I am from books and paper and pen

From Dell and HP and Oxford notebooks

I am from the maple tree outside my childhood home that

Protected me from the neighbor’s Peeping Tom and

Displayed incredible colors beyond the rainbow one mystical day.

I am from New Jersey rhododendrons and evergreens silver with snow.

From the tiny hidden woods across a forbidden street where I first met

The fairy folk folded into a chuckling stream and a feathery

Breeze that enveloped me in magic.

I am from writers – Virginia Woolf’s Leonard, my great great (great?) uncle,

and my paternal grandmother who secretly wrote romance novels and my dad who wrote a poem for my mom in every anniversary card.

I am from bravery thanks to my father, paratrooper in WWII.

But I’m also from personal sorrow – my grandmother and her children neglected by her husband, their father.

My dad held that sorrow and passed it on to me and my daughter.

I am from Montclair NJ where my grandparents came from wealth and sunk to near poverty thanks to a stock market dive

but they produced a feisty daughter, my mom,

Who determined to be herself in flirtatious humor, in dance and in the immense capacity to enjoy life.

Some of her blood runs through me, intermingled with her mom’s (my Nanny), a nurse, and according to all who knew her, a saint.

I am from Nanny’s chocolate junket, served just like her:

Sweet and soft and created with pure love.

Unconditional.

I come from glimmering stardust

  But cling to this dimension of reality

     Even when I write fantasy mingled with

        Unexpected creativity that proves

          I am made of many things

             I Don’t

                 Understand.

Today is my Birthday and I celebrate where I’m from. Where are YOU from?

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