My Ramble Through Life: A Free Range Childhood
- ISBN-10
- ISBN-13
- 9798399393728
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2023-07-13
- Publisher
- Independently Published
- Author
- Marjorie Harshaw Robie
Description
This memoir, the first of three planned volumes, takes the reader back more than 85 years into the life of a child and young adult experiencing the America of the Great Depression, World War II, and the years immediately after, a world very different than today's world of television, computers, the internet, social media, and helicopter parents. The author of two histories on 19th century Ireland, Dwelling Place of Dragons and Dueling Dragons, Marjorie Harshaw Robie in this book now recounts her unique adventures, the first steps on the improbable path which late in life led her to an intensive study of Irish history and the writing of her previous books. Marjorie's story begins in Maryland, just outside the District of Columbia, when segregation laws were strictly enforced. Her father was a research scientist, her mother a dissatisfied housewife (feminism was unheard of); an older sister completed the household. Family dynamics meant her childhood featured much freedom to explore the world around her, hence the subtitle, A Free Range Childhood, but also created a continuing challenge to understand the significance of her adventures and the people in them (including a suicide, a mistaken identity, and a future serial murderer). Amidst these confusions, and lacking much evidence of love, Marjorie struggled to pick her way through life without a plan or direction, rather like the "donkey's rambles" which were a popular pastime of her early years. When she became what would later be called a "teenager", her father's decision to take a job in Massachusetts unsettled the family, and changed Marjorie's world from familiar Maryland to the different world of Massachusetts where she was an outsider, behind in school, and where Jim Crow laws didn't exist. But soon, she came to savor the different options that now lay ahead, which included finding new interests, ambitions, and the enduring love of her life. The first volume ends with her romantic honeymoon in Naples Italy, and a dramatic and life changing day alone in Europe. Readers from 12 to 92 will find the story of Marjorie's first 24 years a riveting read.
