I’d breathed a sigh of relief when we checked in at the airline ticket counter, and felt it again as we boarded the plane. Finally. We were on our way. The vague dream had become a reality. I was moving to France.

Just a slight mental disturbance as the plane flew over Los Angeles. I nudged Joe.

“You think our luggage will be ok?”

“I was sleeping,” he said. “Didn’t sleep last night.”

“What if they put them on the wrong plane in Istanbul? What — ”

“What d’you want me to do?”

“Nothing. Go to sleep.”

In the frenzy of last-minute packing, what to leave, what to bring, there was the question of my mum’s ashes. I’d wrapped the box in a blue checkered scarf tied in a little knot at the top, put that in a plastic bag along with the doll in the blue hat and dress but no knickers. Then I’d tucked everything into one of the three suitcases.

The dimly lit cabin felt warm and claustrophobic. I turned on the little fan above my seat. Then I felt too cold. I’d been predicting milestones when the panic attacks would stop. Once I found a place to live, once the luggage was packed, once we were actually on our way.

And now we were, but Dotty’s ashes were in the plane’s hold. Why hadn’t I packed them in my carry-on bag? There was probably a reason, but my brain had chosen the hold. A new milestone. Once landed in France, got to Languedoc and the cosy cottage, my brain would return to normal, and everything would be fine. It would.

I closed my eyes. Was it against the law to transport ashes? Maybe I’d be arrested in France? Sent back to the States. Maybe the luggage wasn’t even on the plane. Maybe it was still back in Istanbul where we had the layover. I’d chosen the flight because it was cheap; this would be the price. The suitcase would get lost, and my mum would circle the globe for eternity, haunting my dreams and demanding to know what I was doing moving to France at my age.

No common sense, that Janice.

Joe’s head drifted towards my shoulder. He was snoring. He could sleep. No worries about French gendarmes confiscating his mother. What if the plane crashed and we both died? Or what if he died and I miraculously escaped without injury? His kids would hate me and say that I should have known better than to go galavanting off to France with or without their elderly dad.

Obsessive thoughts that kept me awake on the deflating mattress in Belmont Shore had nothing on obsessive thoughts at 38,000 feet in a plane.

At De Gaulle, slightly more frazzled, if possible, than when we left Los Angeles, I shoved my way through the crowd at the baggage carousel, watching for the last of the three suitcases to make its way around. Somewhere amidst all the other anonymous grey hard-sided wheelies was mine, distinguishable only by the purple ribbon I’d tied around the handle. Inside it, the ashes. I watched as a tartan bag and a packing carton appeared for a second time and then a flutter of purple.

Relieved but still tense, I snapped at Joe as we went through customs, snapped again as we crammed my three suitcases and his one bag into the trunk of the tiny rental car, strapped myself into the passenger seat and burst into tears.

“Welcome to France,” Joe said.

As Joe manoeuvred the car through the heavy traffic around De Gaulle, I told myself to lighten up. In general and with him. The long-suffering Camille act was getting on my own nerves, and it wasn’t fair to him.

He’d agreed to a two-week visit, at my request. Years of driving in California, but the thought of getting behind the wheel in France terrified me. And the alternative of taking a train from Paris to Montpellier with three heavy suitcases was only slightly less terrifying. So he’d agreed, and I was repaying him with hysterical outbursts.

I asked if he wanted to stop for lunch somewhere. I’d envisioned charm; he had practicality in mind and pulled into one of the rest stops on the autoroute. Cheese sandwiches and coffee, and we were back in the car again.

“What’s the name of those hardware stores like Home Depot?” he asked.

“Mr Bricolage,” I replied. “We just passed one.”

“Why didn’t you say something? You could have looked for a printer there.”

I sighed. “Joe, they won’t have printers.” Since I’d never been inside a French hardware store, I had no idea whether that was true, but it seemed unlikely. And I wasn’t in the mood to find out. A difference between a vacation abroad and living abroad, I realised. Vacations were patisseries and charcuteries; daily life was printers and computer parts.

“I need to buy some pillows,” I said. Another massive shopping centre on the edge of another big town. Joe muttered something about the traffic and kept driving. “They’ll have pillows at the place, won’t they? You didn’t ask about stuff like that?”

