are on the page, I can carve something as pure as a whisper, organizing words into flashes of feeling to a reader. Entering a kaleidoscope of words, creative writing merges memory and imagination to find my stories. After a long day I close the notebook, turn off the lights, and look forward to resting my eyes;  all my words are spent for the day. Writing helps me recognize my truth as poignant as a gold, pink, and indigo sunset. Reading and writing comforts; this is why I write.