My tale begins as many stories before it, with a mom yelling at a kid to get a job during the summer in between college terms. Not knowing where to start, I found myself at a temp agency who placed me at a law firm as a receptionist during the time when women were made to wear skirts and stockings. How excited I was when that same mom had to take me to the mall to buy a basket full of Leggs Eggs (If you get this reference, you’re at least as old as I am), and dresses, for my summer job. I enjoyed the work at the real estate law firm, so the following summer when I called the woman I’d worked with at the firm, she gave me another receptionist job at the timeshare title company where she was employed.

Although that job bored me to tears, I figured I’d keep at it until something better came along. When the attorney closed the timeshare arm of the firm, he found me a position at a real estate title agency. My front desk contained a typewriter, loads of carbon paper, a word processor with an attached screen on an extension arm, and a dot matrix printer with a box of paper on the floor that fed into it. Tearing the three-ply colored paper off the printer and pulling off the side strips to divide the copies made me feel powerful and like a full-fledged woman of the nineties. It was 1991 – but still.

I bugged everyone to show me what they did and what I could add to my job, so I didn’t just sit there bored and smile at clients all day. Within two years, I’d worked my way to junior closer. A few years later, my husband and I decided to move away to pursue other opportunities, and I thought that would be my last foray into the legal community.

However, five years later I found myself back in my hometown with three kids, a hundred dollars, and in the midst of a divorce and custody battle. I got work as a housekeeper to put food on the table and each time I met with my divorce attorney, I felt more and more as if the system was completely broken. The overwhelming fear that occurs when a spouse tells you they’re going to take the kids away or leave you destitute on the streets while they get everything, is devastating. Something inside me said there must be a better way. I found classes at the local community college on family law, and civil procedure, and took them at night while working as a housekeeper during the day. Halfway through the classes, I showed up at my divorce attorney’s office and asked for a job as her receptionist. I told her that I was determined to help others not feel as helpless, and hopeless, as I felt.

My boldness paid off and she gave me the job. We made a deal that when I finished my classes, and got my paralegal certificate, she’d make me her paralegal. I thought I’d gotten the chance of a lifetime until a year later when she went from slamming doors, and yelling, to throwing a stapler at my head. I’d gotten away from domestic violence in my home and had grown strong enough to never put up with it again, so I quit, while she screamed that I couldn’t quit if I was fired. I smiled as I packed my box, along with the other paralegal, and we walked out. That was a Wednesday. I went home and called the other paralegals in town asking if they knew of anyone looking for someone. By Friday, I had a job offer from the women who I would work with for over eighteen years. She and I became a team and climbed to the upper echelon of the family law legal community together, as well as becoming lifelong friends.

A few years ago, she decided to stop practicing law and mediate full-time, but I still needed to work. That same week, an attorney I’d known for fifteen years, who was a product of the staple thrower’s firm, although a couple years after my time there (yes, she was still throwing things!), called me asking if I knew of a paralegal needing work. Somewhere in the eighteen years at my firm I’d become the Indeed.com of the legal community. When I told him I was open for a gig, he promised me an 11^th floor view of the bay in the glass downtown building and I took it. 

After tens of thousands of emails, thousands of phone calls, hundreds of hearings, dozens of trials, and twenty-eight years in the legal profession (that I never intended to enter), I’m retiring early to focus on my next career as an author, as well as travel and enjoy retirement with my amazing, retired law enforcement husband.

            Follow me on my next journey as an author. It’s time to expect the unexpected!  

My husband retired from 28 years in law enforcement, and as a celebration, we booked our dream trip to Italy and Switzerland for September 2024. We planned for over ten months, talking about the tour and looking up pictures of the cities we would visit. Milan, St. Moritz, Como, Verona, Bellagio, Bergamo, Riva del Garda, places one dreams about while watching travel programs.

As the time approached for our adventure, so did Hurricane Helene. Living in Southwest Florida is paradise – until it isn’t. We were both raised in our seaside town and lived with the specter of storms since childhood, but nothing compared to the 2024 hurricane season. 

