My growing-up years were good. I had loving, demonstrative, balanced, educated parents and a stable home. No one was addicted or abusive or divorced. I have happy memories of my childhood, later adolescence and young adulthood, and I still realize how lucky I was to have that influence and to have been able to pass that stability on to my own son.

I was the middle of three sisters and was a bit of a hellion. I'm not sure my parents always enjoyed the task of raising me, and two or three years of my early adolescence had a few bumps because I was just so bored with school and my energies weren't properly channeled. I seem to have weathered the storm pretty well, however, and emerged in one piece.