A scent that disturbs me and delights me. It smells like ripe pears, vetiver, a bit of violet and something else- something spicy almost biting and exotic.

Don't ever admit you know a thing about cooking or it'll be used against you.

These are all I have. I do not have the wide, bright beacon of some solid old lighthouse, guiding ships safely home, past the jaggedrocks. I only have these little glimmers that flicker and then go out.

Flowers heal me. Tulips make me happy. I keep myself surrounded by them as soon as they start coming to the island from Canada, and after that when they come from the fields in La Connor, not far from where I live.

But who has time to write memoirs? I’m still living my memoirs.

Can you reclaim that free-girl smile, or is it like virginity- once you loose it, that's it?

What they don't know is that I went over the edge years ago, and lived to tell the tale.