We spoke with our families and decided that our trip to Italy, coincidentally over my birthday, should go ahead. Helene be damned. Our flight out of Tampa was one of the last ones allowed before the airports were closed. We sat on the tarmac for an hour waiting out the lightning hoping to make our connection in Paris the next morning. The relief when we landed in time for the next flight was joyous, until there was a security threat in the wing that held our connection. Hundreds of people were herded in a circuitous route around Charles de Gaulle airport to come at the terminal from another direction, except that route held another customs and security checkpoint. Standing in the long line I saw a plane take off out the window and joked that I’d bet that was our flight. I should’ve put money on it.

At the airline desk we dealt with a lovely woman who spoke about as much English as we did French, and she booked us on the next available flight to Milan, six hours later. When the exhaustion finally got the best of us, we found a cozy corner and my husband spent his first few hours in Europe asleep on the floor of the Paris airport.

Eventually arriving in Milan later that evening we took a cab to our hotel and collapsed in relief that the vacation could finally begin in earnest. The next evening, while Helene battered our hometown, we took a tour through downtown Milan, passing through the park and by the opera house, the art museum, and the Duomo.  The weather was clear as we strolled hand in hand through the romantic city and tried not to constantly check our cell phones for reports from the kids. Finding out that all our family was safe, our homes still stood, and none were flooded, was a relief that brought tears to my eyes. We had damage and trees down but nothing structural. It felt like a birthday miracle. On my birthday, the following day, we took a train ride through the Italian Alps into the Swiss Alps to St. Moritz, a town so beautiful it took our breath away. It was a glorious day marred only by my husband’s nagging cough. We chalked it up to the weather changes from Florida to Italy to the top of the Alps, which was flurried with snow while we took pictures wearing thin coats.

The stoic deputy, who’d spent his life serving and protecting, decided not to tell me about the fever until he woke me at midnight with shakes so hard that he fell out of the bed. Covid had joined the party. In no good conscientious could he join the tour for the next couple of days since he was very ill and several of the tour members were elderly. So, early the next morning, I booked him our room in Milan for the extra days, waved goodbye from the doorway, and took his romantic retirement vacation by myself.

The rest of the group lauded his thoughtful decision and took me under their wing.  With a stiff upper lip, I took lots of photos to share, went on two boat tours, walked beautiful cities, had solo lunches, sipped wine at a local winery, and made friends for life. When we arrived back in Milan he was standing on the sidewalk with open arms – and a face mask.

We were able to spend another day together in Milan enjoying the town, food, and made the very best of a bad situation. On the final evening, while packing up, I started coughing. I coughed my way through the cab ride to the airport, check in, and security, while wearing a mask and trying not to make it obvious that I was ill. It wasn’t until take off that the fever took hold. I shook with fever, only stopping to blow my nose, for the eight-hour flight to New York. As we walked the long hallway to customs, the fever decided enough was enough and finally broke, leaving me sweating, pale, and resembling a drug addict needing a fix. My husband feared he’d be accused of human trafficking. Holding his badge in his hand, just in case, we made it through customs without incident and onto our plane home.

We pulled into the house after midnight, and the next morning he surveyed the hurricane damage while I slept. Lots of debris, and mess, and one tree branch sticking through our porch roof like a stripper pole, but all in all not too bad. When I finally woke up, he sat beside me in bed and after apologizing (again) for getting me sick, he told me to get more rest because in three days’ time Hurricane Milton was coming straight for us.

I woke up the next morning with the story already running through my mind. Grabbing my morning cup of coffee, I sat down and started typing.  It seemed only right to have the story set in my beautiful town of Sarasota, and what better place to set a gripping tale than Spanish Point. Then, about halfway through writing the story it hit me. This story can only be 5,000 words. Really? How does anyone only write 5,000 words to convey a complete story? Sure, I’d written two novels already, but they contained 70,000 words respectively.  Combine that with the fact I work in the legal field, and we can’t write anything with only a few words. Our motto is why use ten words when one hundred words will do.  Trusting my instincts, I kept typing. By the end of that weekend the story was completed – with nine words to spare.  

Since the deadline to submit was October, I held onto my story for another month. On August 17^th I held my breath and hit send. Due to hurricane delays we weren’t going to know the outcome until January. Knowing the outcome would mean the difference between writer and author made the wait feel even longer. Then, on January 28, 2023, while out on a power walk with my best friend my phone pinged. I looked down to see the word “Congratulations” as the title of an email from the Anthology editor. With shaky hands I opened the email and while tears ran down my face, I told my best friend that my lifelong dream of becoming an author had come to pass.