“Where we love is home –

home that our feet may leave,

but not our hearts.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes

With a renewed sense of purpose, I shifted my weight on the temporary bed they had set up for me. My life was flashing before me now and I needed to let it unfold. It was important to remember who I was and where I had come from. I focused on my grandmother because she was my only connection to the beginning. Slowly, slowly, my mind drifted back to those long ago days.

I was wearing my favorite plaid dress and saddle oxford shoes. My grandmother was brushing my hair, telling me it was a fine September morning when I came into this world and made Ruth and Harold Cover reluctant parents. The look on her face told me more; they weren’t pleased about my arrival at all. They hadn’t even picked out my name. She explained how she had taken it upon herself to call me Marley, an old English name that meant pleasant wood.

From the day I was born, we lived in my grandparents’ house on a corner parcel of land in Mansfield, Massachusetts. Through eyes of wonder and the hazed impressions of a small child’s mind, I watched each day as my grandmother pumped well water from her kitchen sink and cooked on a wood-burning stove.

My grandfather’s job was to empty the drip pan under the ice box each morning. This made room for the new block of ice that was delivered daily on a horse-drawn wagon. That block of ice kept our milk and meats cold. Three mornings a week, four bottles of milk with an inch of cream floating on top, were delivered to our doorstep. My mother loved to sneak off the cream for her morning coffee.

Nighttime was magical. The lack of electricity provided us with a sweet tranquil darkness. The only source of light came from fireflies, kerosene lamps, and the moon and stars above. These delicate sources of lighting left a vivid impression on my youthful mind.

My grandfather made an impression on me, too. He didn’t show me much affection, but every morning we would sit side by side in his legendary garden. I could feel my imagination stir, as the potatoes and carrots pushed up new sprouts to greet the morning sun. That garden fed us and half of the neighbors on our street. Surrounded by the stillness of growing things and the fragrance of warm soil, I was filled with constant delight. Then, my grandmother would come and take me back inside and feed me, wash me, and make sure I was dressed for the day.

On nights when my grandfather’s snoring kept my grandmother awake, she would send him to my room and take me back to bed with her. She would heat two bricks on the wood-burning stove, wrap them in a towel, and place them at the foot of her bed. The warmth of her body and the sweet scent of her milk-white skin would enter me on those cold New England nights. The days and nights spent on my grandparents’ farm were filled with wonder and curiosity. While the vegetable garden grew silently behind their house, my life took on a shape of its own.

My grandmother suffered from sugar diabetes. The night she was dying, hospital rules wouldn’t allow me to say goodbye to her. I sat broken-hearted in the corridor, until my mother came out to tell me she had died. That was the night my youthful world collapsed.

The following month, my father received a job transfer. Just like that, I was uprooted from my beloved New England and transplanted in Lake Wales, Florida, a small provincial town in the center of the state where discrimination flourished, migrant workers picked citrus trees clean, and white birds soaredhigh in the air with fallen fruit hanging from their beaks. Bit by bit, the familiar smells of my early New England childhood were replaced with the scents of Stuckey’s pecans, boiled peanuts, and Orange Blossom Perfume.

It was a turbulent time in history. Americans were dug into a Cold War at home and abroad. Democratic hopefuls raced to become president amidst scandal and military deadlock. Our family was struggling to embrace the new technology of the black-and-white television set and the disturbing news that was on it. For the next decade, I was saturated with news. I watched the launch of Sputnik I and Sputnik II and sat in awe as NASA was born and Rocket Fever swept the nation.

Every night, we would line up on the living room couch and listen to the heated struggles over civil rights, Castro’s Communism, and Joseph McCarthy’s rise to power. My parents would often discuss how McCarthy seemed to flourish in the Cold War atmosphere and how he had ruined more careers of writers, actors, and top officials than any politician ever had.

So much was happening all around me that I needed to find ways to cope. Out of desperation, I developed an imperceptible resolve in myself that helped me deal with my emotions and keep my worries at bay. I called that resolve my will.

When John F. Kennedy became president in 1961, I was still a junior in high school. Kennedy’s inauguration was a significant event, but I was in the middle of my own significant event. I was seven weeks pregnant and had no job, no car, and no plan.

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