Beginnings

It was a very toasty 108℉ in Phoenix on that late spring day when I popped into the world. The sun was in Gemini and the Moon was in rising on the eastern horizon in Libra. I could tell you the position of every other planet as well, but what's the point? I now believe in that stuff as much as I believe that a Jewish community activist rose from the dead 2000 years ago.

While I have no conscious recollection of it, there are plenty of family photos to prove that shortly after my first birthday, my folks and I flew back to Green Bay, where we met up with my mom's side of the family and then drove to my grandparents' home in western Massachusetts where we spent the remainder of the summer. This was to become an every-other-year family tradition (sometimes with my dad, sometimes without) until they relocated to Arizona in the early 1970s.

My earliest memory was noticing the way the light fell from below the drawn window shade on the painted concrete block wall next to my bed while I was supposed to be napping. From this, I can ascertain I was probably less than two years old, because the next oldest memories are of my second birthday. My folks threw a backyard wading-pool party and invited all the neighbor kids (it was a recently built neighborhood full of new families, all part of the baby boom).

The next year, we made the trek to Wisconsin and Massachusetts and moved from our home in Scottsdale to central Phoenix, where we took up residence in an adorable bungalow built in the late 30s located in what was to become 40 years later the very trendy—and very expensive—Willo neighborhood. During our time there however, it was neither. (I remember it being full of working families and retirees who'd probably moved into their homes when they were new.) It was a cute little place with two bedrooms, hardwood floors, a huge back yard with orange trees and a detached garage—and which now possessed a very curious three year old who recently learned how to use a screwdriver and wasted no time in sneaking off to remove the dials from the backyard gas meter. True story! (My mom and recently gone back to work, leaving me in the care of a part-time housekeeper.) Needless to say, it was a miracle I didn't blow the house—and myself—to smithereens that day.

After that little incident, Mom quit her job and I never saw the housekeeper again.

Two years later, just as I was starting kindergarten, I was told there was going to be an addition to the family. My sister was on the way, necessitating yet another move. I was thrilled at the prospect of having a sibling, but not so thrilled at the though of moving away from the friends I'd made in the neighborhood. I hated kindergarten, so that was also a plus, but it meant that I would forever be branded a kindergarten drop out.

Susan was born the following April, and I adored her unconditionally from the moment she appeared in my life.