Honoring Our Journeys

By Nancy Fardin and Jane Austen

A reluctant debutante and a suburban misfit, rebels against society’s expectations in the 1960s, tell life stories of contrasting journeys yet the same dedication to personal visions of a meaningful life. After becoming instant friends in college, their paths soon diverged. Reconnecting over the internet years later, they tell each other about their lives—from half a world apart and spanning half a century. See the surprising beauty of Australia’s Central Desert, catch rewarding glimpses of life in the Aboriginal communities, watch a house rise from limestone rocks and land once damaged return to bush. Follow a heart longing for partnership and a dream straining for reality struggle through unexpected challenges. Be inspired to write stories about your life, whether you fulfilled your dreams or survived because of them, for the benefit of future generations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 24, 2024
• ISBN: 9798369419656

Nancy Fardin

Nancy Fardin Undauntable Nancy Fardin is a mother of three and grandmother of five whose admirable career includes teaching in American and Australian schools and in Australian Aboriginal communities and persistent involvement in environmental advocacy and action groups. Her home base near Lake Clifton, Western Australia, makes manifest her central focus of living as an amazed, appreciative, and integral part of our living planet. Jane Austen Unsinkable Jane Austen is a grateful and proud mother and grandmother, as well as a lifelong student. A graduate of three universities, her thirty-year-old dream of writing a curriculum that fulfills the objectives of school counseling and environmental education simultaneously continues to beckon her onward. Her continuing education is currently focused on horses and horsemanship.

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Copyright © 2024 by Nancy Fardin and Jane Austen.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 05/22/2024

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Book Outline

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1

NancyStorm at Grammy’s

JaneMy Waiola World

Chapter 2

NancyMom and Dad

JaneMemory of Mom

Chapter 3

NancyLincoln Home, Ranch and Camp Experiences

JaneA House Can Be a Home

Chapter 4

NancyDancing Class, High School Capers, Culture of Lincoln

JaneMeanwhile Back at the Ranch, Midnight Joyriding

Chapter 5

NancyTrip to France

JaneHigh School

Chapter 6

NancyDude Ranch, MacMurray, Capital Pants

JaneMacMurray

Chapter 7

NancyHitchhiking through Europe

JaneNursing School, Wedding

Chapter 8

Nancy1965: Seattle Pacific College, Death of Father, Trip to Ethiopia

Jane1964–1965: Life in Jacksonville

Chapter 9

Nancy1966–1967: Finishing MacMurray, Trip to France

Jane1965: Life in New Haven, Arrival

Chapter 10

NancySeptember 1967–June 1969: New Bedford, July 1969–June 1970: Grad School, NYC, September 1970–June 1972: Seattle

