This Six Sentence Sunday post is an excerpt from my memoir, Off Kilter, published in 2008 by Pearlsong Press.
“I wish I could draw in your mind a picture of that place, exactly as it was, warmly lit by a clear sunlight making sharp shadows on a concrete sidewalk. Beside the sidewalk, up to its very edge, grew clouds of Queen Anne’s lace, sky-colored chicory, purple and white clover and the flowers whose names I still don’t know, the red-orange ones my mother called firemen.
I believe the sounds and smells and the picture are the makings of my childhood solitude, protected and holy. They transformed my loneliness into a safe, enriched, alive state of being, of perfect awareness of each blade of grass and waving flower. There is a place where nature is an open-armed friend, always waiting to welcome and enfold me in its breeze’s caress, its warm sun’s kiss, its clear, illuminating light. This is the place I am from. “
