Dorothy Beeson:  

I always wanted to be a writer. My family and friends thought that was a romantic idea. As it turns out, they were right...I had little talent. I took a creative writing class in junior college and my poems were so silly my classmates laughed. This made me rethink my goals. I went away to college in the Sierra Nevadas with a bunch of friends when I was 18. I was a free spirit who sometimes went to class. It was a great year in so many ways. At the end of a year we returned to Redwood City and I lasted another semester as an English major before dropping out to work. As fortune would have it I went to work at a County Hospital in San Mateo, CA. I worked there for years (first in the clinics then in the ER) - and became friends with the nurses. I decided to become an RN and enrolled in University of San Francisco when I was 23. I was a timid student - who was constantly afraid I would harm my patients. Thankfully we all survived. I married and moved to Arizona. I was homesick for what seemed like years. I missed my family and friends in the Bay Area...not to mention the heat - it is HOT in Arizona in the summer. Of course I moved in JULY! Didn't occur to me that any place could get this hot...no air conditioning - I didn't know the luxury of central air for several years. I went to work at a hospital in Tucson while my husband attend...Expand for more