• I had to start wearing glasses.  After constant complaints about not being able to see what was written on the board, the teacher finally had the school nurse test my eyes.   A note went home to my parents that day -- and about a month later I got my first pair of glasses.  My classmates were not kind.

• reading became something more than an exercise in school.  Up to this point, my mother had insisted on reading everything that I did just to see if I was really comprehending and to censor things that she didn't like.  But when I handed her Bambi, she handed it back with the comment that she did not have time to read something that long..  I remember smirking -- I finally was going to escape parental oversight into the wide world of literature.

• perhaps because of the glasses and the reading, that I stumbled across the great philosophical dilemma that has haunted me very since.  I realized that no matter how hard I tried, no matter how much I wanted to, I could only perceive the world from behind my own eyes, that I was doomed to live out my life in my own skull never quite seeing things exactly the way that someone else saw them.

• The Dream of Choice:   It is one of those dreams  that I have remembered through the years, along with the sandbox, the lion, the volcano and last the man by the bookcase, then the dreams stopped staying in my memory.  It was my very first irrevocable choice, made before I really understood what that meant.

He called me and I arose and ran to him. I couldn't tell you what he looked like or what his name is, it seemed as though he was as he had always been and we were together as we always were.  He showed me around his home, in my child's mind it was a castle or keep because it was made of stone and on a hill and I called him my knight and he laughed.  His hair was long, and so was mine, his garments were dark and soft and mine were light and fluttery.  There was music about us and clean fresh smells. We strolled and talked, always touching even when we weren't, always talking even when our voices were silent, catching up on so much that was happening to each of us. We danced on a balcony under the stars and gazed in each others eyes and he asked me to stay with him. "I can't" I said, "I have things to do and family back there."  Questions bubbled up -- did he know something bad was going to happen?  What would happen to my body?  Why now?  He didn't answer me but urged me again to stay with him,  telling me not to go back, folding me in his arms protectively and I shook my head even though I knew that was where I belonged. One last time he told me that he did not wish me to go and when I just whispered "no", he smoothed my hair and kissed the top of my head.  In a very quiet voice he warned me that our mortal selves probably wouldn't find each other. "We will always find each other" I told him and he held me tightly and said "eventually". Then he closed his eyes, opened his arms and let me go.  I fell, guided by the gentle hands of the spirits, my tears falling ahead of me as they sang soft words of encouragement and happiness. And I opened my eyes and it was morning, and I turned over and turned off the alarm and laid there crying until it was time to get up.