When I was born in 1925, I think our family was pretty much "Father knows best" until 1929, when the stock-market crash ushered in the Great Depression. After that, the kindest way I can describe it is dysfunctional. While we always had food and shelter, there was little else. Love and kindness were displaced by anger and sarcasm. School became my salvation-working on projects and acquiring As, copyediting the high school newspaper, and being on the varsity debate team. Our daily newspaper had Aunt Clara's Page that paid a dollar for every poem or essay published-a double thrill, to be published and have a whole dollar, which surprisingly I was allowed to keep. I also had a few articles… published as an RN that paid considerably more. I graduated from nursing school in 1947, married in 1948, had children in 1949 and 1952, graduated from college in 1980, and then retired in 1987 at the age of sixty-two so that if I died young, I would be able to enjoy some time of my own. I did have several volunteer jobs. In 1996, I had surgery for scoliosis, which did more harm than good and curtailed much of my activity. I wrote this book in 1993 and sent several letters of inquiry, but no one ever read it. In 2011, my son read it and offered to get it published.