My great grandparents emigrated to the U.S. in the 1890’s – my father’s family from Russia and Germany, my mother’s from Sweden, Ireland, and Mexico. My parents grew up in San Francisco – Mom in the Mission, Dad in the Fillmore. I grew up on Liberty Street.

When I was eleven, my family moved from San Francisco to Lucas Valley - a suburb in Marin County. As I surveyed blocks of Model 1, 2, and 3 Eichler homes built against hills where dairy cows roamed, I missed the pulse of the city, the stimuli which had lifted my family in and out the door each day. I longed to roam city streets, take the bus to the library and ballet. Used to streetlamps, I was intimidated by starry night skies. My diary, Sarah, became my best friend. Nostalgia for our Liberty Street Victorian filled her pages: fog racing over Twin Peaks each afternoon; my Gram, brother and I dipping jelly doughnuts into milked-down coffee on Saturday mornings; our father Harry driving up in his convertible T-Bird, a Camel cigarette clasped between his lips while our glamorous blond shiksa mother Bunny practiced lines for her drama class. 

During long lonely summer days, I sat by the creek, pen in hand, assessing my life so far. Why had the Catholic kids on Liberty Street made fun of our father’s “big Jewish nose?” Was there a God and why did people believe they needed a rosary to save them from hell and the fire that burned forever? Why had  everyone been so worried a war might start? Why had my third grade teacher said that boys should be Presidents and girls should be secretaries? Why did no one ever mention my mother’s or father’s fathers? What happened to them? Why was our father rarely home and why had that man banged on the front door late at night calling out “Harry the Horse?” Why did my little brother keep falling off of things: dressers, stairs, building sites with a daring that both frightened and impressed me? What was Gram saying as she crooned in Yiddish with a worried look upon her face? Why didn’t the suburban kids love Peter Paul and Mary as much as I did? I wrote to answer these questions and never stopped. 

With gratitude to writing teachers over the years, especially Michael Ruben at San Francisco State; Diana O’Hehir & J. Herman Blake at Mills College; Anne Lamott at Book Passage; my Bird by Birds, a longstanding writing group started after classes with Annie: Amy Beauchamp, Mary Cone, Terri Tate, Margit Liesche & Caiti Collins. To my writing buddy Elizabeth Kert.