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Diane talks about how her goals and ambitions are constantly changing throughout our lives. Diane and Victoria discuss how they have changed throughout lives, and what has remained constant. The common thread for both women is their strong mothers. Diane's Story Diane talks about how her goals and ambitions are constantly changing throughout our lives. Diane and Victoria discuss how they have changed throughout lives, and what has remained constant. The common thread for both women is their strong mothers. Diane's Story 00:00 / 06:01 There were eight of us in the household and I was child number seven out of eight. So I would describe myself as kind of the weirdo, you know my older sisters were very responsible and my younger sister was the beautiful baby right so, I was sort of the I mean not in I don't think this in a bad way, I just think that it was just sort of like I had the opportunity to sort of I didn't have a lot of responsibility and I didn't have to be the baby which also is a sort of responsibility. So yeah I got I got to be a little loose as a child, and I was you know, I colored a lot and collected leaves and things like that. When I was young, I wanted to be with lots of people all the time and I wanted to make food and have fun. I didn't know how to turn that into a money-making career, I just wanted to be with people very social as a little person but, that changed a little bit when I became a teenager. I became far less interested in being social in being with my family even. I withdrew a little bit. I sort of indulged in the quirkiness a little bit more and then then maybe was healthy for me my family was still there even though I kind of took a wander but, I it was at that point I did start thinking about careers and things like that and like could I be a social worker or could I be someone who listened? Because I am a bit of a talker, still. I am chatty, let’s just face it. I’m a Chatty Cathy but I wanted to learn how to be a listener and maybe take some of that into work that was helpful work to individual you know. I was never really very interested in making money I think I wanted to make a difference. You know the other thing that we spoke about once was that tape measure principle of like if you pull out each inch and you know at 10 everything that you've done by 10 inches and then 20 inches, what have you done and I'm like okay here I am at 60 inches, so far from you know that 6 year old self who was collecting leaves, and how much more time do I have? Do I have another 10 years or 20 years and do the years make a difference? And I decided after our last conversation that I want my legacy to be that I went sort of day by day. I want it to be that I just took each day and I tried, I didn't try to be happy I don't I don't necessarily want to try for that I want that to be the end result of what I do, so I I think, like you, I'm I probably smile too much I might be insanely happy most of the time but, I think that you know I think for me it's really turning into the small differences. The kindnesses and the little bits that add up to what I hope will be you know a legacy of well she didn't she wasn't terrible you know I mean I think that would be enough for me and that’s all right. It is okay and I learned that from you and and our conversations because I see it in you as well. So often you said to me, it is one thing everyday. It is at least one thing everyday and I thought wow this is this is actually harder Victoria but it's much more fulfilling and I think it makes a greater impact then holding back or not doing because there's lots of opportunities for it and I appreciate that insight into your vision of the world cuz I'm trying to put it into my vision of the world. So I guess that would be my legacy. So I know one thread that we shared was was our mom's. I don't know if that's one that you were thinking of at this moment. It was with great joy that I was able to tell my mother that I was participating in this project and she was interested to know about it. Then she died at 99 years old and after a very good and rich and wonderful life and it really meant a lot to me to be able to share that with you. I'm getting a little choked up now but it was sort of like she was really she was always curious she always wanted to know what was around the corner or why did you do that or what are you eating today or any of those things. It was really a lot and I think that it was a big part of my healing process was talking with you and you were very patient and listening to every single story but it was a big thing for me to be able to also maybe think and talking with you and some of the questions and the places we went it was like okay so maybe a part of my legacy is continue Dorising and to share with other people like you. What Doris was, what she did and how like she was kind, you know like your mom and we shared that. That’s part of the good thing, we can talk about anything, you and I. it's not necessarily a passing of a torch okay but it was a little bit of you gave me the like “you can do this Diane you can take this on” and I really appreciated that cuz I think I was feeling sort of bereft and alone and I wasn't and you showed me that. We Dorised together though. We turned her into a verb and we did it and I hope someday to get to tell your mom what you've been in my life. Previous Next

