Someday I’ll Write a Book

I won the Excellence in English award in my senior year of high school. I don’t know how it is for you, but memories of youth for me are, for the most part, vague impressions rather than precise details of specific events. The detailed ones mark significant occasions. This was one I remember.

It was an evening event. Senior Awards Night. I sat in the large school auditorium with my classmates and their families, my own parents on one side, my two younger sisters on the other. Shy introvert that I was, I made myself small in my seat and quietly observed as various classmates were called to the stage and honored for their accomplishments in the four years of high school we were about to complete.

When my own name was called, I was startled and confused. My mother nudged me and gestured toward the auditorium stage, where my English teacher stood waiting for me to accept the Excellence in English award that I didn’t even know existed. I remember nothing about getting to and from the stage.

The next morning, my mother came into my room and sat on my bed as I was getting dressed for school. She told me how proud she was of my award. My reply is the most vivid remembrance of the entire event. I remember my exact words. “Someday, I’m going to write a book,” I said. “But first I have to get some life experience.”

I was 18. 

At 80, I decided I’d had enough life experience.  

Smiling at Strangers is the story of how I learned to let the kindness in my heart win out over my scared and nervous nature.

What Came Next

In 1955, life in the US didn’t offer many occupational options for young girls graduating from high school. Most of my female classmates went straight to marriage and raising a family. The ones who got jobs became secretaries or sales clerks. Those of us who opted for “higher education” mostly entered nursing training programs or went to teachers colleges. For me, nursing was a no-go, but I loved books, reading and writing. And there was that Excellence in English award. So I enrolled in one of Connecticut’s four teacher training schools and majored in English. 

I spent more time training to be a teacher than I spent being one. Two years teaching high school students only a few years younger than I was how to conjugate verbs and appreciate the difference between literature and pulp fiction was enough to convince me I’d picked the wrong occupation. Marriage and pregnancy were a good excuse for very-early retirement.

In the course of a 60-year marriage my husband Richard and I have raised two sons and moved multiple times across the country, living in Connecticut, Oregon, Ohio, Wisconsin, Arkansas, and Vancouver, BC, before settling in retirement in Bellingham, WA, in 2001. Along the way I took courses in library science that allowed me to get jobs setting up a medical library for a rehabilitation hospital in Milwaukee and another for the State Energy Office in Little Rock, Arkansas, while Bill Clinton was governor. I also picked up a masters degree in adult education which I never formally used.

In 1996, I was offered an opportunity to edit a book, which led to 25 years of experience as a freelance book editor, an occupation well suited to an introvert.  

In 2017, my 80th year on the planet, I began writing what became Smiling at Strangers: How One Introvert Discovered the Power of Being Kind. My intention was to publish it in early spring of 2020 and use it to begin a local kindness revolution in my hometown of Bellingham, Washington. While those plans have necessarily been deferred, the need for more kindness, not just locally but in the country and in the world, hasn’t. 

I hope you’ll join me in the greater revolution.