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Tonight I find myself thinking about the girl I left behind in the 70s. Or did I? (To be sure, I'm talking about me in the third person. I didn't leave a baby girl behind on a door step, although my mother used to pretend that was where she found me when we were in locked-horns, battleship mode. Read in the wrong light, that first sentence sounds as if I abandoned a child. But no. No need to call Child Welfare on me. The Only Child even Potentially Left Behind was Me, circa early 1970s.) ;>
When I write, what echoes do I hear but the voice that cried about pimples and parents, bad hair and bad boys, dreams and desires and the totally self-inflicted pain of thinking there was no one out there who would ever understand me?
Judy Blume didn't know I existed when I was 12.
When I read her books, I thought she did.
Part One:
Part Two:
Sidebar: Judy Blume makes me laugh (not for the first time, naturally) in the 2nd segment when she warns moms (I guess that would be me, now) not to TELL their children to read her books because it was something we loved. No wonder my 13-year old daughter rolls her eyes when I beg her to read FOREVER. Let the children come to the books on their own. Snap! She's right. Because if =I= love something, whatever that may be, it is a universal truth that Child 1 and Child 2 will automatically reject it! Oh Judy, you're still teaching me things. As in I will never, ever name anything or anyone "Ralph." 
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