Writer’s note: I participated in a free-write session on Monday, April 20th, and we were coached to explore the following question. This was my contribution.

Where were you the first time you fell in love?

I fell in love with the written word at an age that I was too young to truly recall; I was an early reader. I fell in love with writing however, when I was 7. It was a sunny summer day outside and I was sitting on my family’s newly enclosed porch when I had my first “spark.” The genesis, if you will. I wrote a poem that I still remember to this day. I never titled it, but it reflected my 7-year old anxieties about the planet and our future. The poem was about the hole in the ozone layer.

I find it quite serendipitous to be reflecting on this during Earth Week while in the midst of a global pandemic—a time when I feel the earth needed us to chill and sit down for a minute so she could reset.

I was a child who watched the news religiously. Now, I can’t exactly say if it’s because I was truly interested in current events or that it was just because it always seemed to be on the tv, but I knew a lot about what was going on in the world for my age. And that particular day, I heard a news report about the ozone layer, which was also probably when I first encountered “global warming,” and I was afraid. The report said suggested that by the year 2020, it would be no more, and that we wouldn’t have protection from the sun—leading to our eventual demise.

I don’t know why, and this may be something I need to unpack with my therapist, but I was preoccupied with death in a way that no 7-year-old should be. There’s a reason Vada Sultenfuss was always one of my favorite characters.

Anyway, as I sat on the newly purchased porch furniture, complete with that “new smell”, I began to write:

“One day I had to move.

So I lifted this big ‘hoove.’

The ‘hoove’ (went) so high

It touched the sky

And didn’t come back ’til the 4th of July.

It reached the ozone layer

Which was beginning to look grayer

Until we had a prayer.

When 4th of July rolls around

And you see a big ‘hoove’ touch the ground,

Don’t be surprised, believe your eyes.

It was me who lifted the ‘hoove.’”

I don’t know why I’ve always remembered this poem, but I have. Almost 26 years later, and I can still remember being the little girl, sitting in the front chair on my family’s front porch, discovering I have a talent for writing.