My husband's brother and his wife went to Logan for Michael Ballam's Utah Festival Opera series. While they were there, they took a picture of the Young family's home, the one they lived in before moving to Provo.

As I sat looking at the picture of the lovely little red brick house, it got me thinking how different my own life would be had they stayed there.

And how different my husband's would be.

For one, Grit would likely have played football for Utah State, which would have made my brothers happy, as that is their alma mater.

However, it isn't likely he would have married me. I grew in New Mexico and attended Brigham Young University.

Would we have met? Would we have had children?

If we had met, in Logan, would our son, Steve, have become an NFL Hall of Famer out of Utah State?

Silly — but natural — thoughts.

In Ivan Doig's book "The Whistling Season," the narrator, an aging Montana state superintendent of schools, says:

"If I have learned anything in a lifetime spent overseeing schools, it is that childhood is the one story that stands by itself in every soul. As surely as a compass needle knows north, that is what draws me to these remindful rooms as if the answer I need by the end of the day is written in the dust that carpets them."

Whenever my husband and I drive through Farmington and take a right at the rock church across from Lagoon Lane, it touches my soul and points true north, even though we're heading east.

The Forest Service building is no longer there, and the house we moved from when I was 16 has changed. But my grandmother Steed's home, at the base of the mountain, still looks the same.

Perhaps our street was wider. I don't remember, but for some reason the neighborhood kids for blocks around would gather for games of Red Rover and kick the can in front of our house until it was dark.

There was a sidewalk I used to roller skate up and down, stopping to tighten the skates with a metal key so they dug tight into my leather shoes.

Knowing some of our background explains us to others; we learn where they are coming from.

When S.E. Hinton wrote "The Outsiders," the book's popularity changed the perception of "greasers" for all time. If you got out of high school without reading it, you should still pick it up.

TV shows, such as "Little House on the Prairie" and "The Brady Bunch," are still popular today and teach kids some pretty positive lessons about growing up.

Walt Disney declared, "Too many people grow up. That's the real trouble with the world, too many people grow up. They forget. They don't remember what it's like to be 12 years old."

I suppose that is why revisiting our childhood can in many ways help us understand the adult we have become.

We each have a story to tell, our own personal novel. Good or bad, it is the core of who we are.

e-mail: sasyoung2@aol.com