A lot of the traumas in my life seem to revolve around overactive kidneys. When I was seven we lived in a third floor apartment in a residence with a winding staircase that sort of meandered from the entrance. There was also an eerie dark basement for storage and the washing machine. I sometimes helped mom carry laundry down there, but I was forbidden to go into the basement alone. One day playing outside in the spacious yard, climbing trees and chasing butterflies led to my delaying too long to make it up the stairs. In desperation I sneaked into the creepy basement and peed down the drain. I managed to escape both detection and any imagined ogres. But as I was saying my prayers in bed that night, it hit me, “Oh NO! I have to make my first confession in the morning! What am I going say? Peeing down the drain is the worst thing I’ve done. How many rosaries would I have to say for that?” The next day red faced and shaking I entered the confessional and blurted out, “Bless me father, for I have sinned.  I peed down the drain in the basement.” There was a long silence. I got so nervous, I was afraid I’d pee in the confessional! Finally the young priest choked out, “Say three Hail Marys and don’t do it again.”  I escaped to a pew and rattled off my three Hail Marys breathing a sigh of relief, but wondering if there was a book somewhere with penances for specific sins like peeing down a drain.  Later as an adult I was pretty sure that my first confession was a high point of hilarity at quite a few priestly gatherings.

About this time my mom had a very early miscarriage and had to spend a night in the hospital. I stayed with friends overnight and heard the mother tell someone that mom’s baby had been flushed down the toilet. I didn’t know how babies got here, but that haunted me.

I loved my school and Sister Rose and weekends were wonderful. We could ride the street cars to Forest Park. It was huge and had an amazing zoo. Mom packed picnics and we went almost every weekend. My dad loved taking me to the zoo, telling me about the animals and teaching me funny old Uncle Remus songs about them. But the best things the zoo had were three animal shows like in circuses.

The chimpanzees were smart and funny doing tricks that would even be hard for a child. They wore costumes and imitated people making everyone laugh.

The lion and tiger acts were kind of scary. I yelled loudly, “Noooo!” when the showman put his head in the lions’ mouth! And I would put my hands over my eyes when he would make a sharp noise by cracking a whip and the tiger would roar and snap at him. Dad assured me that it was safe, but I wasn’t convinced.

The elephant show was amazing too. Girls in sparkly swim suits and feathers on their heads rode them and even stood doing ballet on their backs while they marched in a circle.

But the best part was us getting to actually ride one of them. The elephant just had a blanket on its back with the trainer sitting right behind his ears and five or six of us kids hanging on to each other behind him. I was the last one and I loved when we were riding around, but the elephant getting up and down to let us on and off was freaky. First it got on its front feet with us clinging to keep from sliding off his back end. Then it tilted left and then right on its back feet with all of us squealing. The Zoo was wonderful. I never got tired of it.

The park also had a hill with layers of fountains of water with changing colored lights and there was a snack building at the top with music.. And just before sunset we would walk over to the edge of the woods at the bottom and watch the clouds of birds fly in to settle in the trees for the night. In the winter we went sledding in the park.

There even was a glass building called the Jewel Box with all sorts of brightly colored flowers and a tiny mill house with a turning wheel that sent water trickling out along a bubbling creek, There was music and scattered figures among the flowers.

It was a magical two years of happy times with my mom and dad.