Here I Am

Ours wasn’t a family “on time.” Christmas presents could wait until January, stores were closed by the time we arrived, invitations to parties were mislaid and we missed them, shoes couldn’t be found just as our ride drove up, tickets bought in advance were unheard of, daylight savings time always caught us unaware. Was better late than never better than never there at all?

For my thirteenth birthday I wrote in my diary: “I found out Ann and Ray are giving me $10 for my birthday to buy a dress. I love them for it.” For Mother’s Day that year I wrote that Ann and Ray gave Mom $10 but Dad took it. In May I wrote: “A man turned off our electricity again today. Everybody is crabby. We have little kerosene, very little gas and NO food.” A few pages later my handwriting tells me that our power was turned off on the night of my eighth grade graduation.

In July that year I got a letter from a girlfriend. “Am going up to her place in two weeks. Don’t have much. Am worried about many things.” Even the worrying made me late. I was late for the school bus most days, late to get my class ring in high school because I couldn’t pay for it. I was late for my own wedding because I was busy combing my hair in the downstairs bathroom. I was late with my first child. I was late to start college and didn’t graduate until I was 30. I was late to grow up, to learn to drive, to write a check. But I did get married. I did have a child and then another one. I went to college. At 72, I started living alone for the first time in my life.

And here I am at this age writing a book, my first. Better late than never.