My Bio:
What to tell? Biographies usually begin at an early age. Resumes concentrate on employment. I think I can do both at the same time.
When I was 12 my mother decided that on Saturdays I should answer the phone in the plumbing and heating store she and my father owned. Since phone calls were sparse and customers got impatient waiting, my father told me to approach people, ask them what they needed, and escort them to the appropriate area. From years of observing my parents I knew something about the typical requested items: toilet bowls, tubs, sinks, faucets and the paraphernalia required for installation. Back then adolescent girls weren’t the wannabe glamor icons they are now. We didn’t style our hair, wear makeup or bras we didn’t need. So it’s not surprising that customers stared in confused/annoyed silence at me, a skinny kid in ill-fitting jeans asking what they needed today. But as my confidence grew, their reluctance diminished. It turned out dad had the right idea. I was a damned good salesman. Saleslady. Saleskid. Whatever! The Saturday I sold three complete bathrooms, more than anyone on the floor that day, my father increased my salary to the sum he paid a grown man. My practical mother, always scrambling to pay the bills, in turn decreed I use my earnings to purchase clothing, gifts, and anything else I wanted.
At 15, in my junior year in high school, I realized that if I intended to defy my father’s wishes and attend college, I’d have to finance it myself. So, in addition to my Saturday job, I babysat and during the summer I taught horseback riding at a local camp. Fortune smiled on me. I received a scholarship to nearby C.W. Post that covered half my tuition. Since I could commute, all I’d need was the remaining tuition, fees, books, gas for my car, spending money, clothing . . .
Along with working Saturdays and summers and dating and reveling in typical student activities, I modeled for art classes, (portraits, not nudes), tutored and typed menus for a diner. I loved college. It was hectic, but not impossibly so. All that ended at the conclusion of my sophomore year.
Mr. Right was leaving for four years of graduate school in Boston that fall and he didn’t want to go without me. He didn’t share this with his parents, who had been openly opposed to our relationship. Eloping was his idea. Although we didn’t share hobbies, interests or backgrounds, I agreed. Hopelessly naïve, we believed that love overcame all obstacles. The essential part of the plan was that he would attend school and I would support us.
After finding a sunless closet for an apartment, when I went to seek employment not one plumbing and/or heating store manager considered me, now 19, a credible candidate. Without a degree, or useful work experience, I took the only position I could find – an administrative assistants’ assistant. A year later, I didn’t lose that job because of my undeniably lousy typing. We had a baby, a wonderful daughter, whose unplanned arrival prohibited me from working a normal full-time job. My scant salary, coupled with MTA fares, would barely cover the cost of a caregiver. (Impossible as it might seem to anyone under 40, publicly funded childcare centers didn’t exist back then.) Shaken but not defeated, we decided my husband would work Saturdays and weekdays, and at night he would care for our baby while I worked. I found a job as a ballroom dance instructor.
You might rightly ask, is it possible to support two adults and an infant on two part-time jobs? I’ll simply say, when we finished stretching a dollar you could wallpaper a room with it.
Finally, the wonderful day arrived and he graduated. Equally amazing, he soon earned enough from his practice so that I could be a stay-at-home mom and have a second child.
Time passed. We bought a house. Our son began school. I became a girl scout leader, got back into sewing and into tennis. But I was bored/antsy/unfulfilled. I went back to college, enrolling in any course that interested me (psychology, sociology, anthropology, literature, history and archeology) that began an hour after the kids left for school and ended an hour before they returned. Sadly, when a picky individual in the administrative office discovered that not only did I have enough credits to graduate, I qualified for a degree in anthropology/sociology, I was forced to take my diploma and depart. I took up golf.
When I wasn’t hacking around a course or fulfilling traditional parental duties, I grew increasingly concerned. In a few years, when my daughter left for college, I would be 38. What would I do with only one self-sufficient kid at home? If I wanted a career, there weren’t many ads for applicants with a BA in anthropology/sociology. (A logical question would be, “Why not write?” Unfortunately, the obvious solution was a long way off.) At 37, I was discussing my concerns with a friend who worked part-time as a programmer. The field sounded interesting. I knew it involved math – one of my best subjects in high school – and a local college offered a concentrated two-year program in computer science for anyone with a degree. The September my daughter enrolled so did I. Two weeks into it, I knew I had made the right choice.
After graduating, I was hired by IBM. Like college, I loved working at IBM. Ten years later, the only reason I left was that my husband retired at 53 and we moved to Florida. (Lest you think I was kidnapped or pressured into relocating, for me the hottest summer in Florida is better than a dreary icy weekend up North.)
Once again I lacked cerebral challenges and I still didn’t know that I was meant to be writer. Silly me! I had penciled my first short story, adapted as a play for my Brownie troop, at eight. Later, I provided my teachers with far more reading/ correcting than they wanted with essays and term papers of epic proportions. At IBM, I took pride in the clarity and precision of my documentation and business correspondence. But it wasn’t until the morning after I had seen “Good Will Hunting” that it came to me. It wasn’t that I identified with the protagonist’s genius, it was his fear of leaving the comfortable, the familiar, the safe, to try and possibly fail. And like Matt Damon’s character faced with the decision, I was profoundly depressed.
I knew I could write, but fiction required fresh characters and original plots. I’d grown up with parents that prized reading. For decades they refused to have a television in the house. What if everything I produced was trite trash populated with cliché characters? After six weeks I decided that I couldn’t be unhappier if I tried and failed. It was a decision I’ve never regretted.
As for the gut-wrenching divorce and the glamorous trophy wife, the sad twist you might have been anticipating, didn’t happen. We’re still married. In addition to a son and daughter, we have four beautiful, brilliant, talented grandchildren.
For more, you can find me on http://www.Twitter.com/LisaAprilSmith
“Friend” me on Facebook http://wwww.Facebook.com/LisaApril.Smith
What to tell? Biographies usually begin at an early age. Resumes concentrate on employment. I think I can do both at the same time.
When I was 12 my mother decided that on Saturdays I should answer the phone in the plumbing and heating store she and my father owned. Since phone calls were sparse and customers got impatient waiting, my father told me to approach people, ask them what they needed, and escort them to the appropriate area. From years of observing my parents I knew something about the typical requested items: toilet bowls, tubs, sinks, faucets and the paraphernalia required for installation. Back then adolescent girls weren’t the wannabe glamor icons they are now. We didn’t style our hair, wear makeup or bras we didn’t need. So it’s not surprising that customers stared in confused/annoyed silence at me, a skinny kid in ill-fitting jeans asking what they needed today. But as my confidence grew, their reluctance diminished. It turned out dad had the right idea. I was a damned good salesman. Saleslady. Saleskid. Whatever! The Saturday I sold three complete bathrooms, more than anyone on the floor that day, my father increased my salary to the sum he paid a grown man. My practical mother, always scrambling to pay the bills, in turn decreed I use my earnings to purchase clothing, gifts, and anything else I wanted.
At 15, in my junior year in high school, I realized that if I intended to defy my father’s wishes and attend college, I’d have to finance it myself. So, in addition to my Saturday job, I babysat and during the summer I taught horseback riding at a local camp. Fortune smiled on me. I received a scholarship to nearby C.W. Post that covered half my tuition. Since I could commute, all I’d need was the remaining tuition, fees, books, gas for my car, spending money, clothing . . .
Along with working Saturdays and summers and dating and reveling in typical student activities, I modeled for art classes, (portraits, not nudes), tutored and typed menus for a diner. I loved college. It was hectic, but not impossibly so. All that ended at the conclusion of my sophomore year.