“I want my own pillows.” I heard the quiver in my voice. Pillows would solve everything. The cosy cottage was furnished, but it wouldn’t have enough pillows. I wanted lots of pillows. A nest of big, fluffy pillows on the bed and Carolyn’s orange duvet. I’d burrow myself in and read. Books and pillows and a cosy cottage.

Everything would be fine. My new mantra.

TBC

Port Angeles, CA (author’s photos)

“You should go,” Carolyn said when I told her about France. “If that’s what you want to do.”

We were having a beer-and-chips day at the Buccaneer — which I always called the Brigadoon, or maybe it was the other way around; I can’t remember. Beer-and-chips days were the prescription for times when everything felt slightly off.

Hot chips, cold beer and a table overlooking Port Angeles Harbor. The Coho Ferry leaving or arriving, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, gulls swooping perilously close to the plate glass. It usually worked to lift the mood. Not this time.

I’d booked the flight to Paris. Round trip, three-month stay. Even though I knew I wouldn’t use the return part. No idea why I did it. Dotty knew; common sense and money. Janice lacks both. I drank my beer. I needed a place to stay in France. I needed to decide what to take. I needed Carolyn to tell me not to go. It wasn’t what I needed; I knew that too.

“Won’t you miss me?” I asked.

“You’ve been living in California for two years,” she reminded me. “I didn’t see you then.”

My son described my decision as awesome.

Back to California and Belmont Shore, where I scoured the internet for cheap places to rent in France. Some were too rural; I’d need a car. I didn’t want a car. Some weren’t cheap, at least for me. After two days of non-stop searching, I found a place that sounded good. A “quirky but charming cottage” in the southern Languedoc region. I’d never heard of Languedoc, but the rent was about what I’d been paying on the Port Angeles cabin.

Sight unseen, I agreed to a one-year lease. If quirky was code for unlivable, I had my return ticket. My left eye started twitching.

I gave Michael the Dotty plant, one of many I had to find homes for. Michael said he’d think of me every time he watered it. Joe made frequent trips from San Diego and the house we’d once lived in together. With each trip, he’d disassemble pieces of the past two years — the big yellow chair, the rugs, kitchen stuff, the paella pan I’d use to make my trademark dish when the writer’s group came for dinner.

He’d keep everything in his garage for me. In case I used the return portion of my ticket?

As the studio emptied, I made do with less and less, eventually sleeping on an air mattress that kept deflating during the night. Michael made curries and pasta, insisting I eat upstairs with him and Jason.

We’d eat, and talk and drink wine, and I’d start crying. Everything reduced me to tears. Back in Port Angeles, I’d given a tiny decorated Christmas tree to a friend. I’d bought the tree, all bright colours and shiny tinsel, because it made me happy. Now the thought of it made me cry. The Dotty Plant, as Michael called it, was on his kitchen table. One of the leaves had fallen off. That made me cry too.

The emotional exhaustion of the past few months, the reality of what I’d put in motion, was sinking in. I’d reassured myself that once I arrived in France and settled in the Cosy Cottage, all would be well. It helped briefly, then the mental clamour returned. My eye twitched, and my skin itched. Stress and scratching are inseparable.

Was this really what I wanted to do? Leave everything for a foreign country I knew nothing about, knew no one? Didn’t speak the language. I’d imagined brave and adventurous; tearful and twitching was reality.

Sleepless nights on an almost deflated air mattress didn’t help. Packing decisions grew out of all proportion. Whatever I packed in California, I’d be unpacking in an entirely different place. I’d tuck a few travel-sized toiletries — shampoo, conditioner, toothpaste — into a suitcase pocket, then remove the toothpaste. Handy for vacation travel, but I was packing for a move. And then I’d put it back.

What if the village shop didn’t carry what I needed? Was there a village shop? I couldn’t remember what the ad said. If there was, could I walk to it? I couldn’t remember the answer to that either. Frustrated, I’d replace the toiletries and shoot off yet another e-mail to the landlady who eventually stopped responding.

Finally, I narrowed packing down to three suitcases containing my laptop, clothes, photos and an orange duvet cover Carolyn had given me because Bill didn’t like the colour. It had tiny daisies embroidered along the top edge. I also took Pema Chodron’s book, When Things Fall Apart.

And I took Joe.

TBC

Thank you for reading this. Since it’s still a preliminary draft, part of it adapted for Medium, it will undergo revision. Probably a lot, including the order of chapters. If you want to follow along chronologically for now, this is Chapter 5

I hope it leads to a completed manuscript, but even if it doesn’t, it may have helped me understand a bit more about myself.

