A stream of consciousness: My first awareness of how I fit in the universe. (c) Nita Walker Boles

For various reasons, change was our constant companion as I grew up.  Maybe we learned resilience because of it, but we considered it normal that we knew how to pack a house for moving. Within the first 8 years of my life we changed residences from the farm in Missouri to Kansas City, Missouri. Then we moved to a basement apartment somewhere in Denver for a brief stay before living for less than 2 years in the little cottage on Cherokee street, Then we moved to the house on East 12^th Avenue where we stayed about two and a half or 3 years, then to Josephine Street, where we lived for about two years before we moved on to Colorado Springs for the summer and autumn of my 3^rd grade schooling. But by Thanksgiving, to be specific, on my birthday, we had moved to Pueblo, where we would stay until the end of my seventh grade year. That is an average of once a year. It didn't seem so bad.

But my oldest sister, Nina, even as a young married woman, often stressed to us the importance of putting down roots. Beside God and our family, the only constant in our life was the beauty of Colorado. Over the years, reading the Bible as I saw my father do unpretentiously each day, and praying in my room at the end of the day, and when ever I felt the need for divine guidance, kept me close to God. 

Church was an adjunct to this constant practice of what I instinctively knew to do. Church was a place to gather with like-minded individuals. And to sing hymns of gratitude and of supplication to our Father in Heaven. 

We were rooted in our relationship with Him, and, so I suppose, all the early moving about was irrelevant.

We truly did have a rather nomadic existence. I was born on the farm in Missouri, near the Arkansas Ozarks.My earliest memory of Missouri, in fact possibly my earliest memory,  was of the green beadboard shelf on the back porch where the hand pump supplied water and my mother pumping it up into a basin. The beadboard was a milkwashed green and was the counter upon which the hand pump rested.  It is likely I remember it because it might have been a convenient spot to change diapers.

My grandmother Walker's farm diaries, written scarcely half a mile from the place of my birth, mentions towns like Neosho, Cape Girardeau as shopping destinations, or places to get an ice cream cone. She references events I was there for not because we lived there, but because we had come back to visit after our moves first to Kansas City and then Denver.

My single memory of Kansas City was throwing my older sister, Mary's china out the second story window, and laughing as they made a tinkling noise when they shattered below. My sister had soft, dark, curly hair and a dimple to rival Shirley Temple. She was kind and absolutely beautiful to my eyes. A lot of my childhood was spent studying her face and ways, admiring her.

I don't remember more than the look of disappointment, not anger, that I had broken her dishes—at least some of them. She just looked ruefully at me and did not cry when our Mother berated her for leaving them within my 18 month old reach.

The next thing I remember was the basement we occupied in Denver briefly before moving to the house at 603 N. Cherokee Street. There was a sailor who visited us—a relative? The son of the house's owner?---in the basement apartment. I remember being charmed by his white cap and uniform.

But I seemed to blink my eyes to find us in the house on Cherokee Street, and my beautiful sister was gone to school. I surveyed the neighborhood from my rusty tricycle, noting the different architectural features of each cottage along the way. It was all mine, every tree and shrub memorized along with the homes they complimented. Other people might have lived in them, but they were in my world, and I liked every detail, every fragrance, every noise, city or train, voices or rain. It was all for my delight and exploration.

It seemed just that our mother and father were beautiful and handsome, respectively. Mother was tall, willowy, and had campaign blonde hair. Daddy was cool before Boogie was cool. He sported the same hat, the same business suit as he went off to work, a cigarette inevitably between his index and middle fingers.

Mother explored the tables of fabric within short bus rides or walking distance of our home not far off Alameda street, and made clothing that rivaled any designer's for us, and for herself. We starred as models for her sewing club in a television advertisement. I remember the blaring lights, and having her hiss from behind a curtain, “Turn around!” and feeling foolish.

I shouldn't have. We were beautiful children in a happy little world of our own. Before I could read Fun With Dick and Jane, my peers were dressed, lived lives like, and looked like the characters from the beloved first reader series. Mother was close friends with Mary Walsh who lived across the street from us, and who had two boys about our same ages.

Our mothers also shared babysitting from time to time, and we happily ran through each other's houses. It was on one of those occasions that our mother discovered that the youngest of her friend's children was sick with a fever and a dreaded red rash. When she returned from her excursion, Mother remarked anxiously about the signs of measles, and was astonished to hear her say she knew he had them when she left.

Two weeks later, Mary, Mother, and I were all very sick with the Red Measles. Mother never forgave her.

