My dad was a manager for a department store chain. As stores were being established around the United States, he and my mother would live in one town for a few months to a year so my dad could complete the opening before moving on to another branch store.

Along this journey, they ended up in Freeport, Long Island, New York. I had been born seven years earlier, and my mother was pregnant again. Little did we know as we moved into our new home that our landlords were Christian Scientists, and that we were now living next door to First Church of Christ, Scientist, Freeport.

As our landlord talked with my mother, my mother confided to her that she’d had many miscarriages and that she felt she was going to experience the same with the baby she was presently carrying. Our landlord gave my mother copies of the Sentinel and The Christian Science Journal to read. I remember their long visits together. When I was invited to go next door to the Christian Science Sunday School, I felt I had found a new home. An inquisitive seven-year-old, I had found a place where I could ask questions of my Sunday School teacher and receive answers based on two books that I began to learn from: the Bible and the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy.