Backstory

It takes a lot for me to say this, having had a dormant website for more than a decade. Much of my writing has been published through my journalism. And, like many writers and creatives, I have crates of and bags bursting with journals and notebooks in my basement and closets. It’s what I do to get through a day, sometimes.

Really, I have stories to thank. Aren’t they the heart and soul of us all? 

I am an analog girl at heart–all pulp and graphite and ink. Tactile to the core. At age 4, I impulsively reached out my little hand to pet the fur coat of the woman standing in front of me at a Carrols. (If you have to look up Carrols, you could be my son or daughter or just way young.) I wasn’t scolded for this, but somehow I recall a mix of thrill and shame–after all, I was consumed by a compulsive yearning to touch a stranger’s coat. 

Thinking now, it may be why I took to baking at a young age and then cooking, venturing into the culinary field after college before writing–and teaching. 

What I mean by “culinary field” is that I waited tables at a fancy French restaurant after college because I was loath to sit behind a desk in a publishing firm in Manhattan–a common career route for an English major.

Instead, I helped a friend open a restaurant in Manhattan, fulfilling my tactile yearnings daily: making bread (pan!), chopping and prepping my way to the mis en place, then plating and even changing out of my chef’s coat to a tuxedo shirt and black slacks to serve customers in the dining room. 

Word got out that the chef was pretty good and the restaurant, located at 29th Street and Lexington, charming. I recall a woman seated at a table wearing a large-brim hat, a shadow masking her face. It turned out to be the food critic for New York Magazine at the time, Gael Greene. Her review catapulted the restaurant into one of the top in New York City. 

It was not long after that I had a meltdown in the restaurant’s basement bathroom before service: What was I doing with my life? 

I journaled my way into an understanding that if I was going to “be a writer”, I best get writing. Something, anything. 

Backstory is a blog that attempts to pull the varied threads of my life and work together on an irregular basis.