Doris Ebberly wanted her children's lives to be all hollyhocks and hydrangeas and Norman Rockwell sliding down the chimney at Christmas time.  So when her eldest son announced from his tree top that he was never coming down - ever, she was not prepared to acquiesce.

   "You are." she called. "You most certainly are. And right this minute, too."

   "Right this minute" was precisely one-twenty on a mild June afternoon; the very afternoon when, at four thirty-three, Jason Ebberly would turn eleven years old. The event was to be celebrated by a dozen of Jason's closest friends - due to arrive at any moment.

    "If you aren't down here to open the door for your guests there will be no party." Doris' threat was directed to the clump of leaves closest to the area from which her son's voice had issued.  The clump of leaves remained silent.

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Escarla

     On a mild morning in early spring of her seventy-second year, Escarla Ramana de la Junta sat on her veranda and began to write her autobiography.  She had to discard the first page three times, because her tears made the ink run.

    "I lived the most important part of my life," she wrote, "on the island of Quahanda.  It is important because it is an island, as I am an island, and because it is lost, as I am lost.  I remember a small house with walls so thick you could lie on the windowsills, and dusty, yellow dirt streets which were hard to look at in the sunlight and which never made mud, even in the rainy season.  I remember Quahanda, but I do not remember my life there . And that makes it important, too.

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