Things That Have Kept Me Sane

What I like to do: Listen to music, read, drive my car with the moon roof open, enjoying the breeze ( I live in Florida). I used to enjoy gardening when I lived in New Jersey,. I planted begonias, marigolds, geraniums, zinnias, coleus, I planted a flower bed, hanging baskets and pots around my front door. When I was 10 or so, I used to like to sketch. My parents could not afford the lessons that an artistic neighbor suggested, but I’d like to try it again. I used to go to the library every week during the summer and borrow as many books as they would let me have. My parents were not big readers ,so I don’t know how I inherited the “reading gene”. By the time I was 14, I read Dickens, Hawthorne, Alcott, Hardy, Baldwin and Shakespeare and every super-hero comic I could get my hands on. When I was a teen-ager and subject to bouts of depression, I used to like to take the train downtown and walk from City Hall to the Art Museum in the fall.
I know that I inherited my enjoyment of music from my mother. In the early sixties,rock and roll was relatively new and few adults like it. Of course, that was before the influence of drugs. My mom liked Elvis, Chuck Berry, the Beach Boys, the Four Seasons (of Jersey Boys fame, among others.She also enjoyed the music of her youth, especially by Frank Sinatra and music of the Big Band Era. I take after her in a way, because my son likes to share the music he listens to with me. I wonder how I am influencing my kids. I guess it flows from one generation to the next. These are tools of survival. They've gotten me to where I am today