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My earliest memory is at the age of three. Back then, only Mom, Dad, my older sister Tena, and I made up the family. We lived in the boondocks. Whether we did or not is not important, but that's what Mom always said, insisting that we lived in the sticks, which was extremely confusing to a three-year-old. I struggled through most of my early grade school years completed jaded, thinking our family was unique, in that we lived isolated and deprived of civilization, unlike my young urban, civilized peers. In actuality, we lived only three miles from a very small town of 300. It just seemed like the boondocks because we had only one or two neighbors, the road was dirt and gravel all the way to town, and when it snowed, we couldn't get up the big hill in front of the house to get milk, sugar, and bread, apparently, again according to Mom, the necessities of life. So, I suppose I would have to agree with Mom - our place was pretty out there.

Nonetheless, our little hometown school did not provide a kindergarten for the little ones, but they did have something called Headstart. The year I was three was when Tena got to go to Headstart. Now, I always connected Headstart with racing, as in, "Ready, Set, Go." So, of course, I thought that the children who went to school with my sister just chased each other around all day. But after the first couple of days, Tena didn't want to go anymore. As a matter of fact, she cried, kicked, screamed, and carried on something awful. I guessed she wasn't winning the races.

Regardless, Mom made her go anyway, which was a major ordeal. So major, in fact, it literally scarred my visions of school. What I remember the most is Tena getting on the big yellow school bus. Of course, since I was only three, there was no way for me to completely appreciate the state of my poor distraught mother. As little five-year-old Tena, with locks of blond curly hair, climbed into the jaws of that huge yellow monster, she stopped and looked back at Mom and me. I remember a tear on her sad little face, and I remember not understanding what it was all about. Evidently, Mom understood everything.

Tena waved her little hand as the giant swallowed her up, and Mom wept uncontrollably as she held me in her arms and hugged me tightly. Tena's tears were catching, because not only was she crying, Mom and I were crying too. I didn't know at the time that Mom had just let go of her first born and watched her cross a significant

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