When I was a young girl, okay, before most people can remember, I used to enter the flower-arranging contest our elementary school held each spring. I wasn’t good at much, but I seemed to have a knack for arranging flowers. Fortunately, I had plenty of opportunity to find the ones I needed.

Squirrels: Are they my least favorite mammal? Maybe, maybe not. It depends on who’s living under my deck at the moment. Raccoons or skunks? One time I had a woodchuck, another a possum. But are any of them as unrelenting as squirrels? Well, okay, yeah, they are. But let’s get back to my “pet” peeve of the moment: Squirrels.

Does anyone else read the New York Times book review section and wonder about the “authors” in the “By the Book” section? I use “authors” in quotes because a lot of the authors the Times chooses are celebrities and not those slogging away, day after day, to create a cacophony of words for your delight.

One day, as all four of her children were sitting around the kitchen table, my mother, smoking her cigarette, announced out of nowhere that she would always love our father more than she would love any of us.

I, the second born, was named Carolyn Ann, the Carolyn after my grandmother Caroline, called Carrie. The year I was born was a big year for everything Carol. In my elementary school class there were four Carols and there was I. I have gone through life being called everything except Carolyn. It’s Carol, or Carol Ann, or Caroline. But I happen to like Carolyn. One time a friend asked me what my Hebrew name was. I told her, “It’s Carolyn.”

I never knew why my father had such an intense dislike of me, but it certainly cast a pall over my childhood and adulthood. He was nasty to me; he was nasty to my sons. I will give him this much. He was nice to my daughter.

When I was four, we moved to Highview Avenue in Nanuet, New York. My mother always assured us it was the best street in Nanuet, possible because it was on a hill and some of the houses were quite old.

Why do I find the desert so appealing? I have no idea. It’s a siren song, calling to my soul. Not to mention its pallete of colors that changes as the light changes. I longed for the desert. But how to get there?

Ahoy, Maties, and anchors away! The bitches are back!

My sister hated me. Was it my brilliance that turned her against me? Or was it that time when I encourage her to stick raisins up her nose and my mother had to dig them out.

But back to my preparations for what would be my first and only wedding. So far. No morning of pampering, no make up artist or hair stylist, no decent shower because everyone had taken a shower before me and the water was COLD!.

My parents never read to me when I was a child, but I knew books were important.

Art. I still remember our art teacher’s name. Mr. Shubert. He was a very nice, mild-mannered man, but he never recognized my talent. I had the distinct impression he thought I didn’t have any.

My father’s parents were immigrants from Eastern Europe. Despite the fact that my father topped six feet, his father was five feet two and his mother barely five feet. In fact, all seven children were taller than the parents.

Why do they no longer have music classes in schools? All of us in kindergarten had to purchase a flutophone and learn to play the scales and a few simple tunes.

What is the perfect symbol of the American dream. You got it in one. It’s a bountifully green lawn.

Passing through Oneida, New York, I stop the car where I always stop, in front of the apartment house on Sconondoa Street that bears the name “Paul” on its keystone. Even now I can see my grandfather, with his watery blue eyes, his body bent double due to polio, standing on the stoop, tilting himself backward, waving at me. Would that he were still with us, the man whom I loved with all my heart.

Does anyone else have nightmares about their house? Last night—and may I say I never sleep through the night anymore—I had several fleeting dreams, mostly about the house. I cannot remember most of them. They leave me anxious and forlorn. But the one I do remember is about my garage door. It wasn’t working.

But they’re gone, both Greta and Shelia, and I doubt whether they’ll make a reappearance in any other form. But who knows?

Hard to believe perhaps but I’m a latecomer to the classics. In fact, it was a college roommate my freshman year who introduced me to the “Messiah.”