Jane1966–1971: Life in New Haven, Jennifer

Chapter 11

Nancy1973–1974: Melbourne, Galliano, Monnington School for the Deaf

Jane1972–1974: Life in Iowa City

Chapter 12

Nancy1975–1976: Perth

Jane1974–75: Germany

Chapter 13

Nancy1977–1980: Marriage, Pemberton Farm, Ernie, Cyclone

Jane1974–1980: From Germany to Geoffrey

Chapter 14

Nancy1980–1983: Clydesdales, Fire, Giovi, Cappuccina

Jane1980–1983: Early Life with Carl, Toys/Games with Geoffrey, Trips to Audubon

Chapter 15

Nancy1983–1986: Death of Galliano’s Father, Lincoln, Reading Clinic in Mandurah

Jane1980–1983: Early Life with Carl, Door County and Chicago Vacations

Chapter 16

Nancy1988: Gianni, Cottage South of Mandurah, Building Lake Clifton

Jane1984–1988: The Blue House

Chapter 17

Nancy1987: Warrimbah Saga

Jane1989: Milwaukee Saga

Chapter 18

Nancy1990: Planting Lake Clifton, Packing up Mom’s house in Lincoln

Jane1990–1993: Life with Carl, Continued

Chapter 19

Nancy1990: First Time in Tjukurla

Jane1990: UWM CCC, MS Educational Psychology/School Counseling

Chapter 20

Nancy1990: Warburton

Jane1992–1994: Still Trying

Chapter 21

Nancy1991–1993: Return to Tjukurla, Wanarn, Wellstead Property

Jane1994–1996: Finishing UWM degree, Institute of World Affairs

Chapter 22

Nancy1994–1996: Punmu, Wellstead School

Jane1996–1998: MSEd Outdoor Education, SON, Trip Out West

Chapter 23

Nancy1996–1998: Pickering Brook, Parnngurr

Jane1998–2000: MSED The Rest of the Story

Nancy2000–2007: Painting Workshops

Chapter 24 How We Found Each Other

NancyJanuary 2007

JaneJanuary 2007

Interlude

Epilogues

Nancy

Jane

Octet 1

NancyThe Mulloway Adventure

JaneSailing Lives in Me

Octet 2

NancyThe Solomon Islands Adventure and Our Nugu

JaneStarward

Octet 3

NancyOur Wellstead Retreat

JaneThe Question

Octet 4

NancyRottnest Island Joy

JaneUnsinkable

Octet 5

NancyA Renewed Passion

JaneBetter Late Than Never

Octet 6

NancyA Return to My Roots

JaneThe Dark Time

Octet 7

NancyAn Old Passion

JaneMy Fall Semester 2020

Octet 8

NancyAdvocating for the Environment

JaneChez Arky

Biographies

Nancy

Jane

Maps

NancyLake Clifton

Communities in the Desert

JaneCities and Addresses

Nancy

I have so often wondered about the lives of my forebears. They must have had such interesting lives, yet I know so little. It is with the wish to pass along my story that I dedicate this memoir to my progeny.

Jane

Writing this memoir was inspired by my parents, grandparents, and all my ancestors. I wish I could have talked with you about your lives and given you empathy and encouragement during difficult times, esteem and praise for your accomplishments. To my progeny, please know that I offer you the same loving interest, unconditional support, admiration, and applause.

Preface

A Note from Nancy

In my part of the memoir, I don’t mention my husband very much, at his request, though he is and has always been a central focus of my life since the time we first met on Batman Street in Melbourne, Victoria, in 1973.

A Note from Jane

In setting down the events of my life, my intention is to capture the moments as they were lived, including a range of feelings that I experienced, from confusion to inspiration, from pain to joy. My aim is not to judge or lay blame but to forgive and to heal.

Introduction

The making of our book began with an email Jane sent in hopes of reconnecting with her friend, Nancy. We had met and quickly formed a close bond at college in 1962, and though going our separate ways the next year, we kept in touch for a while. Eventually, we lost track of each other, as will happen in busy lives, and hence, Nancy’s surprise at finding a message from Jane in her inbox in 2007! We were both delighted and excited to fill each other in on the previous thirty-some years, as well as share stories of our youth.

Email exchanges continued with stories tumbling out randomly as memories came flooding in. To create this book, we have placed the stories in chronological order to reveal the unfolding of our lives, beginning with our childhoods in the 1940s and continuing right up to the early years of the twenty-first century. Except for the initial emails by which we found each other that are included at the end of the book, we have omitted the email format but kept the back-and-forth movement of correspondence by letter.

We’ve been fascinated by the colorful contrast between us, both in our beginnings and our life trajectories while appreciating in each other the same courage and determination to invite new adventures and meet new challenges, to accomplish, to dream, and to recognize our steadfast desires to contribute something of value to this beautiful, complex world.

Telling stories has long been the traditional way of relaying meaning, of connecting us to our human family’s past and our planet’s future. Our stories offer fantastic roller-coaster rides, and we invite you to hop on and ride with us from the beginning. Our hope is that, when you get off, you’ll be inspired to write the stories of your own journeys through life for the benefit of future generations.

Chapter 1

NANCY

Grammy’s cottage at Black Point Beach Club near Niantic, Connecticut, was a wonderful place for kids. I spent many summers there with my family in that white cape-style cottage with the white picket fence. It had a perfectly manicured patch of lawn that rolled right up to the seawall with a flagpole erected in the middle. The seawall held up the front lawn, protected the cottage from stormy seas, and was the backdrop for a narrow pebbly beach. On Grammy’s section of beach, a jetty stretched out into the ocean and was a wonderful haven for crabs, clams, mussels, and all manner of mysteries of the sea. We spent lazy days fishing off the jetty or building elaborate sand castles, which we decorated with the shiny beach pebbles and shells that we discovered on treasure hunts along the coast.

One of the wonderful things about the seawall was that it was a perfect place from which to launch fireworks. If we were at Grammy’s around the Fourth of July, we would go to nearby Niantic. There we found endless little ramshackle kiosks selling every kind of firework imaginable, which, of course, was legal at that time. I loved buying the little caterpillar pellets. If you lit one of them, it would fizz out an endless carbon caterpillar and lots of smoke. That particular smell always evokes the Fourth of July for me. Dad and Auntie B hunted for the latest rocket that would spray out long tails of sparkling light over the ocean. My sister liked the sparklers.

When we spent the morning on the other side of the seawall, we wore crocheted bathing suits that hung, when not in use, on pegs in our upstairs bedroom. The walls upstairs were simple, unpainted timber panels dividing up the space into four bedrooms and a bathroom. On our side of the stairs was a twin room where my sister and I stayed. Right on the other side of the wall from my bed was my grandmother’s bed. At night, she snored so loudly that the wood panels between us vibrated.

On the other side of the stairs was the very large master bedroom where my mom and dad slept that August with Paul, my new seven-month-old brother. Their room looked out over the ocean, and on hot evenings, we would lie on one of the spare beds and watch the sheet lightning illuminate the black expanse of sea. Mom would read to us wonderful stories filled with magic like Mary Poppins and Mr. Wicker’s Window or Ali Baba. Behind their room and adjacent to the bathroom was the fourth guest room where my cousin, Robert, often stayed. Grammy liked to have all the windows opened, so the salty sea breeze was racing around everywhere, making the curtains dance and filling up my young spirit with an exhilarating sense of freedom. Thinking back, I often wonder how Grammy allowed such a primal pleasure as she was the perfect, self-disciplined puritan claiming Cotton Mather as one of her forbears.

At the foot of the stairs was a formal entry hall with the dining room on one side and the sitting room on the other. In the latter was an ornate Victorian portable shelving unit, which Grammy kept stocked with books of paper dolls, colouring books, endless packs of cards, and a huge selection of multi-coloured crayons. On the very top of this unit was perched a kilted Irishman playing the bagpipe made out of a red lobster shell. The day was divided into organised bits. If we were at home, the mornings would be spent outside, usually on the other side of the seawall. The afternoons were slow, quiet times for playing solitaire, colouring, or doing puzzles. Grammy had taught us endless games of solitaire and had a card table set up with a puzzle tempting us to finish it.

Through the sitting room was a large screened-in porch fitted with comfortable wicker chairs where you could look out at the flag snapping in the breeze above the neat green lawn or the steely ocean beyond. My sister and I would lie on our bellies, fighting over our paper dolls or reading or waiting to hear the music of the Good Humor man. He peddled around the streets in the afternoons, attracting kids like a pied piper to his lovely selection of delicious fresh fruit Popsicles in an ice chest on the back of his bicycle.

On the road-side of the house was a riotous garden full of colourful marsh mallows. It was our job to pick off the jewel-like Japanese beetles, which fed on the delicate petals. This garden ran along one side of the two-car garage. We always entered the house through the garage, which had a tiny bedroom in the corner where Helma lived. Helma was Grammy’s full-time cook and housekeeper. My favourite thing in Helma’s quarters was a great cast iron frog. It had a little handle on its ample mouth. You could pull this down, causing Mr. Frog to open his great jaws and, instead of croaking, he sounded a loud gong.

Through the garage and past Helma’s room was the kitchen from which endless yummy food appeared. There was always the smell of baking—pies and buns—and on Saturdays, the smell of beans baking and bubbling in a huge brown crock and brown bread steaming. There were custard and fresh peaches and lobster or New England clam chowder and tempting molasses cookies and fresh corn on the cob.

One weekend, my father came down to visit us in the summer of 1954. Perhaps he was going to take us home. But on this day, Helma had made a particularly special meal with lobsters. It was an incredibly hot day, and the clouds were boiling in the sky. The winds picked up midmorning, and just before lunch, the power went out. Fortunately, lunch had already been prepared. Just. While we were sitting at table, doing the usual formal ritual, we received a phone call saying that Hurricane Carol was heading straight for the Connecticut coast. By this time, waves were beating right on the seawall, sending spray up and over the perfect lawn. We went out to lower the flag, but it was all we could do to walk against the wind. As the winds continued to pick up, we were all doing our frantic things. Dad was listening to the radio in the car. Mom had probably collapsed somewhere. I was madly packing a suitcase with essentials—books, paper dolls, and a change of clothes. I was pretty scared, so keeping busy kept me from totally panicking.

