First Freedoms ... and Adventures (Mary Strand)

This month at YA Outside the Lines, we're talking about our first freedoms ... and how they help us write about adventure in our novels.

I'm all about adventure, so this isn't exactly difficult. When our kids were little, and not quite so little, I often said, "Hey, let's have an adventure!"

The books I write feature a lot of adventures, and my life — even with my kids now in their 20s — remains filled with adventure.

Since this is a blog mostly for YA (young adult) authors, librarians, and readers, I'm sure I'm supposed to write about high school adventures, but the truth is that (although I had them) my high school life was mostly about sports, sports, sports and other activities.

My life of freedom began the summer after high school, when I lived and went to school in Guadalajara, Mexico. It was the first time my parents simply weren't around. I spoke an entirely different language most of the time (although I was pretty fluent), navigated a romance in Spanish with Alberto (pictured here), received my first marriage proposal (also from Alberto), wandered around Mexico City, Puerto Vallarta, and Guadalajara alone ... and wrote long letters home about how much I loved wandering around a big city like Guadalajara alone.

I found out later that my mom spent the whole summer in stark terror.

For some reason I packed clothes for that trip that weren't "me" (but which I thought were "appropriate" for Mexico), and I discovered that summer that I missed being me. I've carried that thought with me ever since. I learned to walk in a way that was very neutral (no naturally swinging hips), because I didn't want to have to deal with aggressive men. (Other than Alberto; ha ha.) But most of all I lived. In utter freedom.

God, I loved it.

In my second year of college, I spent a semester in London. I'd been living at home my first year and a half of college (no money), so this was more freedom. More adventures. Sketchy walks to KFC at 3am. Spur-of-the-moment toga parties. Spring break meant a trip to Italy rather than Florida. I lost my wallet and plane ticket home in Toledo. With literally no money, I wandered around Paris looking for coins in the gutter. In Paris I had conversations in a million languages, most of which I didn't know.

When I got home that summer, living again in my parents' house, I realized that I couldn't go back to my old life at home, without freedom and crazy adventures. I worked in a bar that closed at 2am, and the after-bar parties ended at 3 or 4am. Let's just say that it didn't always fly well with my mom. So I moved to off-campus housing for junior and senior year of college, although I still had no money. The adventures weren't as insane (usually) (but sometimes) as the ones I'd had in Mexico and in London, but by that point I knew I absolutely needed freedom: the freedom to have adventures, day and night.

That attitude has never left me.

Mary Strand is the author of Pride, Prejudice, and Push-Up Bras and three other novels in the Bennet Sisters YA series. You can find out more about her books and music at marystrand.com.