It was a decrepit building, not really fit for anything more than storage. My father always said that walking inside reminded him of walking into the aquarium store that his father would take him to when he was a little kid. Strange how dropping me off and picking me up from kindergarten made my dad think of Siamese fighting fish and freshwater tanks.

To me, however, this drab, befittingly cruciform building was my baptism into the world of religious schooling. Within the boundaries of those butter cream-tinted cinder block walls, I wrote my first words, made my first fumbling attempts at friendships, first learned that I was loved by a supreme being