Mr. Right was leaving for four years of graduate school in Boston that fall and he didn’t want to go without me. He didn’t share this with his parents, who had been openly opposed to our relationship. Eloping was his idea. Although we didn’t share hobbies, interests or backgrounds, I agreed. Hopelessly naïve, we believed that love overcame all obstacles. The essential part of the plan was that he would attend school and I would support us.
After finding a sunless closet for an apartment, when I went to seek employment not one plumbing and/or heating store manager considered me, now 19, a credible candidate. Without a degree, or useful work experience, I took the only position I could find – an administrative assistants’ assistant. A year later, I didn’t lose that job because of my undeniably lousy typing. We had a baby, a wonderful daughter, whose unplanned arrival prohibited me from working a normal full-time job. My scant salary, coupled with MTA fares, would barely cover the cost of a caregiver. (Impossible as it might seem to anyone under 40, publicly funded childcare centers didn’t exist back then.) Shaken but not defeated, we decided my husband would work Saturdays and weekdays, and at night he would care for our baby while I worked. I found a job as a ballroom dance instructor.
You might rightly ask, is it possible to support two adults and an infant on two part-time jobs? I’ll simply say, when we finished stretching a dollar you could wallpaper a room with it.
Finally, the wonderful day arrived and he graduated. Equally amazing, he soon earned enough from his practice so that I could be a stay-at-home mom and have a second child.
Time passed. We bought a house. Our son began school. I became a girl scout leader, got back into sewing and into tennis. But I was bored/antsy/unfulfilled. I went back to college, enrolling in any course that interested me (psychology, sociology, anthropology, literature, history and archeology) that began an hour after the kids left for school and ended an hour before they returned. Sadly, when a picky individual in the administrative office discovered that not only did I have enough credits to graduate, I qualified for a degree in anthropology/sociology, I was forced to take my diploma and depart. I took up golf.
When I wasn’t hacking around a course or fulfilling traditional parental duties, I grew increasingly concerned. In a few years, when my daughter left for college, I would be 38. What would I do with only one self-sufficient kid at home? If I wanted a career, there weren’t many ads for applicants with a BA in anthropology/sociology. (A logical question would be, “Why not write?” Unfortunately, the obvious solution was a long way off.) At 37, I was discussing my concerns with a friend who worked part-time as a programmer. The field sounded interesting. I knew it involved math – one of my best subjects in high school – and a local college offered a concentrated two-year program in computer science for anyone with a degree. The September my daughter enrolled so did I. Two weeks into it, I knew I had made the right choice.
After graduating, I was hired by IBM. Like college, I loved working at IBM. Ten years later, the only reason I left was that my husband retired at 53 and we moved to Florida. (Lest you think I was kidnapped or pressured into relocating, for me the hottest summer in Florida is better than a dreary icy weekend up North.)
Once again I lacked cerebral challenges and I still didn’t know that I was meant to be writer. Silly me! I had penciled my first short story, adapted as a play for my Brownie troop, at eight. Later, I provided my teachers with far more reading/ correcting than they wanted with essays and term papers of epic proportions. At IBM, I took pride in the clarity and precision of my documentation and business correspondence. But it wasn’t until the morning after I had seen “Good Will Hunting” that it came to me. It wasn’t that I identified with the protagonist’s genius, it was his fear of leaving the comfortable, the familiar, the safe, to try and possibly fail. And like Matt Damon’s character faced with the decision, I was profoundly depressed.
I knew I could write, but fiction required fresh characters and original plots. I’d grown up with parents that prized reading. For decades they refused to have a television in the house. What if everything I produced was trite trash populated with cliché characters? After six weeks I decided that I couldn’t be unhappier if I tried and failed. It was a decision I’ve never regretted.
As for the gut-wrenching divorce and the glamorous trophy wife, the sad twist you might have been anticipating, didn’t happen. We’re still married. In addition to a son and daughter, we have four beautiful, brilliant, talented grandchildren.
For more, you can find me on http://www.Twitter.com/LisaAprilSmith
“Friend” me on Facebook http://wwww.Facebook.com/LisaApril.Smith