We lived on Cherokee long enough for Mother to have disappeared for a few days while we stayed at Mrs. Walsh's house, and for her to return with a baby brother in her arms. When she finally put him down on a mat, I climbed onto her lap, a big lump in my throat. I was so glad to snuggle against her. She wore a navy blue silk dress with black spider webs woven to make a consistent pattern. She was beautiful, her hair well set, but I noticed her red lipstick needed freshening.

Mother and Daddy had guests, relatives I did not know then, but now believe to be Uncle Smitty and his daughter, Barbara, as they look in pictures like the people in my memory. I don't remember Aunt Jessie—maybe she had gone travelling, as she so frequently did. They watched our new brother, David, as he performed a number of amazing tricks, like raising his head and turning his face from one side to the other, his arms and legs spread-eagle. After a couple of stunts like that netted him coos of delight and approval from the adults in the room, I remember thinking, “Oh, David, you show-off!” and retreating in disgust at his basking in adoration.

The easily-charmed adults left eventually and we resumed normal life, but shortly our growing family was installed in a beautiful Bungalow at 630 East 12^th Avenue, just a block from the Governor's Mansion, and a short distance from the Capital. The home had been built in the 20's or 30's for someone who would have moved in important circles within the Colorado Capital Hill society.  

Azhar began renting from us, his quarters in the beautiful library upstairs, soon after we moved in. The warm wood that made up the bench, the stairs and landing, and all the railings and door and window frames also graced the shelves of the library.

When we couldn't go out front we played on the porch, which was enclosed the length of the living room, and bathed in milk-washed green paint. Both the outside front reception area of the porch, accessible from the entry, and the inside reception area were graced with benches to allow one to linger. 

The side walks were made of red sandstone or was it slate? They made a sort of crunchy sound when you walked on them. David was soon big enough to ride a bullet-shaped vacuum cleaner that was, to him, his train, and the joints of the red pavement made just the right noise to affirm his fantasy as he clacked along.

The outside steps were our seats when we were not permitted to go beyond the front gate during our bought with Chicken Pox. I believe all three of us at once. We also gathered our family there for a photo when it came time for Azhar to leave us and return to India.

There was a preschool program at Dora Moore elementary school, and at 3 I began my education, going several days or half days a week. At some point I was deemed big enough to walk the 7 or 8 blocks home alone. I don't know how I failed to get lost because I remember the walk was long and making turns at the right place to go home was essential.

It was about that time that I began also to have a stream of consciousness in which I was at church on Sundays. Mr. and Mrs. Sommers taught the Sunbeam class. We were 3 and we met in a room upstairs I believe over the baptistery in the old main building of Broadway Baptist Church in Denver.

Lining up to follow the Sommers to our classroom in the sanctuary behind the podium, amber stained glass streamed a kind of blessed light from above our heads. I felt warm and loved, certain that God loved me, and I smiled back up toward Heaven, thankful.

We learned the Bible stories, like Samuel in the Temple, and sang the songs like Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam, and Tell Me the Stories of Jesus. I never, never doubted God's interest in me, His Personal interest. I understood that God was our Heavenly Father, and that Jesus was our Savior, to Whom we owed gratitude and allegiance.

As soon as I could read for myself, I began to review the actual record in the Bible of the little stories we were taught in Sunday School and during Bible School in the summer. Very early on, I knew as I read them that God offered to me the same promises He had offered to Abraham and all his posterity in exchange for obedience to His laws.

I don't remember when I started to pray privately, but I did, fully expecting answers to my prayers. I knew God could communicate through thoughts, dreams, and impressions from my own experience, and through stories that trickled in from the experiences of other family members during significant times of their lives. These were just facts to me, then a little girl of 3, 4, 5, 6 years old. Absolute trust and faith in God.

A;though we were not spared adversity, we were blessed richly. Within a small circle from our various homes in the Capital Hill area of Denver were the Zoo and the Aviary, beautiful parks, such as Washington and Congress Parks, and the Museum of Natural History. Our parents took every opportunity to take us to these city places, and, no matter where we lived, to the natural refreshment found within the embrace of the Rocky Mountains.  

The world, my world, was a beautiful place. There were mountains, blue and green in the spring and summer, gold and red in the fall, and graced with pure white snow in the winters. Streams and rivers, rocks and trees proclaimed there was a God in Heaven. Birds, flowers, rain, snow, all the wonders of the world were evidence that He cares and that we have beauty to walk in.