From Nursery School to Kindergarten to Real Estate

From Nursery School to Kindergarten to Real Estate

Life is a series of contrasting experiences and few of them are simply black and white.  I've been blessed with many educational opportunities that have taught me that life is a big rainbow of events that sometimes burst forward from the occasional shades of gray.

My childhood years in Sausalito, California were both charmed and challenging.   My father and mother got divorced when I was five.  Mom was left with three kids to raise.  She decided to get her teaching credentials and went back to school.  My generous and loving grandparents stepped up to became our care-givers and for awhile we enjoyed a lifestyle beyond the means provided by Mom's measly pay.  Gram and Gramp had a beautiful home in Sausalito with gorgeous gardens, a swimming pool, and sweeping views of San Francisco Bay.

My view of the world expanded after Mom found her first teaching job in nearby Marin City.  It's a low-income community---originally founded to house World War II shipyard workers with a more recent history of socio-economic problems---on the other side of Highway 101.  It's a world apart from affluent Sausalito, although both places share the same ZIP code.   Marin City is where I went to Kindergarten.  I was five and my brother was three and he and my younger sister were enrolled in daycare there.

My mom had no other options.  We'd moved into a rental property in Tiburon and due to the logistics and demands of her new job, we had to go to school close to where she was teaching.  This was also a time when affordable daycare and early learning institutions were scarce.  In fact, the Marin City daycare facility was the only one between San Francisco and the Oregon border.  It had been established, in the early 1940s,  by Eleanor Roosevelt for the children of the Sausalito shipyard workers.

It was a time of major adjustments for all of us.  My siblings and I were the only white kids in a community that had become, essentially, a ghetto.   Desipte our different backgrounds and skin tones,  I soon learned that my classmates and I had a lot in common.  We all missed our Moms, every one of us loved using crayons the colors of a rainbow, and we all played together on the same playground on the dreariest of gray winter days.

What I learned in Kindergarten has greatly helped me in real estate.   In this business, I've always felt that one of the keys to doing well is having the ability to work with a diverse clientele.  It's an acquired ability that comes from exposure to different cultures and lifestyles.

Kindergarten, a German word, literally means "child's garden."  My Kindergarten experience in Marin City provided me with the fertile ground I needed to grow into an agent who believes she shares a lot in common with anybody she meets.