Even the Stones

In the late sixties, I left a convent in the Midwest where I had once taken vows. I moved to the East and obtained a job teaching in an elementary school although my goal was to teach at a community college. I knew I had sufficient education but was bewildered as to how to write an effective resume. I heard that a priest serving at my parish was preparing to go on sabbatical, and I was impressed by his academic credentials, so I summoned the courage to phone and ask for his advice. He offered to meet with me and share his own resume.
That encounter began a dialogue that gradually led us both in a new direction. In the spirit of Vatican II, we fell in love. Little did we know, that within the year, appropriate papers from Rome would be filed, we would combine our curriculum vitae, marry, and begin the long trip to Alaska. Little did l know that I would find myself teaching not at a college but first grade in a grammar school on the tundra.
This book is intended as a kind of photograph album in words. Turning the pages, the reader catches glimpses of the early days of our marriage: our trip from Stanford (where my husband completed a summer grant), to our home in Fairbanks. We spent our first year of marriage there which ended with the completion of his sabbatical work at the Geophysical Institute.
There are brief views of the last days too, thirty-five years later, when we were stunned to learn he had cancer. These are not posed photographs, but snapshots glances of lives taken by surprise.