Origin Story

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Inspired by George Ella Lyon's "Where I'm From"

Antique map of Wonzeradeel, 1718

I am from the lake in the middle of Friesland, in the Northern Netherlands, and from the farmland that surrounded it and the sheep that grazed there.

I am from a great-great grandmother who left that land to board a ship bound for a place she’d never been, with six children under the age of ten clinging to her skirts.

I am from a long line of Scottish seafaring men who sailed the Great Lakes on ships loaded down with coal and iron ore.

I am from the women who waited for those ships to return and who had to figure out how to keep the fires burning and put food on the table in the meantime.

I am from the back seat of a borrowed car parked on a hill above the rover, overlooking the scrap metal yard and the gravel plant.

I’m from two strands of DNA that were twisted together by accident to form a new set of genes and chromosomes.

I’m from the Motor City --Motown! – The Paris of the Midwest. A city known for its rich history of manufacturing, music and social inequity.

I’m from a hospital in the inner city with a special wing form unwed mothers, and from a social services agency that handled all the paperwork.

I’m from a typical suburban town filled with houses in varying shades of beige, tan and ecru, otherwise completely identical to one another.

I’m from a family in which the men turned up the volume on the football game when my mother asked them if they were ready to sit down for Thanksgiving Dinner.

I’m from a cul-de-sac filled with kids riding their bikes in circles, while I hit a tennis ball against the garage as hard as I could, over and over and over.

I’m from paper and ink and paint and music, and food and yarn and clay.

I’m from California, the land of plenty, full of swimming pools and movie stars, where the men dress like children and the children dress like superheroes, and the women worry about their weight.

I’m from San Francisco, the land of misfit toys.

I’m from a 30-year career that I never wanted to have, in which I helped make a lot of rich men richer.

I’m from a long string of 1s and 0s that somehow get transmitted over invisible airwaves and reform themselves into an image that looks like my face, then streamed through a bunch of cords and wires until they end up on a screen in front of somebody else.