The noteworthy characteristic of my 83 year-long life is moving: changing locations where I lived quite frequently. The longest I have lived in one place is San Francisco these last 28 years. The location changes and the reasons for them shaped what I did in those places and in many ways inform who I have become.

The earliest move really doesn’t count: at four I moved with my family from Boston where I was born to Madison Wisconsin at the end of WWII. What counts in the pattern of relocation is that I lived twelve years in Madison. They formed me as mostly mid-western. I did my early schooling, friend making, sports likes and dislikes in Madison Wisconsin. I grew up in a University town, mostly liberal in viewpoint.

When my father left U. of Wisconsin for the U. of California in 1958 to become the director of Lick Observatories, I was forced to find a suitable high school to attend. My family relocated to live on Mt. Hamilton, east of San Jose CA where the observatories are located. Mt. Hamilton is a mountain top with telescopes and a small community of astronomers, engineers, support staff, their families and homes owned and operated by the University of California. There was no high school. My mother was well educated earning a master’s degree at the U. of Chicago where she first learned of the work of John Dewey.  She instigated the search for a boarding school that would suit me beyond the girls’ private schools in the San Francisco Bay Area. We were not a family with a tradition of private education. My mother knew the dean of students at the U. of Wisconsin and spoke with him about private high school educational opportunities in the west in 1958. He had met John Holden skiing in Aspen and consequently mentioned to my mom the young co-ed, liberal, private boarding school in Carbondale CO. She and I thought the school might be a good fit for me. I applied and was accepted. That’s how I came to CRMS in 1958.

The CRMS experience was an influential two years, definitely instilling in me a desire to make the world a better place. They were followed by many more relocations  over the following 10 years:  college at Willamette University (BA), Salem Oregon;  US Peace Corps serving two years living in Quito Ecuador; a marriage and brief stint in Seattle, and then two years in Palo Alto working for the Girl Scouts of the Bay Area while my husband earned a MBA at Stanford. With marriage came the trailing spouse career: I went where my husband went and worked outside the home as time and conditions permitted.  First job location for him was Lima Peru for almost two years and then a relocation to Mexico DF where my two children were born. Following Mexico came Chicago Illinois for 1-1/2 years, then 2 years in Sao Paulo Brazil, two years in New York City, and finally a longer stint in Chicago area beginning in 1978. Once the children were born my main occupation was home and family management. And once they were in school in Winnetka (a Chicago suburb), I worked part-time first by opening a small used book and handmade crafts store-front business with a partner. I followed that job with one as a part time training facilitator for a non-profit citizen information organization in Chicago. My first workshop was teaching citizenship naturalization to immigrants in Spanish; and a second workshop training series on Board of Directors’ responsibilities and leadership for small grassroots non-profits using city block grant funds.

Princeton, New Jersey followed Winnetka in 1987. My youngest child was in high school and the older one was at CRMS. In these years, I returned to school, Rutgers University, in graduate studies in adult literacy and adult education. I took a couple of classes per semester. I first earned a Masters Degree in Adult Education and then went on  to earn a doctorate in adult education. I did the dissertation once I moved to San Francisco in 1997. The degree (D.Ed) was awarded in 2005.

I hung the doctorate degree on the wall. I decided not to write a book based on the dissertation, nor look for a teaching position. I was getting older. My husband and I traveled a lot. I served on the CRMS board of Trustees for a decade and six years as a Trustee for Music in the Vineyards, the Napa Valley Chamber Music Festival. Prior to that I had been a director on the board of Girl Scouts of the USA and a couple of other community based non-profit boards of directors.

The post doctorate years were stable. My husband and I lived in San Francisco.  Our children were well adjusted adults living in the east coast. We enjoyed a second home in Napa California with many recreational opportunities.  After my husband’s retirement we travelled nationally  and internationally a lot. Both abroad and at home we enjoyed and supported musical organizations, like the San Francisco Opera, Ballet, and Symphony. We simultaneously hiked, biked, fished, and ran wherever possible.

I am now widowed. I have grown and changed in widowhood, hopefully becoming more myself, more like I was in my years at CRMS.  So far, I have not moved but I anticipate relocating to live in the east as a I enter old age, closer to where my children and grandchildren live. That move will be my last, finally.