The oldest and shortest of six children, I was raised in the Midwest, which my friends from the New York side of the Hudson River refer to as Wisconsota or Minnesconsin. There my interests in social organizations, art and writing were cultivated by serving as president of my Girl Scout troop, painting at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and earning a journalism badge writing a newsletter for the Girl Scout Council of Hennepin County. My career as an over-achiever started early as I tried to stay ahead of my rambunctious younger siblings.

Coming from an uber Catholic family, I lived in a religious cocoon where my parents participated in the anti-communist Catholic Action “Cell” movement and paraded in public with other Twin Cities families chanting the rosary to pray for peace and the conversion of Russia. The four girls in my family all had the first name “Mary.” During the 1940s and ‘50s era, Catholics were told that they would be condemned to hell for all eternity if they ate fish on Friday, broke their midnight fast before receiving holy communion the next day, joined the YMCA, attended a “mixed-marriage” wedding in a non-Catholic church, or read anything on the Index of Forbidden Books. Hopefully all the poor souls who died under those constrictions will be grandfathered out of hell by now.

After nineteen years of Catholic education that included degrees from two Jesuit universities (Marquette and Saint Louis), marriage to an ex-seminarian, a wedding cake with scriptural texts in Greek and Hebrew, a career as a medical social worker, and the birth of three children, the world as I’d known it was blasted to bits when my husband of nine years revealed that he was gay.

Woops! I was thirty-five, full of desire, and abashedly realized that I had never been bedded by a straight man. Making up for lost time, I went on a relationship rampage that ended in two more marriages, three divorces, and three Catholic annulments. I’ve been good for so long now that I probably re-qualify for virginity.

The divorce from my gay husband was surreal. After leaving the bedroom, I became his office wife for the next two decades as we worked  side-by-side in a California health planning agency and then at a state medical association in New York. We remained best friends until he died from complications of AIDS at the turn of the millennium.

Benign Presence: The Secrets and Salvos of a Brokeback Marriage is the working title of the unpublished manuscript depicting my thirty-six year relationship with the most important man in my life. Although this book is my first, I’ve actually been writing for decades. Over the course of my career as a non-profit association executive, I’ve published a magazine, written columns, edited newsletters, authored articles, slaved over speeches, produced program books, meted out meeting scripts, and crafted Christmas letters.

In addition to being an artist and an interim association executive for hire, I am plotting the next chapter of my journey as an author from my home studio in New England. My daily delight is spending time with my six grandchildren, three of whom are right under the roof, and the oldest of whom, also an author, lives back in Minnesconsin.