Journey’s Start

Reflecting back on seventy-five years, I can see how convoluted my path has been. Today, I sell books and music, but it all began with my first meaningful coincidence when I was twenty.

In 1971, I was listening to a friend of an ex-boyfriend talk about a past love who had become a registered nurse and had attended a particular nursing school in San Francisco. At the time, I was a college dropout living at home with my much younger sister. Two of my sisters were away at college, and I had no idea what to do with my life.

On a whim, I applied to that nursing school. I was told I had missed the application deadline, but because I misunderstood some of what they told me, I kept calling back. I was older than most applicants—they were eighteen—and they assumed my persistence meant passion. They decided to admit me to the class beginning that fall.

It turned out to be the perfect home for me. I spent twenty hours a week in the hospital and twenty hours a week in academics. Three years later, I became a registered nurse. I had applied to no other nursing schools. Nursing wasn’t something I had ever planned on.

Looking back, there were hints. I had worked one summer in high school with autistic children, and after dropping out of college, I briefly worked as a nurse’s aide in a convalescent hospital. Still, at twenty, I had no real vision for my future. That one conversation—purely coincidental—changed everything.

It led me to Los Angeles, where I met my partner and husband of forty-six years, John. He opened up a world that is still my life today. We shared passions—his for music, mine for reading and the cello. He was an autodidact, immersed in music, philosophy, politics, and the wisdom of the world.

Together, we opened a business selling music and books, which still exists forty-four years later. There have been many other meaningful coincidences since that first one—some I feel John is still part of, even after his passing. But it was that first coincidence that set me on my path for the last fifty years.