My mother told me stories, which in her telling created such deep  images I can no longer tell whether they were hers, or ones I took to be what I remembered, and projected onto my own screen of memory. Over the years, it’s become almost impossible to tell. But this story is worth the while, for it’s the beginning of a life of happenings everyone bumbles through which in relating become stories, and in their accounting become personal stories.  And they are unique for, after all, every life is worth its telling.

As I grew out of infanthood, the high chair was the place for feeding, and handy for escape. The screen door to the kitchen was fixed with a hook, and I had learned to unhook it and scoot out to the back yard and play.  After mastering the art of unlatching, mom would screw the hook farther up the door, out of reach, or so she thought. Feeding younger brother Bob kept the high rising chair in the kitchen, and after lunch time one day, mom was in the front room when the door bell rang. There in the hall was a policeman clutching a small boy in one arm and a tricycle in the other. Flabbergasted, mom had very little to say except to ask, “Where were you going, Gogi? Mom told me  I said,  “I want to see the quack-quacks” A neighborhood park was down the street. I had pushed the high chair up to the door, stood on it to unlatch the hook and went out to fetch my tricycle for what was my first road out into the world.