'I write to make it real.' How often I have said that over the years? I didn't make it up to sound clever, it is what I do and who I am. In a life filled to overflowing with richness and challenges, there has been much to write about and I have. Flower Child was born when I was thrust unexpectedly back sixty-something years into my childhood by the perfume of a flower in a quiet room. Flower Child is a tiny glimpse of a time, the place and some of the people that laid the foundations of who I was to become. It is where I learned the standards and values that I have lived my life by. In the doubt-filled aftermath of a recent challenge to the core of who I am and how I live, I have again found healing in writing. These are my memories.