Growing up is hard to do, that's what my mother told me. I had lots of hangups, school grades, friends, authority. I almost got out of college unattached and unsexed. My senior graduating semester started off good, by the middle of the semester I was tied down to a guy who had gotten to me at a party. He wanted a servant wife and he found that in me.

I went home after graduation. I did not keep my mouth shut, for the first time in my life I had a guy, I told my mother that we had sex. When he called and told me he had found an apartment and he he told me I needed to get there and set up house, look for a job and be with him I had two choices, obey or disobey. No matter how I thought about it I just could not disobey, my mother told me to call my man and tell him that marriage was the way to get a woman to live with him. I went, I didn't call.

I didn't complain about the apartment, I made it work. But I told him that an apartment wasn't a place for children. A year later I was pregnant in a rent house with a yard. Twenty three and I was now an all around woman, about to be a mother, nested in my house. Whether it was me or him I had set the pattern and found my calling and it was not a job.

I got married, but that was to please my parents.