Comments and critiques are always welcome. I promise not to cry.

My mother died four months after her 100th birthday. I’d found her unconscious in her blue armchair, a massive stroke. Her death wasn’t a shock — at 100, how could it be — but I felt drained, emotionally and physically. I wanted to sleep for days; I couldn’t sleep for more than an hour.

For two years, I’d been exactly where I belonged. She’d needed me and as frustrating as it often was, I’d needed her too.

The official congratulatory letter from the Queen arrived exactly on her birthday, also a less official visit. A Leisure World friend with a permed grey wig, queenly garb, handbag over one arm and trailing a corgi on a leash. Dotty, a bit addled by then, remarked that it was very nice of the Queen to drop by.

I’d taken her to Britannia Club meetings, stayed for afternoon tea. “Here, Janice,” she’d shove a napkin-wrapped package of half-eaten food at me. “Put that in your bag, I’ll eat it later.” We’d go to McDonald’s for fish sandwiches.“Not as good as Arthur Treacher’s,” she’d always say. “But not bad.” Little things, but they made her happy.

Two good years, for both of us. And now she was gone.

Ona cold and rainy January day, I holed up in a motel somewhere in the California desert trying to figure out what I was feeling, what to do next, really what to do with my life. For two years, I knew where I should be. My mother had needed me and as frustrating as it often was, I’d needed her too. Now, who knew?

Michael and Jason had hugged me, made one of their dinners upstairs. Small and quiet, just me. We’d talked about Dotty and the Queen’s visit; they’d both been at the party. Michael asked what I was going to do now; I said I didn’t know. I still had the cabin in Washington. Stay here, he said. A cheaper studio apartment had become available. “We love you,” they both said. “We’ll sit on the sofa, watch Ab Fab and drink wine,” Michael said.

I told my writing group about this vague idea of just packing up and moving to France. “Do it,” one of them said. “I’ll come visit.”

Too exhausted to sleep, I lay on the motel bed, tears trickling down the sides of my face into my hair, onto the pillow. I cried for my mum, I cried for myself. I felt rootless and adrift. Storage containers in Washington, books, and furniture in a friend’s garage. Bits and pieces of me everywhere.

My family were up in Washington — my son and daughter, and a granddaughter, but they had their own lives. I loved them, but I didn’t want them to feel they had to include me in their activities. And if they didn’t include me, I didn’t want to feel needy and left out.

I wanted my own life. I just didn’t know where to lead it. France played like background music, low-key, but insistent. I’d grown up on England’s southeast coast where my mother would insist that on a clear day you could see France. I’d never caught a glimpse — she was either wrong or it was never clear enough.

But France was one of those vague dreams you talk about but never act on.Deciding to just up and move to a foreign country seemed too big, too extravagant. Appropriate in your twenties perhaps, or even as a retired couple, but alone and, well, not exactly young? The more I thought about it, the more confused I felt.

Still damp pillows propped behind my head, I opened my laptop, Googled cheap fares to Paris, then affordable apartments anywhere in France, then back to cheap fares. Looking back, I don’t understand my urgent need to make a decision. The closest perhaps was after my husband died suddenly at 40; against all advice about waiting, I’d bought a condominium near Pasadena. Not surprisingly, it was a bad decision.

Perhaps I hadn’t learned.

My phone rang, a condolence call from a friend in Los Angeles. We talked for a while; I told her I wasn’t sure what to do. Then I said, hesitating to mention it — we’d once worked together and she was far more practical, far less impulsive— that I had this thought about moving to France.

“What’s stopping you?” she asked.

I said I didn’t know.

“Just go,” she said. “If you don’t like it, come back.”

TBC

Thank you for reading this. Since it’s still a preliminary draft, part of it adapted for Substack, it will undergo revision. Probably a lot. If you want to follow along chronologically for now, this is Chapter 4.

I hope it leads to a completed manuscript, but even if it doesn’t, it may have helped me understand a bit more about myself.

Comments and critiques are always welcome.

Southern California is full of memories. There’s hardly a place around Long Beach and Belmont Shore that doesn’t trigger a flashback. I’d raised my children in a little pink duplex just a short walk from the beach, cruised down Pacific Coast Highway in my brand-new 71 VW convertible, long hair flying in the wind. Then, in my late 50s, after the Golden State’s enchantment had long since faded, I moved north.

