Memories act as markers for our lives, and our first ones often reveal a lot about how we see the world.  What you make of your childhood makes you, I believe.  One of my first vivid memories involves a small house I lived in at the age of three or four.  We lived in Colorado at the time and were quite poor as my parents attended graduate school.  I would walk up and down the block and once knocked on a neighbor’s door to see if she had any children.  I remember her house as pink and her hair as…