WHO?
Amanda Welch is a gardener and entrepreneur in Charlottesville. She co-authored The Kids are All Right with her siblings.
When I first moved to Charlottesville in 1988, it was not to go to U.Va. I was escaping my life in New York City, where I had been working in the entertainment industry after leaving my studies in theater history at NYU. I had also been held up at gunpoint, my apartment robbed and my car broken into. It was time for a change, and Charlottesville was a world away from Brooklyn, where I had lived since I was 19 years old. It seemed the perfect place for me to create a real home, the kind my younger siblings—Liz, Dan, and Diana—could call their own.
We were orphans, and for the past five years had each been living separately, with different families, in different towns. Before we lost our parents, we had a privileged childhood in a New York City suburb with a stable full of horses, membership at the country club, a pool at home—the whole nine yards. But, when our parents died—our father died in a car crash and our soap opera star mother was diagnosed with cancer soon after—we lost our home and were set adrift.
Elizabeth and Dan Welch with their actress mother, Ann.
The details of those New York years are covered in a book that my siblings and I wrote together: Me, (Amanda, the oldest), Liz, Dan and Diana. Liz and Diana are the writers in the family, but Dan and I provided our sides of the story and color commentary in The Kids are All Right. We decided to tell the story in four first person voices, because we realized that each of us remembered things differently. Our disparate ages contributed to this, I was 16 when our father died, Liz 13, Dan 11 and Diana 4. And our experiences have made us appreciate each other beyond measure.
Amanda and Elizabeth Welch with their parents.
After moving down here and finding an old farm to suffice for our Welch family homestead, it took a few years to get settled and decide to go back to finish my degree. By that time, Diana, the youngest in the family, had reconnected with us and was living with my future husband and me. I studied Architectural History part-time at U.Va. while working at Plow & Hearth. I graduated in 1993, 10 years after my high school graduation. Currently I work as a gardener, raise bees and raspberries on our farm and have a home business.
We were all together in Charlottesville recently to do a reading at Barnes & Noble for the Virginia Festival of the Book. The reading went well but, as always, the best part for me was having all my siblings in the same room. Dan, his fiancée Lindsay and their new baby Jackson just bought a farm near mine in Louisa County, so I see them often now, but Liz and her husband came down from Brooklyn and Diana made the trek from Texas with her son Harvey. We all gathered in my dining room around our parents’ old kitchen table to eat delicious meals and talk about what’s going on in our lives. The paperback of our book comes out this fall and will feature updates on where we all are now as well as tons of family photos. We have all evolved from the years that we wrote about in the book, and yet we are still as close as ever.
Comments
Amanda I love hearing the Welch’s up date because it all sounds upbeat. You all really deserve it. Lots of love Joan
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