No one looked in on my brother. He was like a little guru in the middle of his playpen in the sitting room, oblivious to the rising tensions and the howling sounds encircling the house. We had a brief respite as the eye of the storm passed over us. We all spilled out of the house to see the sky whirling around. But the winds picked up again. Eventually, a policeman stopped by the house and told us to evacuate. Someone finally went to retrieve Paul. By this time, he was sitting in a puddle of water. The waves, or their horse tails, were now beating against the side of the house, and water was pouring in through the upstairs window in my parent’s room and going down through the floor to drip right in the centre of the playpen. Paul was happily playing in the water.

It was hard getting to the car because the wind was so strong. We fought our way but had to get in the lea side of the car. We couldn’t open the doors on the ocean side. I can’t remember who went with us. I suppose we all piled in that car, all seven of us. We were instructed to go to the Black Point country store, which sat right at the top of a hill, north of the house. There were trees across the road and litter everywhere. Leaves matted the windscreen so that it was hard to see out even though the wipers were working overtime. It was a mighty adventure, and I thought how brave my dad was, driving through the maze of blowing leaves and branches. But even though I trusted him, I thought we would probably be blown to smithereens so that we would never be able to relate the experience to our friends back home.

It was kind of an anticlimax when we reached the shop. We were still tense, but without the drama of the sea, things seemed to drag. There were a few other evacuees up there, and we kept getting updates from the police. In time, we were allowed to return to Grammy’s. The power came on. The house was mopped and tidied. The front lawn was raked and was a perfect green again. The flag went back up. The waves kept lapping at the seawall, so we couldn’t look for treasures. But at least it was a reminder of the huge event that had blown through my life. I was awestruck by the amazing forces of nature that alerted me, for the first time, to the fact that nothing is really permanent.

JANE

Very early on summer mornings, while the sand was still wet, my older brother and I would sneak out of the house and run across the street to the sandbox at Waiola Park. He would choose the best corner for constructing the best-yet marble slide. The sand must be wet enough to pile up and pack firmly from the top of the concrete walls to the bottom of the trench dug way down to the mud below. Careful fingers dug a marble-sized trough down the mountain. The engineering challenge was to include as many curves and tunnels as possible while keeping the slope steep enough that the marble would not stop on its way down. I thought my brother was the champion, but he claims he learned it all from his friend whom he considered the master marble slide engineer.

In the evenings, my brother and I might go to the park and throw our shoes up in the air hoping to entice the bats into swooping low overhead. And he would often meet his friends there to play 500 or capture the flag and I loved it when I could play with them.

Right next door lived a family with a son the same age as my brother, six years older than me, and a daughter just one year older than me. She was named Jane too, and we became forever friends. I was one year old, and she was two when my family moved there in 1945, and we both grew up right there through high school. When Jane’s grandmother from Iowa was visiting, I’d go over to her house in the mornings for the most delicious toast in the world made from the bread her grandmother had baked. Jane’s mom would smash the toast as she slathered it with butter, very different from my mom, who carefully spread margarine all the way to the edges with a light touch.

Most mornings, Jane and I would head to the park. We’d make the rounds on the swings, slide, monkey bars, and merry-go-round. The original swings were flat wooden boards hung from chains with links five or six inches long. We’d swing so high, the chains would become slack, and then there’d be a jerk on the way down as they became taut again. If feeling brave, we’d leap off the swing at its highest point, fly through the air, and tumble as we landed.

The metal slide must have been fifteen feet high. We’d run up the ladder, leap into a sitting position at the top, zoom down the slide, then run around to the ladder and do it again and again. To speed it up, we’d sit on sheets of wax paper and zoom so fast, it made landing on our feet impossible. There were fireman poles on each side that one could wrap arms and legs around and slide down too. I found an even faster way down once when I fell off the top of the slide right on my face, getting a very memorable mouthful of dirt.

