The Beginning

The combination of my best friend beautifully unlocking her artistic potential and watching the Olympic Athletes live out their dreams has stirred something inside of me. I've always believed that every person was created to be a subcreator. Made in the image of God, THE creator. Plumber, chef, mother, undertaker, or accountant, by nature we are wired to express and create. Having always wrestled with whether I am a problem-solving-mathematical-tetris-playing-self, or a lover of sonnets, alliteration, theatre, charcoal pencils, and prose, i've finally begun to see that I don't have to choose. In the last year i've become fascinated by Leonardo da Vinci, the prime example of what is possible if we allow both sides of our brain to work together. I am a good accountant because I can see creative and unconventional solutions to problems and discrepancies. Likewise, I am a good writer because I know how to create beauty out of chaos.

All this to say, for the last 8 years i've been wanting to write down a few stories about my family (chaos), namely those of my Nana and Dad. I don't know how they will all come together, or if they will, but i'll never know if I don't put them down. What's most important to me is that their stories are told. So allow me to be flawed, inconsistent, and gramattically incorrect as I put a little bit out into "the void":


How it began:

After their mother died and their father let his affection for whiskey take control, Mary Cleary, my Nana, and her brother Bill were adopted. But nothing was typical about this adoption. For one thing, their Father lived just down the road and they saw him often. Recently immigrated from Scotalnd, after World War 1, Peter Cleary, a Gordon Highlander (aka Lady from Hell) and boxer, decided to make a new life for his family in America. But he quickly became a widower and single father to 3, with countless reasons to drink. It's no wonder that in the 1930s the state decided to put Mary and her brother Bill under the supervision of Mr. and Mrs. Shepard.

Mary always referred to Honey (Mr. Shepard) and Mrs. Shepard as her true parents. After all, she never knew her Mother, and probably felt as if she were more of a parent to her own father, Peter Cleary, than he was to her. While Honey and Mrs. Shepard were the best imaginable parents for Mary and her brother Bill, it should be noted that their circumstances were rather unusual. The thought of a Jamaican man adopting two scottish children during those times seems unbelievable. But Honey had become rich after gold mining success in Alaska; rich enough to be married to a white woman and a father to two white children. He was also rich enough to own and run a morgue, crematory, and funeral home. And this is how Mary and Bill came to know more about embalming, cremation, and death than any other children in Seattle....