Body, Mind, Spirit

From as far back as I could remember I had wanted to be a nurse.From junior high on I planned my classes around going to nursing school. I took every biology and science class I could find. For Christmas I would ask for things like The Invisible Man, a clear plastic replica of the human body with organs that I spent hours painting to match the real organs. I asked for a chemistry set and a biology set. I spent countless hours of bliss looking at everything from dirt to skin under the microscope. I was obsessed with what was "inside." I wanted to know how everything worked. My mom couldn't understand how I could spend hours dissecting the frog that came in my biology set. The smell of formaldehyde, which preserved the frog in its tiny jar, permeated our kitchen for over a year. She was not too pleased when I ruined her best kitchen knife because I wanted to see what was inside Goldie the goldfish-after it died of course. But she finally put her foot down when I came home with a dead cat in my red Radio Flyer wagon.