I was born in Bloomington, Indiana. I was due on Valentines Day but arrived a week early; my mother blamed this on a really exciting IU basketball game. My father was a psychologist at the University, but not that kind of psychologist. He studied animal behavior, and especially learning. He ran rats through mazes. My mother was a polio survivor, a schoolteacher, and a pioneer in the co-operative nursery school movement. Along with basketball, my family loved books. The day I got my first library card there was a special dinner to celebrate. And before I could read myself, I remember my father reading The Iliad to me, although really he was reading it to my older brother, I just got to be there. A shocking book! And I remember Mary Poppins and Winnie the Pooh in my fathers voice and a bunch of other things that werent movies yet. My parents strongly disapproved of the Disney version of things. Pooh believed in a spoonful of honey, but Mary Poppins did not.

I have great memories of Bloomington. Our block was packed with kids and we played enormous games that covered whole blocks of territory, with ten kids to a side. One of my childhood friends was Theodore Deppe, whos now an outstanding poet. I planned to grow up to be a dog trainer myself.

Both my parents were raised in southern California and so regarded our time in Indiana as an exile. When I was 11 years old my father was offered a job with Encyclopedia Britannica that necessitated our moving to Palo Alto, California. My parents were thrilled to be coming back. My older brother, for reasons that escape me, was equally pleased. I was devastated.

Palo Alto was much more sophisticated than Bloomington. At recess in Bloomington we played baseball, skipped rope, played jacks or marbles depending on the season. In Palo Alto girls my age were already setting their hair, listening to the radio, talking about boys. I considered it a sad trade. The best thing about the sixth-grade was that my teacher,Read Less