My life is a study in contradictions, from the very first. I was born in Minocqua, Wisconsin, a land of trees and lakes and snow. My parents named me Noel, not knowing that I would go through the rest of my life hearing repeated Christmas carol refrains and the question: “Were you born in December?” I was born in April, when ice clings to the bravest of the spring’s first flowers. I was very lucky to be born into my family. I’m the oldest grandchild on both sides, so I was the one and only center of attention in my early years, and I am blessed to have four loving, wonderful grandparents, who have never stopped encouraging me. My cousins and I spent lots of time playing in my grandparent's lakefront home in Crandon. We played tea party in the playhouse my grandpa made, and paddled to our hearts' content in the paddleboat lovingly named "Uff Da" in honor of my grandma's Norwegian heritage. Some of my earliest memories are of her blue-painted kitchen, brimming with the smell of warm cookies. My parents are both lawyers, so when I was little I used to play in the judge’s rooms in the Oneida County Courthouse, coloring Cinderella’s hair green and Peter Pan’s shoes purple. I didn’t bother trying to stay between the lines. When I wasn’t playing under the judge’s desk, I spent time with my grandparents and my great-grandmother. My great-grandmother would babysit my little sister Erin and me. I took for granted that she was alive and well right up until her death at age 107, in spite of the incredibly difficult life she had led as a farmer in Northern Wisconsin. As a child, I hadn’t realized that the bend in her back was from a lifetime of merciless farming, or that her once blue-white skin had darkened to brown over the last century, colored by wind and sun. I never realized how much it hurt her to play with us, throwing a ball with her crippled hands, or teaching us card games.
My grandfather tells the best stories. My favorites were of Paddy Beaver, who lived on a little river deep in the woods, with mice and robins and owls for friends. My grandfather would tell me tales of Christmas time in the forest, when blue jays decorated a balsam tree with berries and pinecones, and squirrels strung strands of acorns, and a big woodpecker chipped bits from the stars for sparkle, so that Santa Claus wouldn’t forget the little animals deep in the woods. He told me stories of how the crows turned black, and where the mourning dove learned its song. His stories were better than any written in a book, because they were my stories, tales that he had invented just for me.
I grew up shaped by my wonderful family. Though we lived in the frozen North, my parents made sure I was immersed in arts and culture. They encouraged me to dance, to sing, to paint. I fell in love with tap dancing, then ballet, and spent hours each week in the studio. I was immensely proud of what I had accomplished, because dancing is hard. It hurts and often I would come home bleeding, but when I was performing the steps I had worked so hard to learn, I forgave my tired body for all its contrariness. Singing was always easier than dancing for me. Where my adolescent arms and legs often fought me for control in dance, my voice was far easier to wield. I never felt awkward or out of place when I sang. It was a very easy thing for me to do, and gave me the confidence I so desperately needed as an adolescent. I was encouraged at every concert and every recital by two sets of adoring grandparents, my proud parents, and usually at least a few sets of aunts, uncles, and cousins.
Though song and dance shaped my early years, my father, uncles, and grandfathers made sure I was balanced by the traditional “Northwoods” ways. I learned to hunt and fish from the cradle. I can track a deer or filet a trout or boil maple sugar. One of my favorite memories is roasting apples over a fire on a bitingly cold November day while hunting with my paternal grandpa, then coming back to our little cabin for a huge meal of steak and potatoes, cooked by my uncle. I remember a ballet instructor once asking me what I had received for my 13th birthday. I think she was appalled when I replied that my maternal grandfather had given me a Ruger-made .257 Roberts bolt action rifle. For some reason, no one expects me to know how to load a bullet or gut a fish, but where I come from, these are everyday skills, I just have to change out of my leotard and tutu first.
When I was 14, I received the best gift of all: a little white bird I named Maggie. She’s a cockatiel, who loves me more than anything in the world, and hates men with a burning passion. This little 2.5 ounce bird has more personality than a room full of people. She has learned to communicate the way humans do, and has come to think of herself as one. She calls me “Mommy,” and has to take a shower with me every morning, and eat off of her own plate at the kitchen table, like all civilized people.
I have always planned on studying abroad in England. My mother had travelled extensively through Europe before I was born, and had made sure my sister and I were comfortable with world travel, so I knew I wanted to spend as much time as possible exploring and learning on a new continent. I’ve been lucky enough to travel to many different places, from Mexico to Egypt, so I knew living abroad wouldn’t be a very difficult transition for me.
I had such a varied, multi-faceted upbringing, being raised by my Bohemian farmer great-grandmother, my forester grandfather and my incredibly intelligent grandmother, who had been a flight attendant in the glory days of air travel, and my paternal grandparents, who rose up from a factory town in Northern Wisconsin, who gave my father and his siblings an incredible life and love for trying new things, as well as my world-travelling lawyer mother and Shakespeare and football-loving lawyer father. Because of my wonderfully eclectic family, I have all sorts of interests, like gardening, musical theater, classic English literature, and my love of ballet, which has evolved into a second great love of Ballroom, Blues, and Latin dance. My life is wonderfully contradictory. I have a carefully landscaped pond in my back yard, filled with treasured goldfish and imported koi, but a freezer full of the venison from last deer season. I know it’s an impossibly strange life, but so far it’s done rather well for me. I’m very excited to experience London, since its past is nearly as varied and contradictory as my own.