< Back Meredith's Story 00:00 / 05:26 My name is Meredith Young. And when I was 12 years old, my father gave me a Polaroid camera and told me just get out and explore. And, and we didn't have a TV. A lot of other children thought that's really weird. You're missing out on all these, you know, really cool, you know, get smart TV shows. But my father took us once a week to the movie theater. So, for college, I went off to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore where I majored in molecular biology. And, by end of freshman year, I, heard about of course, I could take sophomore year, there'd be a visiting filmmaker in Baltimore who under the sponsorship of, the head of the humanities department. And I did a brief interview with doctor. Maxey and I got accepted into this filmmaking workshop and I would get course, of course credit and help out this filmmaker who was filming in Baltimore. And yes, this filmmaker, there were classes during the week where you learned filmmaking techniques. You know, he taught us about directing and being a cinematographer versus a director and roles and all that. And as part of the course, every Saturday for the whole semester and you knew this going in, and they only, it was a very like only like 12 students in, in this course. Every Saturday I'd hop a bus from Johns Hopkins to Downtown Baltimore and go to a different part of Downtown Baltimore. We would be filming one scene of this film for that Saturday. And as a student participant, they paired us up with a union electrician. I was gaffer number two and was responsible for the lighting from one particular angle and the other students would, would be in different parts of the space, the recording space. And I was young, but I missed out on traditional college girl stuff of, you know, but I didn't care. I was, I was psyched. I met creative people. The director of, this film saw that, you know, that I was really dedicated, that I was, you know, that I was showing up. And he said, you know, you should join the Maryland filmmakers association. And I said, I always, as a child, I always thought that being a filmmaker meant being the director or the cinematographer. And I'm like, I'm just doing the lighting. And he said, the director said, when people see this film, they're gonna see the light reflected off the actors faces in its light that you shown on those faces. He says, you are a filmmaker. Eventually, I found a regular full time job, out here in Western Massachusetts that was looking for somebody with my educational background. And, and another thing to help, I found out after they hired me on my resume, I mostly played up, you know, what I, but I've mentioned at the bottom that I was a member of the Maryland filmmakers association and had been a judge on the Baltimore international film festival, which all still exists. And the president of the company saw that, and he had ambitions of creating a media department within, the building. So that kind of sealed the deal when he brought me in. So, you and I have talked a lot about, how it's important to be in touch with both your more artistic side even as, like a STEM oriented academic person. Do you wanna talk any more about how, about how, addressing both sides of of, like, your needs have, kind of ended up in positivity in your own life? Oh, it's totally, both in high school and in college and in at every stage. My unconscious brain knew that I needed to do both. I knew I needed to earn a living, which is where having the stem in the finance background helps pays the rent. But the other, you know, a lot of me knew that to keep my sanity, you know, that what really pumped me up wasn't making money. It was paying the bills and then going out at night and just getting involved in the whole art scene, in, in North Hampton. There were students like me who really need that other, that other part of your life. It's something that really gets you psyched up, you know, like, okay, I need to be a responsible person and earn income and live an independent life. Previous Next

< Back Janet's Story Janet gives voice to her late older brother Jay and recalls the significant impact he has had on her early life and professional career despite struggling in his adolescence and growing up in a time where it was unlawful to be self assured about your homosexuality. This is a story about love and loss but touching upon hope in freedom of self expression in culture today. 