My earliest memories are of our house in Evergreen Ct, Fairfield, where I must have been around 3 or four years old. Of course, I don't remember much, only that the house was small, and I think we had a swing set in the back. I'm pretty sure the house was brick, because I seem to remember the gold house numbers on the brick background (but for all I know the house numbers may have been white). But what I remember the most about the old house was the walks and (for the older kids) bike rides we used to have around the neighborhood, visiting friends and playing at the school park nearby. One thing I don't remember at all was the accidental amputation of my fingertip. I am rather grateful that memory is not among the rest! I also remember a loft (it might have been at another house though) with toys that the youngest of us could use, and I would always be trying to stick my head through the bars that separated us from the floor below. I was not always successful, but one time I did get stuck, and another time I actually got through, somehow ending up on the other end, holding on the edge of the loft floor and screaming lustily for dear life. (Oh, by the way, thanks mom, for the rescue - and I'm sorry I scared you so much!) But of course, even those memories are merely a flash of light from my past.

I wonder if when I am 30, I will be able to remember any of that. Well, I'll probably have photos to look at to provoke my memories into surfacing.

After Evergreen, we moved around a lot in Fairfield. At our house in Sausalito, we had a long back yard, with lots of bushes and three round patios, side by side. We also had a tree in the corner, a tree that we all loved to climb because it's thick branches stretched to the ends of the sky, or at least it looked like that because I was so young. I remember birthday parties, wild neighborhood decorations for halloween and christmas, and elaborate obstacle courses that we set up for our siblings, starring the bathrooms as springs of living water, and the staircases as cliffs of terror, not to mention the garages as caverns of deadly horrors. Yes, I think I was slightly terrified of the dark.

After two years there, I was about five or so, and we moved into Candleberry Lane for a while. I think it was there when we finally left our church we'd been apart of my whole life, though it could've been earlier. I only remember fragments from that church, winning a coloring book in some sort of contest, plotting when I'd climb the hill behind, exploring the fields in front, and hanging out with older kids, friends of my older siblings. I also remember almost always having to hold Dad's hand, me on the right and Andrew on the left, wherever he went, and the big cabinets full of bibles in the back of the church. I remember visiting friends of ours, the Moody's and exploring their lands at night (and even more memorable, acting in a skit with mom, demonstrating the way Enoch disappeared when he walked with God). I also remember having to take sunday naps in candleberry, with large mirrors (probably from old closet doors) lying against the wall in Dad's room, where we napped. I think for a bedroom, Andrew and I shared even back then, each with a mattress on the floor and those crazy peanuts cartoon bedsheets that we saved probably till this day. If they fit, I'd probably be wearing them at college! Would've saved a buck for more pop tarts! I think it was at Candleberry that my older sibs and Dad got a job passing out the newspaper. They biked back and forth through the earliest hours of the morning passing papers, and I begged to join them so much, they let me tag along some of the last weeks before we moved, and I got to throw some newspapers on some driveways. I also remember driving quite a distance to purchase our van, but I'm not quite sure of the timeline on that. I just remember going out into the country, looking at it, and piling in and driving back. It's held us a good many years.