Uncategorized Kerch on 11 Dec 2006 08:11 am
About Kerch
I’ve come to the age in my life, a certain age, as it were, when I feel like I don’t have to kowtow to the expectations of others. I’m 50 something. And the “something” is mostly because I can’t be bothered to keep track of the exact number. Who cares anyway? It’s not about getting older. I don’t mind that, really. It is about remembering the exact number.
Fifty is a pretty powerful number. “I’m 50 years old, I’m good at what I do and I don’t need this… crap!” Do you think that being 53 would have any more weight?
One day I’ll be 60 and that will be fine — better actually! But 62? Na? not interested.
And here, at 50, I have the same husband for 30 years. (So you know, they haven’t always been sugar and spice. But then what 30 years has been the same for anyone. And if they WERE the same, would that be good?)
We, my husband and I, have three kids in their 20s and almost 30s. And none of them are axe murderers! And that — my friends — is a very good thing!
My mother is still alive and runs a cool little shop in Lancaster County, PA, in Stoudtburg Village. It’s a little place where everyone has a shop downstairs and lives upstairs. She sells cool jewelry, greeting cards she’s painted and CDs of the mechanized musical instruments my dad rebuilt before he died 20+ years ago. The shop is called Kerchner’s Antiques. But there aren’t many antiques there to actually buy. But you can see the instruments. and sometimes, if you’re lucky, she’ll play them for you.
I am the oldest of three kids. The youngest, my sister, Carol, runs the Stoudtburg Village Coffee Shop in the same Village as my mother. I used to stay at my mom’s when I visited, but clearly, it was just too impractical when I wanted to go down stairs for the first coffee of the morning. I could not quite get it that I had to get dressed in real clothes to walk across the plaza. So now I stay at Carol’s and hide in the back until after that first cup.
I manage Carol’s website, I balance her books (I was a math major in college but I am not good at arithmetic and I HATE accounting. So, it’s a sister thing.)
I also paint mugs for her to sell. It’s a tip ‘o the hat to my past life as an artist. I did about 20 years selling painted papercuttings to gift shops and galleries across the country.
My brother seems to have found happiness in a machine shop working with metal and building an airplane in his garage. In all things, at 50 you should get to pick what you want to do.
Leslie and I met more than 20 years ago while working on the Baltimore City Fair.It was an opportunity and a life style. Our kids grew up independent and connected to people and experiences they would never otherwise have known. We all got to try out being in charge of something so much bigger than we were. And because it was a volunteer thing, it didn’t matter that we didn’t come in knowing it all. But we left, after so many years, feeling like we were born knowing stuff. And our kids think we really DO control the universe!
We hope you’ll enjoy our year of change. We hope you’ll have comments. That’s what will keep us going. The connection to readers who might poke us where we didn’t know we needed poking.
We’re looking forward to this ride.
