Editor’s note: Below is a portion of Cindy Bosien’s letter in Spartanburg Day School’s recent alumni newsletter. 

Adopted by two doctors at the age of four, for a few years I ran wild and free in the wilderness of Hogback Mountain with my first and still best friend, Tita Flack.  In 1958, at six, I entered a huge, imposing building in Spartanburg, a city far, far away to be tested for my intelligence and readiness to enter the world of Spartanburg Day School.

My first memory there was being asked what color a banana is.  I answered “white.” Told that my answer was wrong, I replied, “The skin is yellow, the banana is WHITE.”

I was deemed intelligent enough, maybe even a bit of a smarty-pants. Happily, I ended up in Mrs. Miller’s first grade class. I went from being mostly alone on a mountaintop to being in a hugely expanded social circle, and I became the Day School’s first Tryonite … By 1962, I was in fourth grade, on the Key Committee, and being taught a rhyme each morning that I still live my life by:

“When the job is once begun, never leave it until it is done.
Be the labor great or small, do it well or not at all.”

Just recently I turned 60. I have been a homebirth midwife for 20 years, delivering over 500 babies from New York City to Amish country in Pennsylvania to El Paso, Texas.  All four of my children were born naturally, with the last three born at home.

Now, I am a home death midwife, helping the dying who want to walk through that doorway surrounded by those who love them best, in the place they most want to be.

Since my own time to leave could be soon—who knows?  —I have turned my attention to giving my world the best of me before I go.

I garden like crazy and have an organic garden center at my 140-year old farm.  I have hundreds of old-fashioned flowers, grown for the sake of the bees, butterflies, hummingbirds, and others.  Many of the plants are edible by people as well.