00:00 / 03:57 I was born in 1943. Yes, I'm going to be 80 years old. A middle child and a working class post World War II family near Flushing, New York. My older brother named after my Father William Henry Ruloff Nelson Jr was a quiet, deeply sensitive and highly intelligent boy. During those years the 1940s and the 1950s baseball. Mom's at home waiting to put supper on the table for their working husbands was part of the American dream and I lived in a little area in Queens where people's families were very very much devoted to fulfilling that post World War II American Dream. My Brother Jay as we called him did not fit in. He wrote poetry, read deeply and spent a great deal of time alone. Even as a very girl I knew Jay, four years older was different. As he and I grew to adolescence he began to be teased by the other boys on the Block. As we played baseball, Jay kind of withdrew into his room quietly. In his early teens I knew there was trouble my parents talking behind closed doors. Those were years when words like homosexuality were never spoken out loud it was illegal and immoral. With all that he was struggling with as an adolescent, Jay had time and made time but to always be my big brother. In a family overwhelmed by illness, financial issues, and emotional stress, he introduced me to poetry and to literature. As he grew, his friendships of bright enthusiastic gay boys I became a focus of their energy. Surrounded by them I went to my first opera. When my brother moved out when I was 16, his apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan became my second home arrested from my own. His life was not easy despite his high intelligence and a full scholarship to Princeton University, he dropped out of college unable to reconcile the emotional stress that marked those years. My course was different. At each juncture of my growing professional life, it was my brother who championed my success and kept me motivated when I questioned my own abilities. My doctoral dissertation was dedicated to him. In 1982, Jay showed the early signs of AIDS. The years ahead were marked with anxiety and fear. We talked honestly and after 4 years we knew he was dying. I saw him 36 hours before he died at the age of 46. I read a favorite poem of his, Edna St. Vincent Millay at my younger son's wedding. A piece of it is “love in the open hand, no thing but that; ungemmed, unhidden, wishing not to hurt.” Like my brother it's a poem about the freedom and the trappings of love. My son's daughter's middle name is Jay, named after him. Over these past decades, I've watched with amazement and joy at the changes in our culture. I often find myself smiling as I think about how Jay’s life would have been had he had such freedom and affirmation. Previous Next

Liam talks about a scene in the movie Tampopo and discusses the differences in how people consume media and how media can be interpreted differently depending on the viewer. Liam's Story Liam talks about a scene in the movie Tampopo and discusses the differences in how people consume media and how media can be interpreted differently depending on the viewer. Scroll to listen Liam's Story 00:00 / 03:22 0:00 I am going to talk about a specific scene in a specific movie that is now over 30 years old. But that means a lot to me. The movie is called Tampopo. The director is juzo Itami. The scene I want to talk about is about a family. We are introduced to the first member of the story, as we see a man running past the end of one of the stories that we've just seen. And we see him run down the street, we see him run along the train track, he runs up his stairs, and he gets to what we assume to be the door of his house bulldozes in and we see in his house, there are three children, a man, we suppose is a doctor and a woman who we suppose is a nurse. Lastly, there is also a woman lying on a makeshift bed or roll on the ground, he runs in and by his tone, we can tell that the woman is sick, and that she perhaps has been for a long time he runs over to her and he says, stay with me, you can't die. And he says do something, sing do anything. And he hits the floor and he says don't make dinner. And the woman slowly rises and gets up and walks over to the kitchen. Kind of absent mindedly grabbing a knife and some spring onions. And she cuts them up, puts them in a pan puts other things and we see the family viewing this and we see the children because they know what to do have already gotten their bowls and have moved to the table we see the older sister setting things out for her youngest sibling, the mother or then comes back with this steaming bowl of food places on a table. And we see all of the hands come in and start serving themselves. However we see the mother first serve the youngest child. After that, they all start eating and the husband looks up and says it's really good. It's delicious. And we see her smile. She slowly falls over. And the doctor pronounces her dead. The oldest daughter screams and comforts her youngest sibling, the father yells essentially Eat it while it's hot. This is the last meal that your mother made for you. 2:22 And we see the middle child, the boy kind of watching his father and doing the same thing. And then the scene cuts out. And it's over. And it's three minutes. I think a lot of the scenes kind of just pass by and spectacle. And so because of that the more intimate and caring scenes really stick out because you're kind of forced to sit with it and sit with what you've just watched. It's It's interesting how we consume media, and how we all come at it from our own different little lens. But for me, I think the scene that I described sticks out a lot because, you know, I think we're all able to see different parts of us in film. And it's interesting, because I think I relate pretty heavily to the characters in this scene specifically, my mom is still alive. You know, she's had different illnesses and different things that have kind of made this film stick out. This is one of the only scenes in a film that's ever I think really made me emotional.

