These writings are an anthology of my mother’s life, most of which was spent in the Bay Area--from Dublin to Mill Valley and from Pacifica to Montclair. She was born at Highland Hospital, when Oakland’s populace was around 284,000 and the Bay Area approximately 1.5 million. She solemnly recalled the lost orchards of the East Bay, the open terrain and rolling landscape of Hayward, the World War II vibrancy of downtown Oakland, and the teaming tempo of San Francisco’s docks coupled with the sophistication of Union Square.

 

During her youth, she found literature to be a safe haven for escape with a resultant creative need to record context and perspective from her experiences. It probably began in earnest just prior to my birth when she was reading "The Great Gatsby". Shocked that the name “George Cooper III” was suggested by anyone with even a modicum of America’s colonial history, she, without hesitation, selected a name from her most adored American author: F. Scott Fitzgerald. Thanks, mother!

 

The Bay Area has been our ancestral home for a few generations and her prose varies from family, to serious, to playful, with her poetry mostly concerning the soul. I suppose her ancestry of half Mexican and half Sicilian undoubtedly had much to do with her character and internal charter, especially regarding the influence of her grandmother, of whom her tender reflections is noted within this book.