BEGINNINGS
“”Let choice whisper in your ear and love murmur in your heart. Be ready. HERE COMES LIFE!” Maya Angelou
Waddling under the belly of an old milk cow initiated my love for bovines. (Little did I know that 70 years later, I’d write a book about them.) My dad had taken me as a one-year-old learning to walk, into the barn that day and introduced me to these massive ungulates. Luckily, my mother didn’t learn about my misadventure until much later. Although I didn’t know it at that early age, I soon discovered that my father was the animal lover in our family while Mom merely tolerated the numerous critters that ultimately shared our lives.
Dad with Jimmy the Raccoon
Dad with Bambi
The year before, on a February morning in 1937, my mother and I spent long hours together until I decided to make my entrance into the world. For someone who ended up traveling and wanting to see the world, it still amazes me that I waited so long to drop into sight. I learned early on that my mother had a great sense of humor. She loved telling the story of her friend Margaret Safford following her around with a mop after her water broke.
Always hard-working, my mom had busied herself washing clothes that frosty February 27th while Dr. Pierrot rested on the couch and nibbled my mother’s famous chocolate fudge. According to Mom, he finally gave her an injection to hurry things along. And thus, I was born at 5:45 a.m. at home in a white clapboard farmhouse in the town of Pomfret, Connecticut.
I was born in the ell of this old farmhouse in Pomfret, Connecticut.