Introduction

It’s been an interesting adventure, _ _ years to date. While much of this journey has been difficult, there have been some very good times along the way. I’ve been looking over my journals, trying to decide what to share and what should be left shrouded in the mists of time.

As a practical note, I used my journals for self-therapy at some of the lowest points in my life. That said, once I began to write and found pleasure and renewal in it, I wrote during some of my best times as well. Now, I’m going through a self-editing process to share interesting (at least to me) information about my life with my descendants.

The lives of my parents before my birth and their early struggles to make a life for us is an area where my knowledge is limited to the stories I’ve heard over the years, along with my earliest recollections. It would have been nice to have had access to my parent’s thoughts about the times and events that shaped our family. Though, for the most part, they seemed fairly willing to talk about such things when they came up, those conversations were few and spread out over many years. Mine, like all parents, had problems, both economic and domestic. An honest narrative from either or both of them would have helped my understanding of those times and problems. I guess that some things aren’t really meant for study by one’s children, though. So, I will do my best to be fair to their memories, but based on my own.

–LE