In fact, my father wrote letters to me during my growing-up years, and always started and ended them with telling me that I was the best little girl a daddy could ever have.

Long after we had moved to other houses, my mother told the stories of the big bed kept in the middle of the front room, right beneath the window where we slept, and the friend named Pud that shared those days with me. I don't really remember any of that, of course. But I've heard the stories so often, I feel like I do.

No doubt you have stories like that in your family, too, that are already being told over and over again, about the days when you were really small. Don't you love hearing them? I did. That's why I treasure photographs; they tell stories that even words cannot.

We moved to Falcon Drive when I was five. When I think childhood, this place is where my heart is. I lived here from about five until I was almost ten. I made snow forts and tents, played dolls and house. Library and school. My brother collected baseball cards and marbles. A baby sister joined the family here. I now belonged to a family of five. Not one photograph exists of us all together. I regret that.