More About ME
I grew up with my family in Ripon, Wisconsin, a small mid-western town where we led a quiet, low key lifestyle, biking to school, playing with kids who lived down the street, squealing in the backyard when we ran through the sprinkler on hot summer days and walking on snowbanks so high we could practically touch the telephone wires during the long, cold winters.
Our family bonds strengthened during the outings our parents planned for us: picnics, hikes in the beautiful Kettle Moraine, trips to County Park to swim in Green Lake, overnight stays in a cabin in the woods on Oxbow Lake and the occasional venture to the big city to visit the Milwaukee Zoo or The Domes (see gallery below - photos taken during our trip there in 2018).
We took an annual road trip to see my grandparents in upstate New York, where we went to amusement parks and the horse track and played croquet and carrom with my maternal grandparents and hiked, fished and swam at my paternal grandparents farm. These experiences all left indelible memories of warmth and togetherness that I carry with me and are part of who I am today.
One of the most impactful events that would most transform my life would be my discovery of my grandparents books in French and in Spanish, and learning of their travels to other corners of the world. This opened my eyes to the existence of the greater world out there and had me dreaming that I too might some day see other lands. Grandma Bowen spoke French! She actually spoke a different language! This intrigued me to no end, I had never seen anything like it in my small town and it sparked an interest in me which never ceased to grow.
Green Lake, WI
Brittany, France
From Green Lake, WI to Brittany, France - love them boats, baby!
To follow in Grandma’s footsteps as best I could, I took Spanish in high school (French was not offered at my school) and found I had a relative knack for it. I began traveling abroad during and after college. I met my future husband, a native of Aix-en-Provence, France in graduate school and moved to France where I raised three children, worked as a conference interpreter and continued to explore the world.
As the years marched on my grandparents continued exploring the globe, though the frequency of their trips gradually tapered off. Eventually they stayed home and relived their past adventures through shared stories and photos. We were deeply saddened when their footsteps were forever silenced (Grandpa Bowen in 1996 and Grandma Bowen in 2006).
I gathered up my grandmother’s travel diaries in 2006 when we emptied out her house and kept them safely stored away but always present in a corner of my mind. It was only recently, in early 2020, that I began transcribing and illustrating them. A pandemic was on, my interpreting work had all but evaporated and I found delving into my grandma’s past travels to be a thoroughly soothing process. As I transcribed her words, I felt I was visiting with my grandma and embarking on a journey that took me traveling through time and space.
This process reawakened in me the memories of so many experiences from far back in my past, eliciting the comforting warmth of nostalgia. It served as a reminder of precious, meaningful moments that contributed to making me who I am. And of the twists and turns in the road of life - I was inspired as a child by my grandparent’s love of travel and language, I went on to learn languages and travel, settling and raising a bilingual family in a different country. I eventually appropriated their travel diaries, the contents of which carried me back to what I might have lost sight of over the years - the inspiration for the life that I have lead. I feel that the road has come full circle.