It was perhaps my eighth birthday when it all started. It’s hard to recall from this far in the future. My grandfather, a gentle old man, bought me a doll to play with and together we sat around a small cake with only four candles upon the top. They weren’t the fancy candles that you see on all the cakes now a days. We didn’t have the money for such fanciful things when I was a kid. No, they were just small nubs of candles that were nearing the end of their usefulness. I remember one of them was actually rather pretty. It was deep red color that my grandfather told me he had used to use on his ‘date…

It was perhaps my eighth birthday when it all started. It’s hard to recall from this far in the future. My grandfather, a gentle old man, bought me a doll to play with and together we sat around a small cake with only four candles upon the top. They weren’t the fancy candles that you see on all the cakes now a days. We didn’t have the money for such fanciful things when I was a kid. No, they were just small nubs of candles that were nearing the end of their usefulness. I remember one of them was actually rather pretty. It was deep red color that my grandfather told me he had used to use on his ‘date…

It was perhaps my eighth birthday when it all started. It’s hard to recall from this far in the future. My grandfather, a gentle old man, bought me a doll to play with and together we sat around a small cake with only four candles upon the top. They weren’t the fancy candles that you see on all the cakes now a days. We didn’t have the money for such fanciful things when I was a kid. No, they were just small nubs of candles that were nearing the end of their usefulness. I remember one of them was actually rather pretty. It was deep red color that my grandfather told me he had used to use on his ‘date…