Meet Margi

(The photo at left is of a path off of the Buda, Illinois blacktop, a road I used to travel often.)


Officially, I'm a baby boomer, born in 1952 to a mom who left her husband when I was a mere three weeks old. Life could only go uphill from there, right?

You know better than that, but you should also know that life is beautiful, something to be cherished, remembered and talked about.

I've always loved to read. When I was in first and second grade, I'd carry home so many books that mom warned me I was going to go blind from reading too much. I responded by reading even more. It seemed to me that the more I read before losing my sight, the better off I'd be.

My sight is still around, mom isn't, but her influence is strongly felt by my younger sister and me. Sis turns 50 this year, and although we live an hour apart, we're much closer as friends than we ever were as kids.

As for immediate family, I have a hubby who retired this year and who is "fixing up the house", two sons and two grandsons. Extended family includes pretty much the same group as yours, fiercely loyal at times, and completely frustrating most of the time.

We've had our share of pets - dogs, cats, rabbits, guinea pigs and hamsters. At one time, we had four dogs and four cats. Now, it's just two older people and Sarah Jane, the yellow lab-mix. She's 18 months old and weighs 83 pounds. So far, she's knocked out one of hubby's teeth and she took me on a romp through the house until I had to let go of her collar so I could fall face-first in a doorway. I now have a broken pinkie finger as a souvenir.

When I sit down to write a column for you to read, I look for common ground, hoping you identify with an experience or a memory of mine. Most of us have significant others, in-laws, friends, siblings, co-workers and probably a few folks who don't like us one bit. All good fodder for a column, which brings me to the title of mine.

"Murder, She Wrote" was a long-running mystery show, that starred Angela Lansbury as Jessica Fletcher, mystery writer and amateur old-lady, busybody sleuth. Hubby is fond of the busybody title, and the kids used to call her something else, but I loved the whole idea. Stephen King is from Maine, and this show's locale was Cabot Cove, Maine so I was hooked. In fact, I was so enamored with both King and the show that a former supervisor wrote a piece about my writings, calling it, "Horror, she wrote." Cute.

Still, I couldn't be happier with this column's title. Cute? Maybe, maybe not, but it's me, and I hope you enjoy what I've written. It's my hope that we all connect on some level, as if we've known each for years and we get together for a cup of coffee once a week.