Buster Brown, Buster Brown, what’ll you give me if I let you down? was the taunt that Jane recited as she leaned back on the ground end of the teeter-totter while I swung my legs and bounced, trying to get my end back down. The earth under the playground equipment was simply dirt, not wood chips, sand, or gravel. Yes, it was muddy after a rain, but when dry, it was of a fine texture, almost powdery in places, which made it so soft.

Waiola Park was one rectangular city block in size with tall hedges around three sides just inside the public sidewalk. The fourth side, on the south end, was where all the playground equipment and game shed were located. Two baseball fields and a basketball court occupied the middle along with a little patch of trees (good for snagging kites). At the north end was a grassy field. An asphalt path wound all around the perimeter inside the hedges, perfect for riding bikes. Between the grassy field and the asphalt path there was a wall made of flat flagstone rocks, perhaps three feet high. In the middle of the wall were three shallow steps, each a large rectangular-shaped flagstone rock. This is where I would sit on very particular occasions with Jane and listen to her telling me a story she made up on the spot. At the most exciting part of the story, she would yank out my loose tooth!

The City of LaGrange flooded the grassy field in winter for ice skating. I wonder now if that is why the wall was there because that end of the field was indeed lower than the rest, and the wall would help contain the water when flooded. We’d have to shovel the snow to the sides, and there were often lots of sticks in the ice, but we loved it anyway. Jane and I would skate there often and loved practicing our twirling, which was facing each other, holding our arms out straight and crossing them, then grabbing each other’s hands and spinning around as fast as we could until one of us fell down! I also liked to play hockey with one of the neighborhood boys.

Summers were especially wonderful. I suppose the town of LaGrange must have run summer programs for children in all the city parks. All I knew was that Mr. Castle would come on Tuesdays in his Woody station wagon and park right across the street from our houses. He brought craft supplies! These included colorful plastic strings for making lanyards; pieces of leather and leather lacing for making wallets and coin purses; wooden bases, reeds and buckets for soaking, for weaving baskets; and plaster molds, plaster, and paints for making little figurines. How I loved making all those things!

The park lady (we called her) would be at the playground every weekday to help us check out toys and games from the little shed. There were checkers, puzzles, a Ping-Pong table, paddles, and balls, paddles for tether-paddle ball, baseballs, and kickball. Once or twice a week, an archery teacher would come, and we’d drag the targets and their stands and carry bows and arrows to the north end of the park for lessons. That was really exciting, but those bows, though simple, were pretty hard to pull back and let go without scraping the inside of your arm.

Jane and I would run home for lunch when the park lady left for hers, and in the afternoon, we might check out more toys or ride our bikes or roller skate on the path, stopping for water at the pebbled cement drinking fountain, and then make another round. We might swing on the swings, twirl on the merry-go-round, and jump onto the teeter-totters. Near the playground was a white-barked tree with low-hanging branches we called our Polar Bear Tree. We loved to climb it, stand tall, and look out on our world.

Waiola Park was my safe place, my wonder land, home to imagination, where I felt protected by the grass, the hedges and the trees and lived the happiest days of my childhood.

010_b_lbj23.jpg

Jane and Jane, author in wagon, 1945

010_a_lbj23.jpg

Jane and Jane, author on left, 1948

Chapter 2

NANCY

Dad, a mechanical engineer, went to MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). He started working at MIT as soon as he graduated and eventually became head of the gas turbine laboratory. He lived in an apartment building in Cambridge. Mom graduated from Mount Holyoke. She had attended high school at Drew Seminary in Connecticut where she was a top student. The dean of the seminary left to become dean of students at MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Illinois, at the end of Mom’s senior year. Mom decided to follow her and spent her freshman year there at MacMurray. She was interested in biology, but MacMurray didn’t have a strong department at that time, so she transferred to Mount Holyoke. Perhaps her parents wanted her closer to home as well. Anyway, when she graduated, she began doing research for the well-known Dr. Cannon at Harvard University. She lived in the same apartment block as Dad. So the plot thickens.

Dad became intrigued by a wicker basket of clean, pressed laundry that appeared weekly in the letterbox alcove, so he waited to see who it belonged to. Once he discovered it belonged to Mom, he decided to ask her to an MIT fancy dress dance. I think they both wore sailor outfits, and thus began the romance.

