It is not that I am a gloomy person, but I am a serious one, and I take world events seriously. Although I have many interests that I pursue, I have a great interest in the World War II era that I feed with books and films. I search for answers that can explain the hatred, cruelty, indifference and greed of that time. I have the greatest empathy for the victims of that war and for those who managed to survive and tell the tale. God only knows why I was born into my birth family in America instead of a Jewish family somewhere in Europe or a Japanese family living in Hiroshima.

As it was, my family was not highly affected by the war. We lived in Cheyenne, Wyoming at that time where the major industries were the railroad and the military post known today as Warren Air Force Base. My father was at home throughout the war with a job working as a car inspector on the Union Pacific Railroad while my mother stayed home to care for us children. There were only three of us: two boys and one girl (that’s me, the youngest.) Later on after the war, my younger brother and sister were born. All my uncles were farmers except for one miliary uncle who fought in Europe, survived and returned home after the war.

Our living situation, however, brought us a little closer to the war effort as we lived in military housing along with other railroad families mixed in with military families. Our small apartment was in a long barrack style cinder block building with six other identical apartments. Our source of heat was a coal burning stove that we fed with the coal stored in the shed right outside our door. This coal shed served an additional purpose for us kids when we sat on it’s roof on hot summer nights and told ghost stories. One I remember well: “Bloody Murder in The Coal Shed”. I don’t know who made that one up. There was no mail delivery then, so my brother and I walked to a military trailer camp nearby with a note from Mom to pick up the mail. And I remember my brothers and I loading our pockets full of ginger snaps and running through the fields up to the security fence around the air strip to watch the fighter planes land and take off. What a thrill that was!

Now, I don’t claim to have an infallible memory about those days. After all, I was only seven years old by the end of the war in Europe, but I remember bits and pieces very well. As an adult, I know that my parents sacrificed and struggled. My father carried two jobs: one full time and another part time, and he rode a bike to work or walked. As children, my brothers and I didn’t understand struggle. But as adults we have lived my parents example of courage and fortitude and have the knowledge that we can summon those strengths when we need to.

We carry those realities, all of us, no matter where we live. It is the carrying of them that somehow, even without words, creates a presence in the world that (I pray) weaves a web of holding of all the generations to come.

Blessings on the last part of your book. I await it! May your gardens flourish even as your two beautiful souls listen and speak, listen and speak.