My Early Life

I was raised in the town of Hastings on the Sussex coast of England, the location of the famous Battle of Hastings in the year 1066.

My school was in the town of Battle itself, further inland, where the Norman invaders had killed our King Harold.

Living in this well-known region gave residents a kind of pride-ofplace, and we were all able to recite the history if one of the tourists should happen to ask. (Indeed, several more eccentric residents were eager to do so even when not asked.)

Within a few weeks of adopting me, my parents realized they had a baby with a spirit of adventure. This was exemplified when, at the tender age of thirteen months, I set off from home alone to explore the world.

After thirty minutes of panicked searching, my parents found me in a neighbor's yard on the far side of the busy High Street. Somehow, even though a baby, I had managed to crawl down the full length of our winding driveway and navigate my way across the public road without being flattened by a passing car!

* * *

Both my parents came from the city of Canterbury in county Kent. My father worked in banking and my mother was a stay-at-home Mum.

My one sibling, a sister two years younger than me, still lives a few minutes from my parents' home, whereas I have continued to follow my instinct to explore farther afield. This is not for lack of love for my parents; I could not have wished for better. They were loving, supportive, and attentive.

In many ways, my early childhood was the British equivalent of a Walt Disney movie. We lived in a country house surrounded by handsome oaks, lush green meadows, and bellowing Jersey cows. On spring mornings, I would awaken to the heavy perfume of lilac blossoms wafting through my bedroom window. Add some busy little bluebirds twittering on my windowsill and a family of adorable squirrels racing up and down the trees in our garden, and the Disneyesque image of my childhood is complete.

My Mother

My mother was formed by the British upper middle class of the 1950s, so the majority of my childhood memories find her in the kitchen. She's wearing a full-length apron, sifting white flour into a bowl. She pours in some milk and cuts in chunks of chilled yellow butter from the fridge. Then, with a light touch, she flattens the dough into a piecrust using her wooden rolling pin. I hear the kettle whistle and see her wipe her hands with a dishtowel before she pours the steaming water onto the loose Earl Grey tea leaves that she's scooped into one of her fine bone china teapots. The lovely perfume of bergamot is released into the air and fills me with a sense of happy expectation.

She smiles at me.

I'm sitting at the table, waiting for my cake.

* * *

Mum was five feet five, with nicely cut brown hair that fell to the middle of her neck in a classic '50s style. Although she wore casual slacks at home and in the garden, she would always put on a skirt, jacket and silk blouse with a cameo brooch to go out, even just to do the shopping in the village. There were stricter dress codes in those days and well-brought-up women of the middle class were careful about how they presented themselves.

In addition, I suspect she aspired to climb socially, although not in an obnoxious way. Her father, who was not born into privilege, had pulled himself up through the ranks of the British army by hard work. I think that drive was something my mother inherited, as well as absorbing the idea so common in England that one should always try to better one's social standing.

But far more important than looking and dressing well, she was loving and attentive. For example, she always walked me to my primary school and was waiting for me outside when school was over. She never missed a day.

On the walk home, she would ask me to check in one of the public post boxes. I'd reach my hand in and she would say, "Can you feel a ledge?" Stretching my arm as far as I could and wriggling my fingers around, I would find the ledge, and on it, a piece of chocolate she had hidden.

Mum made up this ritual purely to enchant me. It sent a wonderful message: Delightful things are found in unexpected places! To find a piece of chocolate in a chocolate tin is predictable, but to find it in a public letterbox, that's pure magic!

Once back at the house, Mum would often sit me down in the kitchen for a piece of homemade cake. She was a terrific baker and I loved every ingredient of her desserts: clotted cream, raspberry jam, strawberries, buttery icing, dark chocolate, and of course, sugar galore! (Those were the days when we could eat sweets with delight, free of the burdensome awareness that we were consuming a substance now proven to have health dangers.)

Mum was not only a wonderful baker, she was also industrious. During my teen years, she rented out a room in our house as a bed and breakfast. When my sister and I got old enough that she didn't have to watch us so closely, she opened a little antique shop (antiques were her passion) while simultaneously taking a job teaching English to foreign students.

In spite of these forays into the workforce, however, she was not a career woman. My father was the breadwinner and my mother concentrated on maintaining a stable...