As years pass by…

It was an unusual childhood.

Not because our family of five moved countries, or because my brothers and I were home-schooled for the longest time.

But because it was a rich and varied childhood… the kind you read about in stories… where you went swimming in the sea, and got invited into olive orchards by kind-looking, old Arabs to pick green, sour olives, and where you travelled to other cities to meet up with friends, where school (when we eventually enrolled in one) lasted only 4 hours, and we went straight to the huge town park afterward to play football and cycle until nightfall, without worrying about homework or getting up for school the next day.

It was the 1970s and we lived in the small seaside town of Misrata.

Through all those lovely years from this long ago part of my life, the most vivid and precious memory I have is of the huge box brimming with books and the high stacks of National Geographic and Readers’ Digests that I monopolized.

Those long hours spent reading is the reason words have never left me.

And so I weclome you to read A Pocketful of Words… My blog where you can enjoy anecdotes from my life growing up in a strange land, and unusual experiences from the years I spent wandering around India as an army wife.