Then it was off to college. Indiana University in Bloomington. Beautiful campus, great small town. Exciting classes and professors. Making new friends. Living on my own. It was a new world. My roommate was a girl named Seiglinde from Germany. Her voice was like a lullaby, and every night she put me to sleep—literally—with her stories. And in college, just as in high school, my only real interest was in classes that celebrated the written word: creative writing, poetry, and even the history of song lyrics. As long as I was involved with words on paper, I was content.

I got married to my high school sweetheart and settled into life. I wrote in journals and took classes while I held a variety of jobs before becoming a "real," honest-to-goodness writer (which means I started a love/hate relationship with the mailbox while collecting rejection slips). I worked at a library, a real estate company, and a clothing store, I was an envelope stuffer for a Congressman. I talked to people visiting my city when they flew in to the airport. (This job is called public relations, but it meant, in my case, handing out maps, smiling, pouring coffee, and making up poems on the office typewriter.) None of these jobs prepared me for writing, or for being a mother. That is something that,