At 67, I returned to look after my 98-year-old mum. Dorothy, or Dotty as the family called her. I’d been driving down to see her for years; several short visits, a month at the most. The 20-hour drive from Port Angeles, broken with an overnight in a motel before crossing the Cascades, sometimes another overnight visit with my friends Kit and Jerry in northern California before arriving at my mother’s.

I thought of the drive as an emotional transition from my life into Dotty’s. The twitch under my left eye began the moment I was waved through the security gates of Leisure World. Now I was looking at an indefinite stay. I rubbed my eyes.

There were two armchairs in my mum’s apartment: the blanket-covered morning one where she sat before noon, usually with a heating pad at her back. And a blue one with an electronic gadget that slowly raised the seat, allowing her to stand. Her days were mostly spent in the blue chair. It was where she ate her meals on a tray, watched the TV, remote at her side and watched the birds outside the window.

She’d once travelled — Australia, New Zealand, back and forth to her native England — now, in her late 90s, her world was whatever she saw from the window beside the blue chair — birds, and sometimes what passing neighbours were up to.

“Janice, Janice, come and look,” she’d call into the kitchen where I’d be cooking, or unloading groceries. “Quick, or you’ll miss it. Ah, it’s gone now. You missed it.”

On the back of the sofa, a lineup of some of the dolls she’d dressed in her knitted creations. One with a fancy blue hat and dress, her legs spread. No knickers. “She keeps losing them,” my mum explained. “I bet that housecleaning woman takes them.” Ah, the irresistible allure of tiny knitted bloomers.

In the bathroom, Barbie had lost hers too, then her green knitted bra. Eventually Barbie also disappeared.

Sometimes, I’d arrive to find my mum’s cotton knickers draped across the counter to dry. I asked why. “Well, I’m not having her (the cleaning woman) wash them. She (the cleaning woman) used the laundromat adjacent to the apartment for everything else, but not the unmentionables.

“Oh, you wouldn’t understand, Janice,” said Dotty. “No one asks people to do that sort of thing.”

It’s just not done. Got it, mum.

It took a few weeks, but we settled into a routine. A caregiver (not the cleaning woman) slept on the pullout sofa bed and stayed until I arrived early the next morning. Depending on what was needed — doctor’s visits, pharmacy, grocery runs — I’d be there until mid-afternoon, or early evening when the caregiver arrived for the night shift. Dotty insisted she needed none of this; especially not the caregiver sitting on the couch to watch TV with her.

I made lunches, also dinners, which the caregiver, I think her name was Juanita, reheated in the microwave. Sometimes she brought over food for Dotty. Mexican, which my mum insisted she didn’t like. “I’ve tried it, Janice, you know I have.” She hadn’t.

“I’ll eat anything, you know that.” She wouldn’t. Nothing foreign. Italian was foreign, Chinese was foreign, Mexican was especially foreign. Only fish and chips weren’t foreign. Or a nice bit of roast beef.

When life in Dotty’s World felt particularly eye-twitching, the Belmont Shore studio was an oasis of calm; if the guys upstairs were out for the evening. If I had the mental energy, I’d write — try to coax Margaret out of her sulk and reveal to me what was wrong. And if she wouldn’t talk, and Michael, mid-50s, and his much younger partner Jason were home, they’d invite me to their parties.

Wearing one of the many white terry cloth robes, nicked from hotels he’d stayed in, Michael would knock on my door to warn me that friends were coming over and the music would be “like really, really loud.” Usually Madonna. Michael loved Madonna and flew anywhere to see her in concert; once to Italy.

Sometimes, I’d just shake my head at it all. From the Black Swan moment when my life seemed to be closing in, it had expanded to include the world of my 98-year-old mother and the theatrical world of the guys upstairs with their exotic dinners and Madonna belting out music at a volume that filled my studio. (I eventually bought noise-cancelling earphones for times when I wanted to work. Or sleep.)

Would that annoy me at 81? Probably; I suppose it might have at 67, but it didn’t. I felt changed in a way I didn’t understand. Looking back, I suspect it was a new sense of possibility.