< Back Norma's Story Norma talks about how she found herself in the later stages of life identifying with something new- being an athlete. She talks about the skills she has acquired through this sport apply on the water and in her personal life as well. Listen to Norma’s journey to discovering one of her new passions of whitewater kayaking. 00:00 / 03:39 Interviewer: Norma, I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit of how you first got interested in the sport of whitewater kayak. Norma: Well, I loved water since I was a little kid, I was the one that was not afraid to just jump right in there, but um, I grew up with EDD so my parents were not real happy about letting me go near water. So it may have been making up for lost time but I actually started canoe camping with some friends after my divorce, and that was wonderful. But then, one of those friends and we decided to take on a whitewater workshop just let us to be able to let us tackle a few more rivers that had some little rapids on them, and I just got hooked on that. So I took some lessons, started going out with Appalachian Mountain clubs and other groups like that. I do that all spring, summer and fall pretty much. I feel like I have not come as far as I might have because I just don’t get out enough. But it’s really about practice and not being scared, not giving up, you know there is a lot of discouragement, but you got to push through that. Sometimes you just feel like ‘I’ll never get through this’ but gradually, you do, getting a feel of balancing in the little boat and maneuvering what sometimes are quite subtle shifts of your weight and leans, it was not an automatic process getting used to that but I finally have it, more or less. So that’s, you know, every little step is empowering, it’s really special because when I was a child I was not athletic at all, I was more like the kid that got picked last for the volleyball team, or got sent out into the out field, so I never identified as an athlete at all. But now I have discovered what that feels like, to be active, and enjoy it and think about skills, and pick up skills. It's a whole different outlook. It’s a rapid on a particular river that they say its a mile of continuous rapids and of course when I first ran into it, I was just like “Let’s just get through this” boom, right along, and then people said, try some turns, try to stop and rest and look at what is ahead of you, and see what’s coming, and I mean, that kind of applied to anything in life, you know. If you stop, and rest, and get calm, and look outward a bit, then you’re going to do better. And it’s like a puzzle, you know, you’re working your muscles but you’re also thinking of it like an obstacle course, like, how am I going to get through this rapid? Or what do I need to avoid, where do I need to be? And then execute that. I think that’s good for the brain, I hope it will help me as I get older, and I hope I can keep at it as I get older. That is a worry but, I really hope so. Previous Next

< Back Ngozi's Story Ngozi Okeke talks to Tamar Shadur about traveling to Nigeria, dad's special pancakes, and how she would like to be remembered. 00:00 / 02:15 Previous Next

< Back MJ's Story In this interview, Mary Jo discusses her experience with assistive technology like a cochlear impact and electronic captioning. She describes her journey and how sudden hearing loss has influenced her as an individual, her relationships and her outlook on life. She leaves us with a powerful message about the importance of advocating for ourselves and others. 00:00 / 04:01 I woke up one morning and it sounded like really loud noise I my head, it was really disorienting. I got up and I was running the sink in the bathroom, and it sounded so loud to me, like unbelievability loud. Then I realized I think I need to see somebody about this – to make a long story short immediately, the person I went to see said Well you have had a hearing loss and it's not reversable, like you have lost your hearing. I was kind of shocked by that, that she could tell all that, she looked into my ears but there was nothing to be seen, there was no infection - I wasn’t sick I had to go and have it verified, I had a bunch of tests and then I had what was called a sudden sensorineural hearing loss. Then it was just getting used to suddenly having 24 hours tetanus in one ear, I thought that was a big deal because you don’t know where sound is coming from, we are so bilateral, without two ears you can't pinpoint sound. That went on for quite a number of years and then one day I was in a café and thought I heard machines doing something weird like making a high pitched nose, I mentioned it to the other people I was with and they said, “I don’t hear anything” and as soon as I went outside, I realized it was all in my head. I was concerned that it was the same thing happening again, this time I went pretty much directly to the ER – They confirmed – well by then I had lost my hearing – being suddenly deaf, completely deaf was diffidently an experience I imagined would never happen to me. Initially I couldn’t do anything, I felt very reliant suddenly on other people to do things for me like make a phone call for me that I couldn’t do for myself, so have I adjusted very well? When I look back on it, I think I really did but I didn’t grieve the loss of my hearing and I think that came up later on, there would be sudden moments where I was just a mess because I would be with other people, and I couldn’t understand what was being said and felt completely left out, I'd go and have my cry someplace and then I'd come back and then face whatever I was dealing with again. In