I was five years old in 1943. When my sister was born, the event shattered my world. And the shattered sent me to the image of a kaleidoscope. I was the center of my universe, and now I wasn’t.

She was a preemie and had to be fed every four hours. At that time, my father took me to church with him. He was Catholic, and there was a lot of magic involved in the preparation of communion. Very, very different from my mother’s Methodist church.

But it introduced me to all sorts of concepts I had never considered, like measurement and precise measurement. And now people were putting a teaspoon of this powder and leveling it off with a knife.

So when I played with my dogs under the house, in the sand, I had to learn about measurements. I certainly experienced the concept of delayed gratification, which, if I said I wanted something, it was already there. And now her needs were more immediate than mine. She required more and different kinds of attention.