ABSTRACT
This chapter describes Maria Gleaton Cattell's anthropological life. Her life journey has been a path with branches and loops, forwards and returns, a meandering pathway through light and dark, rainbows and dark nights. Maria's spiritual autobiography weaves together her experiences of place as a traveler, gardener, and anthropologist. In 1940 she moved to Lansdowne in suburban Philadelphia, where she started school in first grade. She studied English literature along with minors in history and art history. It was summer 1975, the year she turned forty-one. Maria was working in her Second Career as secretary in F&Ms Department of Classics. For the next few years, she took an anthropology course each semester, usually with Jim Taggart or Nancy McDowell. Maria studies gradually focused on a geographic area and topic for her dissertation research: Africa and the anthropology of aging. Becoming an anthropologist and doing anthropology have been personally empowering and enriching for her.
