Back Story

Back-pedal to my college days. I did my undergraduate degree in psychology, mostly because I was fascinated with what made people tick. When I was sixteen I'd even worked for a psychiatrist one summer for a short time. The psychiatrist captivated me because he was as odd as some of his patients -- talking to himself in his office and making odd snorting sounds. Maybe he merely had a cold and was dictating in his Dictaphone but as I sat at my little desk, wishing I was soaking rays at the beach, I let my imagination concoct this much more interesting scenario of a doctor as nutty as his patients. But then several years later with degree in hand, I wondered what I could do with it, and not only that but nothing was a sure thing. It frustrated me that there were a hundred theories to why people did what they did. How could you predict anything reliably? To counter the unpredictability of psychology, I switched to the sane numbers of data analysis -- statistics. What a breath of fresh air -- at first -- so reliable. You figured out what analysis worked best and then applied it, and lo and behold a nice solid answer. Of course you could manipulate the outcome slightly to suit your needs but I won't get into that. And when I tell people I studied statistics, the look of horror that sweeps across their face is similar to telling a deer that you're a hunter by profession.

Fast forward to 2001, I was pregnant and had two other barnacles in tow. I used to love to make salsa during that time -- we had a garden full of tomatoes -- and I had the recipe adapted to what my husband and I liked. When I was pregnant though, I couldn't eat the stuff and my husband couldn't either. If he breathed on me with that garlic and cilantro spicy pant -- with love in his eyes and passion in his voice -- I'd hurl everywhere. I still made the salsa though when the produce was ready, and the following year we had quarts and quarts of it all ready to eat. And during those afternoons I'd watch Oprah and she was always talking about finding your passion. My passion? I'd look at my brown-eyed boys and imagine my little girl yet to be born and think, there it is right here. Eventually though something deeper surfaced, almost like giving birth to a fourth child. It was an expression of who I was and where I'd come from. And that happened about a year later and my husband was as surprised as I was.