I wonder if a day will come when I no longer remember these numbers. 44 — The number of the first address I recall. 242 — Our family's P.O. box when we lived at #44. 711 — The number of the first house that the family owned. Not rented. 637-4735— The first phone number that I memorized. It went to a black phone. At first it was ME(rcury)7 4735.  That phone number went with us from #44 to #711. What first important numbers do you remember?

Yesterday's mail brought my royalty check. Whoo-hooo! Just in time to pay the property tax bill. Boo-hoo. I'm grateful, and fortunate, to still receive royalties on career and educational books that I wrote 10 years ago. Jo in Little Women was asked by Professor Bhaer (who Jo eventually married) why she wrote trashy stories. Her answer: The sale of that trashy story bought something for her family back home, the sale of this trashy story paid for a vacation by the sea for her ill sister who needed the fresh air, and so forth and so on. Professor Bhaer had the decency to feel bad for bringing it up to Jo, and after he apologized, he encouraged Jo to write something that is dear to her heart. I'm not saying that my books are trash. Far from it. I have been wondering lately if there is something that is dear to my heart that I want to write.   

Swings and jungle gyms. Slides and teeter-totters. I came across a playground for the first time when I was five years old on my first day of first grade. I really took to the slides, especially the corkscrew one. When I got home that day, I looked forward to the next day of the slides just as much as the books and the pencils, and the desks and the blackboards. That experience lasted all of two-and-a-half days. I had to wait a full year to hang out in a playground again because the teacher said I was "too young" for school. It was okay. I went back to my old playground of open fields.

Lately my hands have been itchy to draw. The other evening it began with the desire to draw a sunflower. Instead of drawing an imaginary one, I got off the couch and went and plucked a wilted sunflower from a two-week bouquet in the kitchen. I checked out the flower's structure, counted its petals, and took a good long hard look at it. I sketched a sunflower head with 32 petals (more or less, I lost count in the 20s), shaded in the petals with colored pencils, didn't like the result, and went searching for the crayons. Before I knew it the sunflower got a stem and leaves. . .and a setting!