Mom and Dad gave us an interesting life. They encouraged us, and I loved both of my parents, but I could never feel unconditional love from my mother. She didn’t like being a housewife but felt duty bound by her New England background to be one, and she did the very best she could, carting us here and there like a New York taxi driver to friends’ houses, to dancing classes, to the cape for the weekend, and for the holidays; arranging music lessons; and on and on. But she was a brilliant woman and being a mom just didn’t do it for her.

At the same time, there was something very special about Mom, and the longer I live, the more I learn. She was a silent helper to many people we knew. She took in one of my best friends for a period while she recovered from encephalitis. I only learned this recently. I was in Australia at the time and just didn’t hear about that. Our family sponsored a Nigerian woman and her partner to study in the United States. The pair became part of the family, and unbeknownst to me, Mom paid for the woman’s computer programming studies when the chips were down for her. She became a very proficient programmer, which helped to support her large family over the years. Mom also paid for the installation of earphones at our Lincoln church so that elderly parishioners could amplify sermons on Sundays. But she never made these things evident. In fact, I never heard about most of these things until after her death.

And there was never any visible magnetism between Mom and Dad, no man-woman sensuality. Mom rarely liked the gifts Dad bought for her, and he couldn’t dance. He fell asleep at symphonies and she didn’t like to fish. Dad was warm and always supportive and interested in what we were up to. He wrestled with us on the floor and loved having us sit on his lap. I always felt his unconditional love. Mom was never affectionate. I remember Dad coming home from work and throwing an arm around Mom’s shoulders and she would say, Phew, go take a shower, not in an amusing tone. Mom came from a wealthy New England family with all the puritanical baggage. Dad came from the wilds of New Mexico. On the positive side of the ledger, they both liked tossing ideas around and since those ideas came from two different worlds, doing so must have spiced things up considerably for both of them. Extended family visited over the years, but basically, we were a nuclear family trying to surf the peaks and troughs on our own, just like the majority of us in the west.

But I grew up at a time when dreams were possible in Lincoln, where we were exposed to such a wonderful range of ideas and experiences. It was a time when we were encouraged to see our privilege against a backdrop of all those less fortunate. So I turned my back on being a proper lady. I didn’t learn social etiquette the way Mom tried to teach us. Underneath it all, maybe she didn’t believe in it either.

For a while, I thought the way to go was to make sure everyone on the planet had all the things that I had. At this stage too, I had a deep longing for a satisfied, wise, old mom who could love me, warts and all, a rock that was not rocketed into migraine and fits of temper by what seemed to her a god with a strange sense of humour. She would fume at 5:00 p.m. about the joke played by a god looking in on all the women in Lincoln preparing dinner for their families and laughing its heart out. Where, I wondered, was the big mom who enjoyed preparing delicious meals for the people she loved? I can still hear Mom muttering to herself, banging all the doors on the kitchen cabinets while Dad took a nap on the den couch after arriving home from work. Then we all sat around the table while Dad told interesting stories of the day, Mom related something of interest that she had heard or read that day, and we all tried to help solve crossword puzzle clues that had stumped Mom. Also, the three of us siblings were encouraged to tell our stories of the day. I loved these intimate times at the dinner table.

JANE

When I begin to write about my mother, the first thing that pops into my head is she loved to laugh. My second thought is how surprising the first thought had been. As I continue to reminisce, I find myself on a circuitous, emotional journey through her life and mine.

For many years as an adult, I had a rather poor view of my mom, thinking she worried too much. As a child, I had felt her criticism. Her teasing nickname for me, Feeble Francis, contributed to my feeling unacknowledged and unworthy. Because I insisted on asking so many questions, I think my mom assumed I didn’t understand the answers. I know now it was because I wasn’t satisfied with them, and I wanted to know more. But even more strongly, I felt her fear, worry, and sadness, which seemed to pervade everything. I desperately wanted her to understand me so that I would not hurt her. She said she felt like she failed with me. I didn’t want to feel like a failure, but I also didn’t want her to think it was her fault. She seemed so sad already. I so wanted her to be happy. And I wanted to be happy too.

I shudder now at my judgmental attitude. When I look