"That's the store that we need to go to and open the door and put our money in." (At age 3. While driving by the new Toys 'R' Us.)

'Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.'

'A duck!... A baby duck.' (Squealing about a birthday card on her third birthday on Puerta Vallarta, Mexico.

Nobody has ever before asked the nuclear family to live all by itself in a box the way we do. With no relatives, no support, we've put us in an impossible situation.

All I am, or can be, I owe to my angel mother.