Judith Alapi Higgins

Memoirs of a Crone deals with the reflections of an older woman as she nears the end of her life. As she reviews her life and takes a mental and spiritual accounting of all that she has done and left undone, she steps back to gain perspective. Evangeline Sable was many things and wore many faces through the more than seventy years of her life. Hers was a lifelong struggle to blend the facets of her personality and reconcile the conflicting aspects of her self into a more or less seamless whole. Evangeline sees herself through the prism of her life as a young girl, an immigrant who is destined to be forever different from those in the society which never embraces her completely. Later, in her roles as a wife and mother she struggles to further shape her identity along the expected paths of society. When tragedy strikes, all the carefully constructed aspects of her life crumble and she is left with the remains and with the opportunity to build something new. Slowly her life takes a turn and she discovers parts of herself so far unrecognized. Her emotional and spiritual struggle embody the journey that everyone must traverse to live a complete life.

Tom was born in the Adirondacks of upstate New York. When he was two, his parents took him and his brother to St. Augustine for a winter vacation. He remembers seeing the dolphin show at Marineland and learning to swim in one of the motel pools. He has a picture of his brother riding a giant tortoise, possibly at the Alligator Farm. Later he earned a PhD and became an environmental engineer, working throughout the US and in 30 countries. He authored 3 books, The Hazardous Waste Minimization Handbook, The Pollution Prevention Handbook and Toxic Chemical: Risk Prevention through Use Reduction. Judy was born in Budapest, Hungary, leaving for the US after the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. She enjoyed writing and art in high school, and wanted to study art in college, but her father wanted her to study something more practical. She got her BA in Psychology and an MA in Counseling Psychology. She practiced counseling for a short time, but turned to writing and never gave up her desire to study art. Judy first visited St. Augustine with her cousin during a spring break from college. She was awed by the Ponce de Leon hotel, and enjoyed eating fresh oranges and swimming in the ocean. Judy and Tom met while working at Santa's Workshop, in the Adirondacks. She taught Tom her love of art, visiting museums around the world. They eventually took an art class at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, and followed this with short classes by artists in the area. Based on an idea that Tom had, Judy wrote Opalescent, a historical environmental novel, set in the Adirondacks. The two then illustrated the book with pencil sketches. Judy went on to write Balsamere, a novel about a Great Camp set in the Adirondacks, Heirlooms, a novel, and Gold Pieces, a book of short stories based on immigrant experiences. Tom and Judy illustrated these books with pencil sketches. As they approached retirement age, they looked for a place that they could move to. They remembered fondly their earlier visits to St. Augustine, and 5 years ago bought a home in St. Augustine Beach and became Florida Residents. They spend 8 months of the year in St. Augustine with Piper, our Pomeranian who was born in Florida, and summers on Lake Champlain in Vermont. This book is a collection of pastels they drew and stories that they learned about their new home.