My daddy wouldn’t say no…

No, you can’t be a writer. No, you can’t climb a mountain. No, you’re a brown-skin girl in a color-struck world. So go for something safe. Something small. Something easy.

Instead, Daddy bought me a typewriter. Shiny blue plastic and my own. A Christmas surprise. Better than a Barbie. Or ice skates. Or a fancy–dance dress in red silk or black velvet. Instead, I got the plastic blue Remington. That sealed it.

I’ll write for life, I told myself—never dreaming I’d just chosen a kind of heaven. Or a certain hell? Giving your life to something tough and crazy is, for sure, a wild and rocky journey.

So Daddy tempered it. He mixed in Jesus. Not with speeches. Not with mandates. Instead, he piled us in the Dodge and drove us to a little Denver church where Daddy sang in the choir and Mama taught Sunday school.

Then on ice-cold mornings when the boiler in the church wouldn’t crank, we’d huddle with other believers in the second-floor sanctuary wearing coats and scarves and singing “This Little Light of Mine”—clapping our hands for warmth, praying the offering was enough to fix the doggone furnace.

But every Sunday, we came back. Because, in Christ, that’s what you do. You keep going. So here I am, half past 60—with my Daddy long dead and Mama, too—but still writing. Still at it. These are my books and this is my site and these are my thoughts so far. Not done yet. You’re not either.