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It was the fall of 1972 and all of my favorite after-school TV shows were canceled. In their stead were hours of tediously boring congressional testimony on the Watergate Scandal of the Nixon Administration. While this was certainly an annoying inconvenience for a ten year old girl, it paled against the jubilation I felt from my recent move to live with my grandmother in Boynton Beach, Florida. To top it all off I loved my new school and friends, and had the most wonderful teacher I'd ever had before, or after.

Suffice it to say that my life to this point had not been idyllic. I was the eldest of three in a single-parent household residing in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. My mother was a heroin addict, among other things, whose extracurricular activities competed victoriously with her parenting. Therefore, merely a child myself, I had to be a surrogate mother for my brother and sister who were one and two years old at the time. In addition to being laden with more responsibility than was appropriate at my age, I was physically and emotionally abused by my mother. Neglect and abuse trampled me, leaving behind footprints of gaping wounds. A glorious day it was indeed when our neighbor came over and told me, "Your mama's been arrested and your grandmother is coming to get y'all."

It turned out that my mother was incarcerated for only a few days, and when she came to Boynton to get us, miraculously my grandmother convinced her to let me stay and finish the school year. My grandmother, no doubt, was my Angel of Rescue; she sheltered me that year in a haven of love, calm, and juvenile bliss. Suzanne Degni, my teacher, became my Angel of Hope and Inspiration; she salvaged my mind and spirit from the ashes, and provided the gust of wind that propelled me above and away from the devastation. She did this by proffering to me in her classroom a healing balm that I could self-administer as needed for the rest of my life a sweet concoction of art, music, literature and creative writing.

It was in her classroom that I first heard names like Robert Frost, Robert Louis Stevenson, Christina Rossetti, Carl Sandburg, Ogden Nash and Lewis Carroll. Our class perused Frost's "Stopping by Woods on A Snowy Evening", and I was transported there amidst the tranquility and calm of a snow drenched forest. We drew pictures of the serene tableau evoked by this poem in amateurish artwork. Mrs. Degni's approving smile endorsed these youthful artistic impressions as museum-ready masterpieces.

My spirit

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