Taking the Long View (first bio chapter)

Considering using this as the title of my memoir. It’s a way of focusing down on all the various events in my life, why I took the decisions I did, what became of them in the end, and what events just ‘happened’, but had a major impact on my life.

I’m up in the sky, looking down at my life here on earth. A female first-born child born to an early 20th century Irish/Ulster-Scots couple whose families had both been immersed in a minority cult called ‘The Brethren’, which impacted greatly on their lives, in some ways positively, though in my opinion also negatively. I was loved, as was my brother, but little did they realise, that their views did not automatically trickle down through our genes, that we both considered the status quo, then moved away from it, though each in different ways.

70 years later and looking back, I see wonder, curiosity, disappointment, joy, and yes, worship of our creator God. And yet to my parents I had stepped out of line, not automatically following the path they had absorbed, seemingly without question, from their own parents.

Wonder: nature, ballet, foreign countries, art

Curiosity: Foreigners, sex, the human body, philosophy, books, genealogy

Disappointment: relationships, illness, death, my children

Joy: Love, sex, literature, music, my children, relationships, grandchildren

Worship: Praise through music, nature

Perhaps these could be titles for the chapters in my memoir?