Laura Mason

I've been married for 12 years to Shane Zheng, who I met while living in Japan (he's a native of Shanghai, China). Shane and I have two kids. Our boy, Kai, is a 6-year-old first grader and our girl, Hailey, is a 3-year-old preschooler. I work as a freelance writer (less and less, what with the kids and all, though locals can see my cover story on orchids in Food & Home's spring 2006 issue). Shane is a comptuter network analyst at Antioch University.

I've done quite a bit of travelling over the years. I did the obligatory backpacking through Europe a couple of times before moving to Japan to teach English for a four-year stint. This is where I met Shane (through mutual Santa Barbara friends), who was in Japan studying. After eloping in Hawaii, Shane and I moved to San Francisco where we lived for 11 years. There, I pursued my Big Dream of becoming the Great American Author by earning an MFA in creative writing from SFSU (my bachelor's is in English, from UC Santa Cruz) while working as a writer/editor in Corporate America. The Great American Novel has yet to be written by me . . . unlike Norman Mailer, I may not have the requsite talent, but Harriet Dooer, who didn't begin her writing career until the age of 60-something, continues to be in inspiration. In the meantime, writing the occassional magazine article keeps my feet wet. Shane and I take the kids to visit his family in Shanghai on a fairly regular basis, and while the kids' spoken Mandarin is fluent, improving with each trip, mine remains mired in the baby-talk realm ("I have to go potty!" or "A doggy says, 'woof, woof.'"

Like many of you have expressed, my kids are my greatest blessing, joy and challenge at this stage, and perhaps they will be at every stage from here on out.Here's a picture we took of them about a year ago--I can't find any recent ones of the two together.