For the first several years of my life, my family lived in the city of Finlay, Ohio. Finlay, back in the mid to late 1950s was much smaller than it is today but it was still large enough that many of the houses sit side by side.

My brother, sister, and I did not have much of a yard to play in, and my mother even back in those relatively safe days did not allow us to play out on the street as many of our friends did. So we were pretty much confined to the house most of the year.

However, every summer the day that school got out my parents would pack us all up and we would drive through the night finally reaching the little cabin they had built and owned on in Northern Michigan on the shores of Mullet Lake.

Oh how we looked forward to those summers! For three whole months we were free to play out of doors, to swim, fish, and to have all kinds of adventures! Summer’s were a magical time for us all, but one summer in particular I truly learned about magic and about love.

I must have been about 5 or 6 that summer. Still young enough to believe anything my big brother and sister told me and I did. When they told me that, a shell I found down at the beach had an entire army of snails inside that would come out while I was sleeping and turn me into slime I threw the shell outside my window and slept for days without the benefit of fresh air.

When they told me that the crows that would gather on the telephone lines every morning were waiting to fly into my hair and build a nest I started to wear a baseball cap.

So, when my brother woke me up one night well after dark and told me to get dressed the stars had come down out of the sky and were flying around in the yard of course I believed him.

Dressing as quickly as I could I followed him outside. There they were twinkling on and off just as he promised. I sat down on the back step and watched those stars for what must have been hours until I could stay awake no longer.

I remember telling my brother how I wished that I had just one or two stars to take back to my room with me so that I could watch them until I fell asleep.