terms of coping, I think one of the things I have learned is that I've had to speak up for myself much more than I have ever had to do in the past, partly because it was a sudden hearing loss, and I think because of that I feel like I can be more outspoken because I don’t have this identify that has been developing for years and years about being a deaf person, I think there are a lot of positives believe it or not. I think that just having a disability is a positive thing because it changes my perspective on myself, it makes me realize that I am in vulnerable to anything as anybody else. I have met people that I would never would have met, and I had something in common with them, and I will approach them, and they will approach me if they see that I have a cochlear implant. And with little kids, I really appreciate the people, the interactions, and the connection I have had with others because of this. I have realized how quickly things have changed. I mean with no warning at all, and I read a lot about appreciation and addressing appreciation is a healing tool. I am so privileged to have good doctors and good audiologists to work with and to have the financial means to get what I need. I would hope the other person who was the friend of, or sister of , or mother of, or whatever of somebody was bearing something could maintain that sense of curiosity and not go down that fear lane and I think there is more possibility for growth and healing if you are more curious and open then if you are shut down for fear, but looking back on it I have gained so much that I never would of gotten without that. Previous Next

< Back Ali's Story Ali speaks to Joan about her journey of being adopted. She talks about her mom and her sister and how they became a family. She speaks on how knowing a brief background of her biological family gives her some comfort. Scroll to listen 00:00 / 03:28 Yeah so I was adopted when I was 1 year old I think at the time my mom was living with my sister in Hong Kong and the adoption agency had sent her photos of a few children so she sorta got to see them and she could pick which one she wanted which sounds really weird but those are just the children who are available for adoption at the time and she ended up choosing me who knows why but here I am and when everything was final she actually flew down to Vietnam to bring me home everything was pretty much facilitated through the embassy so she had a lot of help in bring me home and it wasn’t too strenuous just for herself she was actually able to meet my birth parents which is something that a lot of people don’t can't really say that their biological parents and their adoptive parents met in person and yeah she met my mom and dad and she tells me that my birth parents couldn’t keep me anymore because they didn’t have the funds to feed me and my mom was crying and my dad was just kind of there but just knowing that is really special because a lot of kids once again they don’t have that they don’t have that memory so my mom said that I have multiple siblings so I guess I was just the one kid that wasn’t able to be fed at the time so it's interesting to know that I have like other siblings out there and my mom also has a photo of me and my biological mom of just her carrying me which is kind of crazy cause I don't know my sister is also adopted from Vietnam just from the south and she doesn’t have any recollection of like anything from her history I think these little details definitely changed the way i feel about adoption in comparison with other adoptees cause many adoptees get left behind you know left at a door step something like they they don't have any memories but there biological parents can say they know and my sister she's also adopted like I said and she was given up right after birth so she doesn't know anything about who her family is or how many siblings she had or anything like that and I think the fact that my family tried to take care of me for like a year was sort of reassuring that I was cared for its something that I am grateful for and other adoptees can't say that they have that same experience and they live their life not knowing what their birth parents truly thought of them which can very it can be stressful and impact their life so just knowing I was cared for was really important for me Previous Next

< Back Janice H's Story Janice tells a story about a memorable photograph she took while visiting a village in Liberia, Africa. The story is a snapshot of the Liberian bush in 1972. 00:00 / 04:42 My husband and I traveled all over the world, and one of the times that I I remember very well is my time in West Africa in Liberia. When we lived in the in the bush, twelve hours from the capital city, my husband was building a five mile farm to market road, so he couldn't get off too much time to take me anywhere. But I had a friend in the Peace Corps, so he said he was gonna walk me up to this town that was very pretty and very traditional. So, Frank, Frank, the Peace Corps volunteer, and I, drove up, my husband's road, and then Frank and I got out and walked about an hour into the jungle, up a really, steep path. And Frank pointed into the water, and there were these huge catfish swimming on the gravel bottom. And I said, great. Let's catch one of these fish and eat it. And Frank said, no, no, you can't do that. These are their totem. They are the ancestors of the village we're going to see. So we kept climbing up to the top of this mountain, and we got to the top, and there were about 80 huts sitting on carefully swept red soil, and a gang of children were attracted by our sudden appearance, and they ran to call the