Strange, what sticks in a child's mind. My husband always says that children recall those times most often when those upon whom they most depend for their security, their emotional well-being, the values they emulate, and their hopes for outcomes even at their young age, fail them. Mostly, he contends, because the child senses a glimmer of a notion that he/she is not that valued after all.

I can dimly recall my father presenting me with a tricycle. That would have been perhaps when I was four. He patiently taught me the rudiments of empowerment in sitting on the thing and pumping it with my legs, just barely touching the pedals. My father was physically small, and he was able to squeeze himself onto the thing to give me an idea of how it would locomote. I may have thought this undignified of him; surprising at the very least.

When someone who lived on the street bullied me and took possession of the tricycle I went home crying. My father insisted that I stand up for myself, and confront the bully and get the tricycle back on my own. I resisted, telling him I was too afraid. Disgusted with my lack of character he went down the street himself and wheeled the then-abandoned tricycle back to where we lived, in a rented flat in a house on an inner-city street where, when I was old enough to go to school, I needed only to cross the street, for there was the school, directly across from the house where we lived.

In time I became comfortable with playing on my own in the schoolyard; eventually brave enough to try the swings on my own. I hadn't many toys. But I did have books at an early age. That was my father again. My parents were poor but as the old saying goes we were never hungry. I recall my shame when I realized that I was the only girl in my class when I did begin school, wearing broken shoes. And then I began to appreciate how well some other children were dressed, and I was shabbily clothed.

Although my parents just managed to pay their way into the future with their four small children -- I was the first-born and the next was born four years later -- I was sent to a socially-progressive Jewish school. They may have struggled to afford the modest fee for the parochial school, but I became accustomed to after-school and week-end classes until I was in my teens. My husband, in fact, when we were fourteen, used to wait outside the community centre where the classes were held, until I was free to join him.