about

my name is DeAnna Knippling. i am twenty-seven years old. i have brown hair, brown eyes, a husband, a daughter, and a cat. my husband's name is Lee Kenyon and my daughter's name is Rachael Kenyon, although sometimes we call her Ray. she was born on October 17, 2001. the cat's name is Fafnir, after the famous dragon of Norse legend.

i currently work at a job. as soon as we have the money, i'm going to quit and be a full-time writer and mother (i have the kid part down; now all i have to do is get published). i was published...oh, ten years ago?...on an old website, verbosity. also, i have poems scattered around under my own name and under my net nickname, which is dust. i used to be part of an old mailing list called "darkwaves and larkwings." it seems like this is the first time since the list fell apart about five years ago that i've written in any kind of organized way.

i've stopped writing poetry. i don't know why. maybe i've invested too much of myself in prose; maybe the cycnicism and angst that drove me to such lengths have faded. i used to be miserable all the time: but i had "lots of potential." well, i don't have any success in life, but i have some joy instead. so far, an acceptable trade, but i'd hate to see myself miss having both for want of trying.

the reason this site is called "the secret hideout" is because of my younger brother, Matt. when we were kids, we lived on a farm in the middle of nowhere, i.e., near the geographic center of South Dakota. the nearest "town" on the nap was five miles away, and it was a general store and our mail drop. we didn't have running water at the country school we went to until i was in fourth grade.

we didn't have much. it was reganomics time, and my father was a farmer.

what we had (among other things) was our imagination and a place to carry it out. i can't tell you all the adventures we had (well, i can't remember them, but that's not the point). we climbed things; we jumped off things; we pulled thigns apart; we wired them back together.

we had secret hideouts.

there was one in the silver barn, up in the hayloft. there was one in the red barn above the tack room. there was one in the hayshed, there was one under the tarp covering the woodpile. there was one (for a brief time only) under the picnic table with the benches turned out to make a spaceship. we spied on our parents. we jumped from the top of the corn bin into the corn and buried outselves in it. we climbed apple trees. we peed in the fields while mom and dad left us at the pickup truck while they drove tractors. we stood in the front yard and watched dad shoot skunks.

and when family came over, we'd gather all the cousins together and make up adventures, adventures that nobody agreed on what was going on, what was fair, and how come you guys tricked me into going into the old outhouse anyway?

but the secret hideouts and the adventures are what i remember as being the best part of childhood. i'm sure our parents sat in front of the windows and laughed to see us sneaking across the yard, ceremonically cutting walking sticks off dead branches in the woods with old steak knives, and climbing through the elaborate snow tunnels we carved out of the drifts every year, wailing as the roof slowly sank in the spring.

i wouldn't go back. my daughter is sleeping on my chest, and i wouldn't give her or my husband up for anything. that doesn't mean i've forgotten, of course.

3/03/2002