After that first brief image, looking at the light under the door and listening to my mother’s voice, the memories of childhood come in indistinguishable order. We moved once, when I was 10 or so, and everything I remember is divided into the old house and the new house.

I’ve driven by the house in recent years. It’s an average three bedroom tract home in a pleasant middle-class neighborhood. Built in 1955 or so, with a modest front yard and a walk-out basement which opens into the back yard. It looks like a peaceful home in a peaceful neighborhood. Once I saw someone working in the yard, and thought of asking if they would let me see the house, on account of it being where I grew up. They probably would — Minnesotans are nice and unsuspicious like that. But I didn’t. They would ask me if I had good memories, and I would have to lie, because it’s their house now and I wouldn’t want to make them like it less.

I was, by all accounts, a pretty good little child. In fact my mother said many times that she liked me a lot until I was about four. I had a quiet temperament — even before I could read she could sit me down with a stack of magazines and I would spend an hour looking through them. She could dress me up with a hat and little white gloves, and people would say what a cute little girl I was and she loved that. Of course, people say that about all little kids — I wonder if she realized that. Anyway, at this stage I had yet to disappoint.

Besides being adorable, the major task of my preschool years was learning to read. It was very important to my mother that we learn to read as early as possible, and apparently I learned when I was three. By the time I went to kindergarten, I could read second or third-grade books. This isn’t that unusual now, many kids pick up some reading skills in pre-school. But I didn’t go to pre-school, and reading wasn’t something I “picked up.” I remember long sessions of reading aloud. They seemed long to me anyway — but 10 minutes is forever to a preschooler. I can still hear my mother’s voice saying — sometimes yelling — “sound it out.” She was a big believer in phonics at a time when the schools were mostly using different techniques.

Despite being a generally cooperative child and a reasonably quick learner, I think even before kindergarten I was willing to work around requirements I found unreasonable. I distinctly recall one day working with some flashcards. There were three words that I could not figure out, so my mother gave me those three cards and sent me to my room. I was not to leave my room until I figured out the three words, and I was not to cheat and look at the pictures on the reverse of the cards.

Well, duh. As soon as I was alone I looked at the line drawings on the front of the cards. I don’t remember what two of them were — but one of them had a rather strange drawing and I couldn’t figure out what it was a picture of. I puzzled over it a long time. I did other stuff. Finally, I was saved. My dad came into the room to put up a new shelf or some dad-like thing of that sort. The very picture of innocence, I went over to him with the mysterious card.

“Daddy, what is this word?”

“Oh, that word is ‘cookie’.”

Aha! Of course I thanked him, and then, not being stupid, I waited for him to leave. He went to the basement or the garage or where ever dads go on the weekends. I gave it a little longer to reduce suspicion and went out and read the three words to my mother and was released. I think I must still remember this incident because it was one of my rare victories. It may have been my only victory for a long time.

To be fair, I was and am an excellent reader. And I hear people mispronounce words because they don’t “sound them out” and I always smile and feel just the tiniest bit superior for a second. And, despite the painful process, I learned to love reading and spent a good deal of my childhood years escaping into a hundred alternate worlds. Of course, I would have learned to read anyway, and I probably would have learned to love it. It’s too bad that in learning to love books, I learned to like my mother a little less.