I don’t think that there is any one book that evokes such vivid memories of my very early childhood as” “The Snowy Day,” “Peter’s Chair,” and “Whistle for Willie.” The first was not read quite as much as the last, which I have to say is probably my all-time favorite book. I never tire of the words, but it’s the illustrations that really pull me in. Literally. To the kitchen of the first home I lived in with my parents, in Great Neck, New York.

There’s something about the colors, the patterns, that makes me remember the vinyl and printed chairs in our tiny kitchen at that house on Hampshire Road. My parents were still married, my brother was about to come and join his new family from all the way in Bogota, Colombia, and all was good and right with the world. I had a handmade dollhouse from my doting father, and a tennis-buff mother, who I recall always, always wore her tennis whites, which amounted to little more than a very short skirt. She had a pair legs on her, I know that much. And I was nicknamed “Alice” by the neighbors next door, in reference to “Alice in Wonderland.”. Something about the dramatic way in which I ducked through a hole in the hedges to get into their backyard to play with one of the daughters: Lisa, or Pammy. Not Diana, she was too mature for us. All of sixteen.

I recall the day that Diana C. from down the street sat on me. She was a rather large girl, and a bully at that. She wrestled me to the ground and plopped herself right onto my skinny chest. I remember gasping for breath, and thinking to myself that this feeling? It was so much worse then falling off of the jungle gym, flat on my back, and knocking the wind right out of me. I ran all of the way home, crying. All the way home was little more than three houses, on the same side of the street. But when you are five years old, it might as well be a marathon.

I remember my first crush, Paulis. He wore cowboy boots in the summer. He used to lean up against the bar of the swing-set. He was cool. He was six. I remember Abe, my father’s friend, who lived around the corner from us. He was the Somalian and worked at the United Nations. And he had a daughter, Lilah. She was the most exotically beautiful girl I’ve ever known. My mother used to say that boys wouldn’t appreciate her beauty until they were older. But I appreciated it. And I was a kid.

I remember my mom’s best friends, Belle and Gerri. I remember the Volvo station wagon. Stepping Stone Park. Carvel Ice Cream. The Moorehead boys next door. The oldest, the marine? He was the first boy I ever saw naked, through my bedroom window.

Those were special times. Times when I was part of the typical nuclear family. I was young, innocent and fresh. Shortly after these memories, I became older, not-so-innocent and still fresh, but in a much different way. Jaded at 8-years old. So reading these books by Ezra Jack Keats to my own girls just brings me to tears. I think about how fortunate I am to be able to give them the innocent and fresh life that was stolen from me.