From my childhood in Memphis, I loved art and music and theater. I remember visits to the Brooks Museum to see the Kress collection of Renaissance art. Saturday mornings I listened to “Let’s Pretend” on the radio and on Monday nights the “Lux Radio Theater.” My parents took me to the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo at the auditorium and operettas like “The Desert Song” and “The Student Prince” at the open-air shell in Overton Park during the summer. I read books that kindled my imagination. Beginning with The Wizard of Oz, The Arabian Nights and The Secret Garden, I lost myself in stories. Throughout my school years, I discovered Hemingway, Fitzgerald, the Brontes—ancient Greece through the books of Mary Renault—the history and life of Afghanistan, Hawaii, and the South Pacific through the life and characters in James Michener’s novels. I was always trying to see myself in an author’s stories. Would I live in Europe and take my long hair down with a single pin like the nurse Katherine in A Farewell to Arms? My sister Katherine said I was more like Melanie in Gone with the Wind. For years I hated thinking of myself as being as drab and dutiful as I imagined Melanie to be. I wanted to be Scarlett. After I saw the movie as an adult, I realized that it was Melanie who had the courage to kill the marauding Yankee soldier, and it was Melanie who had all the inner strength. I began to admire her and understand the value of that inner strength. Certainly I needed it when I went through a divorce at age forty. For a time, I was off balance. All those years of loving art and music and theater created a base to help show the way to getting my balance back.