Of Pigs and Shopping Malls

In 1988 I flew to Switzerland to visit my son who was studying in Basel. The city is in the German-speaking part of the country and he'd spent the year before he left studying the language. He d reserved a room for me in the same house he stayed and we spent a pleasant week traveling and sight seeing. Flying home it occurred to me that I d been completely dependent on him while I was there. I didn t speak the language, so I couldn t order food. He d gotten me a place to stay. He knew the geography so he could navigate and keep me from getting lost. Our roles had reversed! When he was a baby he d depended on my wife and me for shelter, food and comfort, and now the giver had become the receiver. Maybe I could work these ideas into some sort of writing project, I thought. I d written as an avocation since high school and a girl in my high school class was an editor at the local weekly paper. In 1988 I still used a typewriter, so I clacked out a few pages and sent them to my former classmate now newspaper editor. The following week she phoned and asked if I could send more. Send more are the sweetest words any writer wants to hear. The paper put me on a schedule with other writers and over the next ten years I wrote a column about me, my family, my jobs, etc., every six weeks. In this book I ve shared some of what I think are the best.