It was 2020, and I was looking for something to ease the self-enforced quarantine of the COVID-19 lockdown. An attractive brochure from Hutton House Lectures arrived in the mail. I signed up for a ZOOM course called Write a Chapter of Your Life, given by Lisa Pulitzer. Writing for that course stirred so many memories of the 90 years of my life that I decided to extend the chapter into a book.

Those memories saw me grow and develop from a depression baby born in 1933, into a naïve bride just out of high school. Suddenly, I was a housewife and mother of four children, born over five short years, and then widowed at age 39.

I began as a girl with virtually no knowledge of how the world worked, and eventually became an independent woman with a curiosity about life. I have traveled to many wonderful places on five continents. Then, at age 84, I entered into a new way of life with a second marriage.

Our combined family of 60 children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren are very important to both of us.

In this memoir I have set forth some of the memories of my life's journey in hopes that a reader might get a glimpse of me as a growing, evolving woman, and appreciate some of the experiences and observations I have been able to recall.

Sue Pratt