Who I am and what am I doing here?

As a young child everyone in my family read. My father especially was always reading something - the newspaper, his beloved National Geographic (he had a lifetime subscription), Life Magazine - whatever was around. I don't recall him reading to us three girls other than perhaps Bible verses, but nonetheless I knew  reading was cherished in our house. My mother was a reader too, but she also wrote. She kept  diaries that to this day I have never read although my older sister has.

I remember the day of discovering my calling as if it was yesterday. I was too little to sit at a table and hold the newspaper as my wingspan wasn't wide enough to handle the pages. So I would sit crossed legged on the floor and spread the pages out in front of me and read whatever I could understand - mostly cartoons and the ads. I loved looking at the pictures of all sorts of places and people. I would wonder what it would be like to be in those places or be those people. One day when I was about 10,  I was turning the pages to our local newspaper The Fort Wayne Journal and as I turned the very last page my eyes drank in a scene which changed my life. It was a full page black and white picture - an ad from Easter Seals. This was the era of the last big polio epidemic and so this ad featured a young girl of four or five. She was beautiful, a cute-as-a-button blonde with her hair up in sausage pigtails. She was standing between a set of rails on metal uprights. She was obviously holding tight to the rails. On her legs were metal upright bars with white leather straps assisting her little legs to stand. But what caught my eye and my heart was the lady standing there beside her,  helping the child to manage this great feat of standing. The lady was rather plump as I recall, she had on a sparkling white uniform and on her shoulder was a triangular patch with writing on it. I could just make out the words: American Physical Therapy Association. It hit me like a neon sign - this was my destiny; this is what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to help little kids to walk. I never changed my mind from that point forward.

Being a physical therapist is, and will always be, part of my identity, but now I am retired - a retired pediatric physical therapist. Reading and writing have always been a secondary passion to my first love of helping children. So now I find I actually have more time to indulge in those passions. This journey is just starting. This redefining of myself as a writer - an author -  is just beginning! And believe it or not, I am having a blast! Come with me and join my journey! Better yet, join my team to cheer me on as I pursue the Tale to tell!