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Deranda And The Pediatrician, S. Ray Granade

Creative Works

The winter after her tenth birthday brought the crisis with it. That crisis compounded a wretched combination of willfulness and unrecognized reality with timing. The compound meant that she might not live to be eleven— however impossible that seemed at the time.

She was a child who loved the outdoors and its beauty, but also loved order, neatness, and cleanliness. Those two loves warred within her, with the best manifestation being a penchant for interrupting her early preoccupation with making mud-pies for frequent trips indoors to wash up before returning to “cooking.” The long walkway from her first childhood home …