Family in Lubbock? the clerk asked, Are you by yourself … really?
Runaway. I’m a runaway, I said. She searched me with her gum-chewing look. I said it again, I ran away from home. I didn’t plan it. I don’t have a destination right now. She shifted her weight and drew her hand onto her hip as her head took an affirming angle. I have always wanted to do that, she nodded her chin in my direction. I felt like a hero … … so here I was. The six-year-old, the five-year-old, the nine-year-old Sammi trying to reconcile with the 51-year-old Sammi. A package of people I love, fear, know, and do not know–riding down the highway together with cars passing us as if all was copacetic. We all just kept our eyes facing forward like nothing was off color. ____________________________________________________________________________ Everyone thinks about running away from home sometime. Most people don’t venture that when they are 51. Sammi did. When the world got too small and being part of it got too unbearable she ran. Mostly west. On the way she bumped into her past and found some reconcile with her present. Filled with memories common to us all, too familiar demons, the longing, the searching, the betrayal and brokenness–the beauty of it all. Far from unusual, the instinct to flee what we no longer know how to cope with is common to us all. Between the pages of WHEN I LAST SAW ME perhaps you will collide with where you last saw you too. _____________________________________________________________________________ Written in a unique, quirky literary style, this memoir is from a woman with a most unusual biography, but with a past that will strike a familiar chord in many. In person Lisa is funny. A sit down comedian. Odd. Endearing. Original. Author Lisa is reflective. Curious. A noticer of things most overlook. A seer of things others never place in the light of a proper view. This is the story of her runaway adventure, bringing her to terms with things long pushed back. It is an awakening to purpose pressed by pain. Understanding wrapped in mystery. A journey is sometimes hard. Sometimes not. Mile markers keep time and allow the grace of a reflect. Like breadcrumbs, they led her to a place she did not expect … a place so worth visiting that her outlook changed forever.