In The Beginning.......

I guess I'm going to jump around quite a bit on this blog-----there are a lot of things I want to say about the present time,  about my day-to-day life, but in order to see how I got here, I also have a lot to say about where I came from.  The road to wine country was by no means a straight path.  Sometimes I am amazed that I ended up here.....but so happy about the twists and turns that brought me to this place.
I was born in Brooklyn, New York.  After meeting so many people in so many different cities and states, I am convinced that about a third of the population came from Brooklyn or the surrounding areas at some point in their lives.  It's like everyone somehow starts out there, and then takes a different path to their ultimate residence.  Growing up in Brooklyn was quite the experience. At the time I didn't think anything was so unusual about it.  We played on street corners, rode bicycles to the school yard, and ate at the corner "pizza place".  After high school, most of the people I knew dispersed and went in different directions.  I only realized when I became an adult how much the place I grew up and the family I grew up in so directly influenced my decisions and who I would become.  My parents were also from Brooklyn, although one generation back, my father's family came from Poland, my mother's from Italy.  My father was married before.  He was Jewish, and was married to a Jewish woman.  They had two children, my half-brother and half-sister.  Sadly, his wife passed away from cancer at a very young age.  (but no one talked about it in those days).  Having a mother die so young, and a father who probably was grieving, and drinking, and unavailable probably made those kids emotionally unstable and unable to cope.  My father later met and married my mother--a non-Jewish woman who had no idea what she was getting herself into.  His family objected and rejected, the kids were confused and unhappy, and I'm surprised they ended up staying together.  But stay together they did, and several years later had two children together, my brother and me.   I guess I can stop here because there is so much to say and so many more blog posts to say it.