What a strange title

The mid-morning sun pierced the lingering frost on the brilliant yellow wattle in my Australian garden. It was a cold, crisp, yet sunny day in May and the vibrant colors stood out against the brilliant blue of the sky. I was going to start a new life yet again, this time far across the Pacific, in the United States.

Eucalyptus trees, with their lovely yellow flowers, have always been a favorite of mine and I wondered if I would miss the heady, strong gum smell, mid-summer when the heat is oppressive and the cicadas are so loud one can hardly concentrate. It turns out that California is loaded with eucalyptus groves, the scent so reminiscent of Australia, but alas, no wattle flowers.

Yellow has always been a favorite color, perhaps because of the wattle, the green and gold worn by Aussie athletes, or perhaps because it is the color of amber - amber washed up on Latvian shores, where my heritage lies.

What an interesting journey my life has been, taking me more than two-thirds of the way around the world. The heritage of northern Europe so firmly ingrained in me by my parents, to the easy going lifestyle of Australia in the fifties and sixties. My childhood, my youth and early married life, the land with so many gum trees and wattle flowers certainly helped create the person I am today. But I wasn't done yet. The home of the bald eagle, the mighty United States, beckoned through a lover who became a husband. After more than twelve years, dual citizenship, and making so many new and wonderful friends, I feel part of the US as well. In this blog I want to try to capture who I am, why I think the way I do and how being a product of three different cultures has changed my life and my thinking.

Maybe I just want to know the meaning of life, the need to strive and achieve, live as many adventures as possible, to laugh, cry and share all this with my family and my friends, but most of all, to be true and faithful to myself and my beliefs, incorporating all the lessons learned from the land of amber, the land of the wattle tree and the land of the great bald eagle.