First memories were in Missouri as a baby in a crib.  My mother shushing me so my cousins would not
know I was awake.  I kicked the wooden yellow bars of the crib and tried to make noise so my cousins
would hear me can come in and play.

Orignally from Ohio, we moved to Missouri for business my uncle had found.  I remember the Missouri
house at 7810 Colleen Road and looked up the old house on Google Earth recently.  I had dreams there
of flying and tried to stand on my baby dresser to launch off.  A few years later I was in our deep
back lot watching the clouds and noticed a large giant size, santa looking cloud.  I wasn't going to be
fooled and noticed that this cloud figure was animated and moving back n forth , side to side walking
and waving to me.  I grabbed a clump of grass and threw it up in the air to see which way the wind was
blowing challenging this figure.  The wind gently blew to the right of me and then I could test this
figure as it was moving in all directions to prove itself to the five year old me.

This figure was so animated and friendly that I spoke to it and my parents remember me yelling up to
the clouds.  Mostly I think I tested the figure and even now I thought pretty good for a five year old.

My parents were no religious although they loved celebrating the holidays.
My mother's mother and my fathers grandmother were the ones that liked
religious objects and did  the praying.  I was baptised in St. Louis, Missouri
along with my infant brother.  The most I felt about this was that I was made
to wear this hoop petticoat that made my dress stick out and it was hard to
sit in.

We moved back to Ohio when I was in first grade and I attended public
elementary school, Chester C. Bolton in Lyndhrust, Ohio.  While exporing
the neighborhood with friends I found myself far from home, if only my
mother knew.  We had walked down to the catholic church, St. Paschals.
There in the little woods there was a grotto of stone with the statue of
Mary in it.

I thought I was the only kid that had found this and set to clean up the
area and make it pretty with stones and flowers.  I was then Mary's servent,
and that sort of stuck all these years.  To make matters more imprinted,
years later I got the chance to watch "The children of Fatima" and another
movie sort of the same theme and cried and felt that movie till this day.

I later went to a catholic middle school and the old nun, Sister Gilbert,
foamed at the mouth at a kid from the public schools.  She was sure I was
a heathen sent to her.  One day I was writing the words to the Beatles,
"If I fell" in my notebook.  She demanded I hand it over and read it to
the class as I hid my face in my arms.  She thought it was a love letter to
my boyfriend and I thought, "Hmmmm she must think I am a genius if I
wrote that."

I was fasinated by the mysteries of the church and even though my parents
did not go to church, I did at times.  I just knew Jesus would appear there one day.