I was born lucky. Lucky to have come to parents who had three boys and had just about given up hope of ever having a girl. I was lucky to have been born in the Bronx at a time when kids roamed freely through the streets all day long. But maybe most of all, I was luckiest to have the skyline of Manhattan to stare at while I hanged upside down on the jungle gym in the playground. Sometimes I'd sit on a bench by myself and just stare at it. For me it was like the Emerald City in The Wizard of Oz.

My brothers say they don't remember me. I guess that's because when I wasn't staring into space or dawdling, I was at the library across the street from the Civil War cemetery with a book across my lap. I just had to crack open a picture book, smell it and I was gone. My favorite was Babar. I don't think I'd ever even heard of France but that place and the Old Lady's elegant house and balcony completely captivated me. As did any book that had drawings of far away places.

If I wasn't staring at books or daydreaming, I was drawing. I wanted to be an artist for as long as I can remember. Sometimes I wanted to be other things as well. For years I wanted to be a nun artist. I think I wanted to be a nun because I would have liked to boss kids and wear the long skirts that nuns wore then. I wanted to swish up and down the aisles between rows of desks like Sister William did when we sang out our multiplication tables.

I suspect most kids take in things literally and I was no exception. I once saw an illustration of 'what you can be'. One of the occupations illustrated was an artist. He wore a beret and a smock with a bow. I didn't like that uniform very much but thought that was an artist's uniform and much like a firefighter's or a police officer's, it came with the job. But I thought that as a nun I would look ridiculous with a beret on top of my habit, so that's when I believe I lost my vocation.

Like everyone, I grew up and so did my love of art. When I graduated from St. Barnabas High School, I went to the School of Visual Arts. Soon after graduating from SVA, I moved to Montreal which looked to me very much like the pictures in the Babar books. I have traveled to many faraway places and live in Toronto, Canada now.

I dawdle and daydream and gaze at picture books. The best thing is that now I even make some. Though I'm too far away to stare at the skyline of Manhattan, I think of it all the time. And sometimes I put it in my books.