My dog, a miniature schnauzer named Winnie, loves me, but she loves my husband more. I don’t know what this says about me, but it seems significant.

I go back as often as I can to Troy, North Carolina, the small town where I grew up. One of the best things about visiting is that when I’m talking with my friends who graduated high school with me, someone who was already an adult at the time we were in school will invariably come up and say, “Now what are you young people talking about?” I can’t get enough of that.

When I first moved to New York after college, I went into a deli and ordered a salami sandwich on white bread with mayonnaise. This was done in all seriousness and without irony. Just ask Ellen, my former boss and current friend of twenty-plus years. She was there, and when she settles down from laughing at the mere recollection of it, she’ll tell you it’s true.

The summer when I first began to date Rick, the wonderful man to whom I am now married, I was doing press at The American Dance Festival in Durham, North Carolina. The two theaters in Durham where dance performances occur are Page Auditorium and Reynolds Theater. (His name is Page and my maiden name is Reynolds.) Later, after we were married and had moved back to Durham, I wrote about dance under my current name Jean Reynolds Page. People thought I made up the name to go with the venues.

One Christmas, when I was still in elementary school, Santa Claus brought me a Wurlitzer Organ (the kind with the pre-programmed percussion, as well as settings for swing, waltz and rock -- all that good stuff). On the same Christmas morning, Santa also brought me a horse. Since my family was anything but wealthy (my dad owned the local Texaco station) this did not represent my typical Christmas morning. In fact, it still bears mentioning as one of the most astonishing days of my life.

Over this past holiday, I was talking with my kids, (now in their late teens and early twenties), and I heard myself telling them that I’ve enjoyed every phase of my life so far. I also told them that every decade of my life has been better than the one before it. Realizing that this is absolutely true gives me insight into why I always leave my characters with some sense of expectation regarding the future.

Before I begin to ramble about being unjustly kept in for recess in fourth grade, I will leave other unofficial anecdotes for another time. And while you can’t change the past (although I know from experience that you can certainly try to rewrite it) I will nevertheless try to update these add-ons, from time to time, so that the kind souls who return to this site more than once don’t get sick of this page.