When I was a teen, I watched It Happened One Night, a 1934 black-and-white romantic comedy with Clark Gable as a journalist and Claudette Colbert as a socialite on the run. In a particularly chatty scene, they try to convince interlopers they’re a married couple, and Gable chides Colbert “Once a plumber’s daughter, always a plumber’s daughter!”

The socialite says later, “I’d change places with a plumber’s daughter any day.” It had never occurred to me beforehand that being a plumber’s daughter was a thing–insult or otherwise. I realize a plumber’s daughter is one who’s born to the middle of things, which is where I still find myself these days (midlife, mid-career, midwest…).

Check back for my writing about being creative, being a parent and being on my own terms.