Butterflies or Tigers: A Memoir

Like the author herself, these improbable stories defy classification. Culled from ninety-one years of a rich and varied life, they begin with a vivid childhood memory of a terrifying hurricane at sea, during her family's journey from Colombia to a new life in the U.S. What follows is a series of disparate tales that include: • Learning to cope with a free fall from suburban comfort in New Jersey to Great Depression rural poverty in alligator-infested central Florida. • Having a mystical encounter in a sacred forest in Assisi, Italy. • Being exposed to the subtleties of Earl Gray's tea, Viennese "shtroodel," and "Bead a Meyer" furniture by a sophisticated Hungarian neighbor. • Causing a sudden mysterious drop in the birthrate in a Mexican fi shing village. • Being rescued by a French taxi driver from taking a room in a Marseille port hotel popular with sailors and their ladies of the night. • Enduring a hilarious seniors-only white-water rafting trip on the Rogue River in Oregon. • Finding herself stark naked in a rehabilitation center shower with a rapt audience of two attendants and a TV repair man. Through these and other experiences and adventures spanning ninety-one years, Liza Tilson opens her heart, shares the good and the bad, the funny and sad, and shows what it means to embrace life and live it fully.