On being an adult orphan.

Hello, blog. A great number of you have reached out to see if I'm okay. Thank you for that. If you're just catching up to the ol' Red Accordion Diaries, here's what you've missed: I'm an adult orphan! In the past year, I turned forty and then promptly nursed both my parents to their cancerous deaths. Dramatic, eh? But this blog...

Writing is my sanity. I can't not do it. When I am not writing regularly, I am difficult to live with. I am irritable. I am impatient. I make poor choices. 


My beautiful parents.
I'm known for oversharing, but you'd be surprised how much I've edited myself over the past many years. One time, while living in Scotland, I unintentionally upset a relative with a passing adverb, and since then I've overthought and deleted and rewritten and edited just about every word on this blog. I've even got hundreds of blogs in draft, unpublished because I worried that someone out there would be upset. I wondered how in the world stand-up comedians can get on stage and talk about their families without causing people to be written out of wills or at least not invited to Thanksgiving.

I sort of don't care anymore.

Adult orphan: it is, in a really bizarre way, the act of officially becoming a grownup. I am the eldest generation. I am the matriarch. I am well-read, well-educated, well-traveled and should be confident in my decisions -- because there is no one to run options by anymore. And guess what? That's okay. 



In all this grief -- and I know I'll be up and down and such -- I've discovered that my parents raised me really well. In their ends, nothing was left unsaid, unthanked, unacknowledged. My parents often said that I was "born thirty" and that "she raised herself." Jokes about control freaks and independence were rampant, but both adjectives have served me well. My parents raised me to be able to take care of myself. I'm confident now that I can do that, and I don't need to ask the advice of a ghost. Thanks for that, parents. You all were amazing.

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UPCOMING public shows:
July 19 at Prohibition Distillery in Louisville, Kentucky.
August 1 at Belladrum Festival in Inverness-shire Scotland, United Kingdom
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3 comments

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    1. Me too!! I need to print it out. I'd forgotten it existed.

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  2. You are a wise young woman to know what a great job of parenting Kenny &Patsy achieved. We think of you so often and are confident that you are ready to take on the role of matriarch. That being said..I am so sorry that they did not get to be with you and your wonderful husband and sons for many more years to come.

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