chief who came, and he was a very nice man, and he took us into the village to his house. Frank had always brought something with him for these poor villages. Well, this time, we had a conical paper filled with salt, which was a very good present. And so, the chiefs shook our hands, and an old man came, tottering on spindly legs, and he was barefoot, and he had a little tiny chair that he sat down and sat on, and then another old man appeared with his traditional short chair, and he sat down, and the chief gave them the salt, and then the chief said, there's an old man who makes medicine for the village, and he has and that point, one of the old men taught it away and came back with a baseball shaped object wrapped in leaves, which was delicious pork meat. And knowing that the people of the villages never had much meat, I said to Frank, we can't accept this. And Frank said, oh, we have to accept it. So we accepted it. And then I said, can I take some pictures? And the chief said, sure. And I took pictures of him. I took pictures of the old man. And then the chief said, I'd like you to take a picture of the old man who made the medicine. So we went to his house, a little a little house, and there was an ancient man with a wispy mancho style beard hobbled into this, into the sunlight. And he sat on his little low chair, and he had a he had a mixing bowl, a wooden bowl in his hand, and he showed us how he made the medicine. And I said, oh, oh, can I take a picture? And they said, sure. And they immediately switched his little tribal chair for a regular size wooden chair. And the old man's wife hurried up with this huge World War two great coat, which the old man put over his sarong. And he sat on this chair looking very proper, but I couldn't afford to miss this shot. So, I took very careful, couldn't afford to miss this shot. So, I took very careful aim. Now, when I took pictures in the bush, most people didn't even want their pictures. This old man was different. He said, please, could I bring him the finished product? And I explained to him that the film I was using was slide film, and I'd have to send it way across the ocean to my mother, and it would take a long time. She would have to have the slides made, and then she would have to send it all the way back to me. And I said I was so sorry, but it might be a long, long time before I could bring it back. And the old man took my hand in his tough calloused ones and looked to my into my eyes as he spoke. It does not matter how long it takes to accomplish the thing I asked, he said. I am old, old man, and soon, my time will come to leave this village and the life I know. But if God comes before you return, I will tell him, God, I am sorry. I cannot go yet. I am waiting for my picture. Previous Next

< Back Charlie's Story Charlie recounts his rich experience traveling the world, and what he has learned from a lifetime of travel. He discusses the importance of how traveling helps us experience and help better understand other cultures, and how the individuals of these cultures shape his experiences. Scroll to listen 00:00 / 04:58 So to start out, I wanted to ask you to tell me about your travels throughout your life. Oh, totally I've been we've been very lucky with the chances to travel widely and a number of ways. We've traveled in Europe and Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand. And we traveled by boat and we travel by plane to some places that folks don't likely get to. So we've been very lucky. What what we started doing was bareboat chartering. And so we go down with friends and charter a boat for a week and poke around. And then we got to know some folks down there. And that led to a number of trips that took us to quiet little places that were very special. Yeah, what places did you end up visiting? Well, the some of the most interesting those days were in the Bahamas, which is not far from Florida. The Bahamas, or that's an earring because that a lifestyle is a very simple one and tied closely to the water. So people fish and people say, Oh, it's a much less complicated life.Each culture has its own defining food preferences, but so it becomes a question of which your pleasure artists are buried. So when you hurt Italy, I remember, we literally he took us out into the countryside of his place, and we'll probably had five or six courses. And in between each course, there was a different pasta dish. So oh, you could Oh, the pasta, trouble. And other cultures that fish can be defining, particularly in the islands where the fresher, fresh and wonderful. And and then of course, there's always the wind to wash it down with that makes that compliments of me also. It's all fun. Some of the places that we went to, as I say, we traveled around the world. And it's you, you realize when you travel that, wow, the architecture and the historic ask aspects are interesting. It's the people that make the difference. And so we'd always try and somehow connect with local folks wherever we were. And that made it especially nice. It was interesting because you can read forever about different cultures but until you talk to the people, while you're there isn't really illuminated and and so the people flesh out the sense you have the culture. So I know that it is it's clear that you've had a lot of time spent traveling and going throughout different places in the world. I definitely want to be able to travel more in my future and so I was curious if you had any advice for me for my future travels. The only advice I would give as a general advice that remember that traveling in my view is about the opportunity to meet people and focus on people lose much this the charm with the area and look food and all the reasons that it's appealing. Previous Next

