Risking the Rapids. Irene O'Garden

it cauterized,” the doctor advises. “Hairbrushing will aggravate it later on.”

      Dad drops us downtown at the Medical Arts Building, but it says here—surprise—Kako, not Mom, accompanies me to the procedure, then takes me home on the streetcar. Mom stays home to print the paper.

      “You sure didn’t like the elevator,” they said when I was older. “You wailed all the way up to the twelfth floor and all the way down.” Yeah, and I might have been wondering where my Mom was.

      I still do.

      And I am not the only one.

      A Crystal Cave

      Whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on in ’56. Dad’s radio station turns to a Top 40 format, and he wants out. WCCO-TV snaps him up as on-camera weatherman and movie host. (He also tries to create a children’s show featuring himself as a friendly pirate, but no go.)

      The Olders are now in high school. Tom’s a freshman at the military academy, Pogo’s a junior, and Kako graduates in June. The phone is either ringing or monopolized, and there’s a flurry of shaving, corsages, and other dating accoutrements. Well, not so much for Kako. She has steadily gained weight and lost confidence.

      For graduation, Mom and Dad buy her a suitcase and take her out to dinner. Just the three of them. The kicker comes over dessert.

      “I’ve decided to become a nun. A Benedictine.”

      Clink go their coffee cups. They are openmouthed.

      “Honey, you’re too young,” Dad insists.

      “No I’m not. I turn eighteen in December, and I can enter then.”

      “I know it sounds exciting now, but please, honey, wait a year. You need to live a little.”

      “I’ve lived enough to know it’s what I want, Dad.” She is adamant. She wants to be out of the house and free of her undeserved duties of motherhood, but of course cannot state her true feelings. So she insists on her “vocation.”