All of us wish we'd had perfect childhoods, with a mother and father who modeled ideal parental attitudes and taught us to internalize the tenets of self-love. Many of us, however, did not.
My mother and father met through climbing and it was totally natural that I would become a climber too.
My love for artichokes comes from when I was very young. My mother and father would slice the hearts and fry them, and they would be crispy around the leaves and tender at the base.
My mother and father were both much more remarkable than any story of mine can make them. They seem to me just mythically wonderful.
My mother and father and many of my relatives had been sharecroppers.
I was named Stanley because the week before I was born, my mother and father saw a movie - 'Stanley and Livingstone.'
