Valerie often makes reference to her “anemious childhood.” Valerie is given to exaggeration and bombast, but in this case she is fairly accurate. From the winds blowing off the bay to the storms that raged between her parents, there was always turbulence. She hated every minute of it. Cursed the winds and her parents. There was not a peaceful moment in Valerie’s childhood existence. She slept with her fists balled up. Her jaws ached every morning from the grinding. In adulthood she’s constructed a proper fiction of “rough times building character.” But she always says it, teeth clinched, fists balled.