Mascha Siegl Kushner

Immediately after graduation, my family decamped from Mt. Vernon and resettled in Seattle, on the Other coast, from a mostly Italian and Jewish environment, to a mostly Nordic one.  The uprooting was tough, but the natives were nice.  I immediately went off to Antioch College, in Ohio, and stayed two years before realizing I wasn’t ready for college and so returned to Seattle.  I married another N.Y. transplant who had come west for medical residency, we had a boy and a girl, and after 17 years, we divorced.  Later there was another marriage, but I’ve been single for a good while.  I live in a tiny, sweet apartment within walking distance of downtown, from which I can see the Space Needle and the ferries crossing Elliot Bay.  My brothers Zev and Simon live in Seattle, too.

Fifteen years after leaving college I went back and earned a B.A. in Art (textile design) at the University of Washington.  This time it was rewarding experience.  My interest in plant life found focus in botany classes and geology studies gave depth to my hiking and climbing experiences.  Later, I worked in the area of fabric construction. 

Great, healthy, life-loving children:

• Son, Will, lives in San Francisco with his wife and three boys.  I visit them four or five times a year. 
• Daughter, Diana, and her family live forty minutes north in Mukilteo (we do have our American Indian place names).  I’m there most weekends, doting on my granddaughter and grandson, doing things like sewing ballet costumes and teaching guitar. 

Living in the Northwest, I got to be up close and personal with a few earthquakes and a volcano eruption.  I climbed Mt. Baker and Mt. St. Helens (BEFORE it erupted).  I flew all around the country in a single-engine Cessna with my second husband – including trips to Alaska where each of my children lived at one time or another.  Nowadays I treasure interaction with family and friends, I travel, garden, knit, sew, read and do various kinds of exercise in an attempt to keep my body from seizing up.  Computer graphic art and photography are other interests.

Looking back to high school days, I am struck by the quality of education we had – I think it was a fine foundation for what followed.  In fact, I wish I could have the chance to go back and do it over – without the raging hormones and social distractions.