I’d found a local writing group, enrolled in a Hollywood class on completing a novel in 90 days and forgot about the guy who said creativity ended at 70. The Margaret book had shifted from stalled to full steam and inspired. Every Saturday morning while the caregiver did Dotty Duty, I’d hit the 405 freeway heading north to Hollywood, park the car on a side street, and grab my latest Margaret pages.

I’d come to California to look after my mother. That was the plan. I hadn’t thought beyond that. But as the months passed, the writing group became more than just a place to get feedback; the people in it became friends I’d invite over to the studio for potlucks. And the guys upstairs —an entirely unexpected addition, an exotic spice in the usual blend. And now Margaret’s voice was back. Was I happy? Could California feel like home once again?

Just before I opened the red wooden door to the theatre where the class was held, I’d look up to see the Hollywood sign. And smile.

TBC

Thank you for reading this. Since it’s still a preliminary draft, it will undergo revision. Probably a lot. For that reason, I haven’t numbered chapters at the top of the page. But if you want to follow along chronologically, this is Chapter 3.

I hope it leads to a completed manuscript, but even if it doesn’t, it may have helped me understand a bit more about myself.

Comments and critiques are definitely welcome.

(Long Beach, California (all pictures by author)

“I’m calling about your mother,” the woman who came in every day to check on her said. “I’m not sure, but . . . she thinks the girls from Sex and the City are dropping by to visit.”

My 98-year-old mother had seemed a bit confused, the woman said. I drove to Seattle, caught the next flight to Long Beach, rented a car and went straight to her retirement complex in Seal Beach. By the time I arrived, she’d been admitted to the medical centre with a possible stroke. Tests ruled that out; the diagnosis was severe dehydration.

She’d told me many times in her later years that she wanted to remain in her home and never, never to go to a nursing home. The memory of an old friend of hers, admitted to a place next to the retirement complex, haunted her. A stroke had left the woman unable to speak. With tears in her eyes, my mum used to imitate the sounds the woman made, a clear cry for help.

I knew I would do everything I could to ensure that my mother remained in the home she’d lived in for thirty years. While her Sex and the City visit wasn’t the stroke I’d feared, it was clear she needed more than just the daily caretaker. I decided to move down there for as long as necessary.

At 98, who knew how long that would be?

(My Belmon Shore studio, Long Beach CA)

Looking back through the early drafts of the memoir, I’m surprised by how little space I gave California. I dismissed those two years in a sentence or two because I thought the memoir was about moving to France.

I no longer think it was that simple.

When I felt life was closing in around me at 68, I had a sense of California opening it up again. Living in my mother’s one-bedroom place, sleeping on her pullout sofa would be impossible; we’d drive each other crazy. I found an unfurnished studio apartment in Belmont Shore, five minutes from her. Small, but full of light and just across the road from the beach.

While I could have managed the rent, since I was still paying rent in Port Angeles, my mum offered to pay rent on the studio. Although I’d come down to California to help her, she was helping me as she’d done throughout my life — even at the tender age of 68.

“Janice has never had much common sense about money,” she used to say. Unfortunately, I’m not sure old age has blessed me with much more.

But, moving on. It didn’t take long to transform the empty studio with thrift-shop finds. An old futon I covered with velvet throws, cushions, and a huge yellow armchair with a matching footstool that I couldn’t resist. The fireplace didn’t work, so I filled it with plants and put the yellow chair beside it. With afternoon light streaming in, it became my favourite reading spot.

And, since writing was always a constant, I set up a table for my laptop and a canvas director’s chair. When I wasn’t busy with my mum, I’d write. I started the Margaret book, as I thought of it then, in Port Angeles. All about an English schoolgirl who arrives in America with her mother, a GI Bride. Margaret, desperately homesick, wants only to return to England.

When the first chapter made it to the finals of a literary contest, I was thrilled. When I read an article by a famous author who wrote that creativity ends around 70, I was devastated.

And the Margaret book stalled.

Thinking of that now, at 81, it seems laughable that his words would have produced that reaction. But at 68, I was flying under the radar of old age. If I didn’t look old, I wasn’t. Except what if he was right and 70 really did slow the brain down? What if creativity did gradually wane?

And my 81-year-old self wonders, what if 68-year-old Janice had taken this guy’s words to heart and just stopped writing forever? Every word looked like rubbish anyway. And she only had two years before her brain completely turned to mush, and then the phone rang, and it was mum wondering where Janice was. Even if the Margaret book hadn’t already stalled, there wasn’t much hope for it now.

