Clammer Maddie, 2021

My gorgeous sixteen-year-old  cousin Maddie from upstate New York is in Los Angeles for a few days — for two modeling jobs!  Her father wrote that she would be on the west coast, staying with family friends and pursuing her modeling career which she has developed online since she was barely a teen.

This year she is finishing up high school along with a number of Running Start classes at a nearby college, plans to take a gap year, and then enroll in UCLA (I think) to pursue a career in film.  Which exact aspect — behind the camera or in front of it — is unclear to me but I’m sure Maddie has some definite goals.  She has had definite goals since I first met her four or five years ago.  And she pursues them with purpose, hours of research, and on-the-ground, first-hand-investigation.

I think she means to spend her gap year getting more modeling experience.  “It’s something I can always fall back on to make a little money while I’m going to college,” she told me last summer.  She was here with her dad and his long-time lady friend Katie (yet another of Maddie’s mother-figure-admirers-and-encouragers).  When she left here from that visit, she headed for L.A. to visit family friends, tour UCLA, USC, and possibly Pomona — UCLA being her first choice based on what their literature said they could offer and friends had reported from on-the-ground experiences.

Maddie and Sydney in Oysterville, 2022

What a gal!  Was I that smart at 16?  Am I that smart now?  And besides all of that long-range planning, on-the-ground-research, and general sixteen-year-old enthusiasm, Maddie is gorgeous, fun to talk to, and full of energy and enthusiasm.

I’m proud to call her “Cousin” and only wish L.A. were closer to Oysterville.  But then I’ve wished that for more than fifty years — ever since Charlie went of to Cal Arts to college and never looked back.  The two of them are hoping to get together for coffee in the next few days if Maddie can fit it into her whirlwind schedule…