Chapter 1

All we are asked to bear we can bear. That is the law of the spiritual life. The only hindrance to the working of this law, as of all benign laws, is fear. - Elizabeth Goudge At some point one more sane than I would have given up the fight. In my case I was fighting the truth. To tell the truth meant, to my terrified sixteen-year-old mind, certain death. Perhaps not in the most ultimate expression of the word, as in being killed or dieing from asbestos poisoning from the crumbling yellow-stained tiles in the ceiling of the Quonset hut I sat in during my eleventh grade year. Death would have been kinder than what I imagined would happen to me if anyone found out my secret - especially my mother and stepfather - especially in the ultra conservative small town set amidst the fragrant orange groves of Southern California in 1966 in which I was raised. High school cheerleaders don't get pregnant. They didn't do "that thing" you have to do to get pregnant, not in Orange County. Not in 1966. Good girls, wearing dark blue wool skirts, lengthened to the middle of the knees with a bright white sweater emblazoned with a plate sized blue "W" on the front, didn't go to parties and sneak off to a bedroom to get naked with a boy she hardly knew. I don't even remember "doing it." Stay tuned for the upcoming book THE HUGGING TREE.

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