Or so I thought then.

TBC

Thank you for reading this. Since it’s still a preliminary draft, part of it adapted for Medium, it will undergo revision. Probably a lot. For that reason, I haven’t numbered chapters at the top of the page. But if you want to follow along chronologically, this is Chapter 2.

I hope it leads to a completed manuscript, but even if it doesn’t, it may have helped me understand a bit more about myself.

Comments and critiques are definitely welcome.

Memoir

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the abandoned and unfinished memoir I’d started writing at 70, two years after moving to France. Part of a piece about unfinished writing in general, it wasn’t something I’d seriously considered revisiting, much less finishing. But the seed was planted—watered by some encouraging and much-appreciated responses.

I knew I couldn’t just pick up where I’d left off; there was a reason it had stalled. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to understand why. In a subsequent piece, I wrote that I thought I knew the reason; at 70, I still had much to learn:

Writing about old age without really experiencing it is a bit like reading travel books or watching films about foreign countries without ever being there. Eighty, I’m here to tell you, is actually living in that country.

That much is still true, but it still didn’t make me want to return to the memoir, add some chapters about joint replacement and hearing aids and call it a wrap. Questions persisted. Why exactly did I want to move to France? In an early blog I’d written: “I’m moving to France to eat cheese, drink wine and hopefully finish a book. Maybe not in that order.”

That was it? My Medium intro written in 2021 says: “At 68, I started a new chapter in my life: I moved to France. Alone. It turned out to be quite the page-turner. Still is — even when age insists on a part.”

That probably needs an update.

So, to recap, at 68, I started a new life in France to eat cheese, drink wine, try to finish a new book and (as I’d written elsewhere) to find out if I was too old for adventure? For that, I’d left behind friends and family, a life in the Pacific Northwest where deer roamed in my back garden and I’d look up from writing to a distant view of the Strait of Juan de Fuca?

All that for a country I knew little about, couldn’t speak the language, and knew no one in?

There had to be more.

Ediz Hook, Port Angeles, WA

I clearly remember a particular Friday evening when I met with a group of friends, all women, all around my age. We’d been meeting every Friday for several years. First a movie, then dinner at a local restaurant. That night it was Black Swan, Natalie Portman’s portrayal of an insecure ballerina who finally gets the role she’s yearned for, but as the pressure mounts, the line between reality and illusion blurs.

I remember sitting in the darkened cinema with my friends. As the scenes grew progressively more disturbing, I felt the discomfort around me. Whispers, fidgeting and then two of the women got up from their seats and walked out. A third one glanced at me, then quickly followed. I remained until the end, then joined them at the restaurant. The film was quickly dispensed with; too bloody, too disgusting. No one asked why I stayed; the talk had already moved on to the food. Chinese. Delicious, we all agreed. Then where to eat next Friday; the new seafood place was supposed to be good.

Sylvia Plath’s novel, The Bell Jar, came to mind as I sat there. Maybe I’d had an inkling of it before; the limitation, the need for something more. I’d never felt it quite as clearly as I did then. This would be me, I’d thought. Friday night movies followed by dinner, followed two days later by Sunday night potlucks at one of our houses.

Life slowly closing in around me.

Since writing about the abandoned memoir, I’ve been excavating — digging through old drafts, pages of Scrivener notes and outlines, years of diary entries and posing questions to ChatGPT, which sometimes provides answers, but frequently raises yet more questions, some I’d never considered.

It’s fascinating and arduous. Hours at the laptop until my eyes water and my brain stops cooperating. My poor long-suffering partner sees little more than the top of my head bowed over the screen.

While the feeling from the Black Swan evening lingered, it wasn’t my first Peggy Lee, ‘Is That All There Is ‘ moment. It happened at 40; Married to my second husband, we’d sat down to watch 60 Minutes, as we did every Sunday night. Three months later, just turned 40, he died of a cerebral haemorrhage.

So Black Swan alone didn’t cause me to exchange one life for another. If it had been just that, the decision would have been easy. It wasn’t.

TBC

Thank you for reading this; still a preliminary draft, part of it adapted for Substack. (There is also a prologue, not finished yet). This chapter, or part of it, will, I hope, lead to a completed manuscript. Even if it doesn’t, it may have helped me understand a bit more about myself.

Your thoughts, comments, critiques are welcome!