It is a hot summer in New Jersey in 1976.  Although simply describing it as hot doesn’t really do it justice.  Stifling and oppressive sounds a lot more like it.  But being just six years old, with the majority of your time spent jumping through oscillating sprinklers and into a pool, you don’t really notice the heat all that much anyway.  The heat cannot touch you when you are endlessly wet on the outside while practically frozen on the inside from the constant flow and steady diet of ice cream and popsicles.  Frozen treats that you more than likely bought from a man driving a musical truck with a rainbow-sprinkled ice cream cone painted on the side.  And you appreciate those frozen treats even more when you climb up to the top of the playground slide and then proceed to feel the burn in spades as you slowly inch your way down the hot, dry metal.   So, with your now burned red bottom, you quickly move to the swing and pick up where you left off the day before in your ongoing pursuit to touch an actual real-life cloud with the tip of your finger.  But, alas, no matter how far you stretch your arm, you can’t seem to reach it just yet.  You spend some time sulking in disappointment as you consider the possibility that it might have something to do with your height.  Maybe next year when you are taller and your arms are longer, you will finally be able to touch it.   Maybe you just need to be more patient.  Or at least that is what you have been told.  Having given it a good go, you begin to steady your legs in order to bring yourself back down to Earth and out of the vast blue sky that is filled with those fluffy white and misshapen clouds that you so desperately want to touch.   As the swing now gently rocks back and forth, lulling you to sleep like a baby inside its cradle, you lean backwards while holding on tightly to the chains that the swing is fastened to.  And with a peaceful feeling of pure tranquility, you instinctively close your eyes.  When you reopen them and look up at the sky, you notice that the clouds are changing and slowly beginning to take shape.  Like a dream that the universe brings to life in moving performances beneath the shining sun amid a clear blue sky.   Becoming imperfect and animated images of those familiar things that are usually found illustrated in a children’s picture book.  Like a giant whale swimming through the sky with a monkey on his back who appears to be waving to you.  Or a dinosaur standing beside a tall castle of equal measure.  Or a pack of snarling wolves on the prowl circling above you from their aerial view.  In fact, it is those wolves that jolt you from your sense of calm.  You quickly snap out of it and hurriedly get off the swing, daring yourself to look back up to see if the wolves are still watching you.  You look around to see if anyone else sees that the wolves are about to attack, but no one else seems to see them.  And as you fearfully glance back up towards the sky, it is clear that they are not only watching you, they are following you.  It’s time to go inside. A child, who just ran for her life away from a pack of snarling wolves that were seemingly created exclusively for her by the clouds, cannot be easily convinced that they were not real.  Running away with a vivid imagination in tow that is as wild as the wolves she was so feverishly trying to escape.  Of course, at six years old your perspective can oftentimes seem to be outrageously distorted, but that is only because you are still in possession of a wonderfully overactive imagination.   You can’t help yourself.  Yet even while your young mind can wander to unreasonable depths and you are fairly certain that the wolves who were formed by the clouds cannot really harm you, you are still keenly aware of the fact that wolves are far from fictitious.  Being well-versed in Little Red Riding Hood’s scary encounter, you know that wolves don’t always disguise themselves in your grandma’s nightgown or shroud themselves in the clothing of a sheep.  You also know that wolves are not really found in the clouds where they can magically transform into a harmless puppy with one strong gust of wind.  Being young and impressionable, however, it is sometimes difficult to separate literal from theoretical, fact from fiction or real versus make believe.  It is through these imaginary episodes that you begin to understand the difference between what is real and what is not.  For a child, it is pretty straightforward and simple:  either people who you already know well or those who you briefly come in contact with make you feel safe and protected, or they don’t.  As Maya Angelou said, “If someone shows you who they really are, believe them.”  And the same can be said about wolves, fictitious or otherwise.  Sometimes people show you exactly who they are which could very well be a wolf in wolf’s clothing.  They are not always compelled to hide or pretend to be someone or something else.  They do not watch you from a distance or secretly follow you home.  They do not need to sneak into your house through a small crack in a window because they live there and have a key to the front door. Being six years old in the year 1976 is a significant part of Jenny’s story.  It is the year that she first came face-to-face with a real-life wolf.  One of many memories that will not be easily forgotten and will haunt her for years to come.  Like seeing wolves made of clouds in the sky while the day is bright and the …