< Back Candace D's Story Come listen to Candace’s story about her experience afinding her partner Gary and moving to Peru and living abroad. Through her story, Candace reflects on how living abroad allowed her to break free from her past and go on the adventure she had always wanted when she was little. 00:00 / 05:48 I was born in Princeton New Jersey in December of 1949. Unfortunately, I was born to very [inaudible] parents. As a child I always hoped that one day things would change. And then I remember very distinctly standing in my bedroom, I was 8 or 9, 10 years I old. I’m thinking, it’s not gonna change. It is just not going to change. But then I realized, cause I had older siblings who had left home. But one day it will, because I will leave home too and I cn change my life then. And that was, important for me. It was 1969, and I met this guy through my friend Terry. He had the kindest eyes, and he had a demeanor which a friend of mine in town here says he still has. He was very calm but he was just very caring and you felt like he was actually seeing you and hearing you. He originally had been from Long Island. His father had been in the schmatta trade, which means dressmaking trade if you don’t know the term, very New York term. And his Gary Drimmer. His parents had moved when he was eleven to Peru and he had gone to, finished up middle school gone to the equivalent of high school. In Spanish. By choice. Because he wanted to learn the foreign language. Well, we dated some, it wasn’t really serious but there was some connection and so when he left he said “I’ll write you,” and I thought right. At that point in my life I had learned that young men tend to lie a lot too. And they might mean to do things but they don’t always. So, we actually started writing and over the next three years we wrote letters, over a thousand of them. They were really the best way to get to know somebody. Because there was no interaction of you know sitting in the backseat of a car and what happens with that. So, it was more what was in your head. I mean he would talk about books he was reading. I would talk about issues I was having with my parents all the time which just was constant. I was really upset when he wrote me a letter that he was four years, four months younger and that he was Jewish. It was Jewish, didn’t bother me. The first boy I loved in fifth grade was Jewish. But you know it was like, “You were four months younger than me!” I felt like I was robbing the cradle. Which of course was hardly that. We continued to date each other during those 2 and a half of the three years until we decided okay, we got together he came back, up to the states and couple times and we got together then. Then we said, okay this is more serious than dating other people. Gary’s father writes, and there’s some, a lot of the letters are in there and asks, negotiates with Gary to come down to Peru to help him with the business he has, which is failing. Peru is a mess, it’s under a dictatorship and had been. And Gary negotiated, “Fine, but Candace has to come down with me and you can’t be saying anything about it.” Well, Gary’s parents were very very progressive, let me put it this way. They smoked pot with Gary in Peru, so that, I mean they’re dead no one can yell at them now. But I said “Oh my god! This is great!” So, we decided in late ‘71 I was gonna go down to Peru after I finished college in May at the University of Georgia. I got my first passport. I went to the library and got a bunch of books on Peru. Started reading about history. And I told my parents I was moving to Peru. Well, they couldn’t stop me I was 21, and turned 22 at the same, around the same time. So, in June of 1972, I left the United States with a passport in one hand and no idea what was gonna happen in the other. I mean, my father said, “You’re going to hell, and I won’t drive you to the airport”. My friends thought I was insane. “How do you know this guy?” “What do you know of this guy?” That kind of thing. But I felt I was doing the right thing. It was just like, the round peg into the round hole, I knew where I was, and this felt right. I got to Peru very early in the morning. After a long airline flight. Six months later we got married in a civil ceremony cause my parents refused to come to the religious one. And I was in the process of converting to Judaism with the only rabbi in the country. So, I learned, it was very lonely to be on your own, but I also learned that I am good at reaching out to people. And I learned to network with people. I would, if somebody invited me over for a cup of tea I might stay as long as they would let me stay in their house and pump their brain and try to get to know them. I really insinuated myself into people’s lives. I do remember things that I did, and it’s almost embarrassing but at the same time nobody ever said can’t you get out of my house, they understood, they all had been new at one point. So, I got to say I loved living abroad. It was the adventure that I had always wanted. I wanted adventure. I knew that. I also hated it at times. It was the biggest challenge. It grew me. It gave me the strength that I wasn’t raised with. It taught me I have more resources than I ever thought, and I loved ex-pats. Even the ones that I wouldn’t have spoken to for more than 5 minutes in the states. Because there was such a diversity of opinions, viewpoints, “lunch should be at 11:30, no 3 O’clock in the afternoon is early enough are you kidding?” I mean the world was just different. 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