1. Poverty
1.1. Poverty doesn't define you.
1.1.1. "Having no radios, few newspapers, and no magazines, we were somewhat unaware of the world outside our community."
1.1.1.1. "Poverty was the cage in which we all were trapped, and our hatred of it was still the vague, undirected restlessness of the zoo-bred flamingo who knows that nature created him to fly free."
1.2. Nobody liked poverty.
1.2.1. "Nowadays we would be called culturally deprived and people would write books and hold conferences about us."
1.2.1.1. "In those days everybody we knew was just as hungry and ill clad as we were."
2. Realization
2.1. You need to think before you do something.
2.1.1. "Actually, I think it was the flowers we wanted to destroy, but nobody had the nerve to try it, not even Joey, who was usually fool enough to try anything."
2.1.1.1. "Suddenly I was ashamed, and I did not like being ashamed."
2.2. Not everyone is who you think they will be.
2.2.1. "The witch was no longer a witch but only a broken old woman who had dared to create beauty in the midst of ugliness and sterility."
2.2.1.1. "I had never heard a man cry before. I did not know men ever cried."
3. Maturity
3.1. Everyone deserves to be a child for a little bit longer.
3.1.1. "fourteen-going-on-fifteen as I recall that devastating moment when I was suddenly more woman than child"
3.1.1.1. "I was still child enough to scamper along with the group over rickety fences and through bushes that tore our already raggedy clothes, back to where Miss Lottie lived."
3.2. Some maturity as a kid is a good thing.
3.2.1. "We children, of course, were only vaguely aware of the extent of our poverty."
3.2.1.1. "I think of those marigolds at the strangest times; I remember them vividly now as I desperately pass away the time."
4. Growth
4.1. You will always have memories of the past.
4.1.1. "Whenever the memory of those marigolds flashes across my mind, a strange nostalgia comes with it and remains long after the picture has faded."
4.1.1.1. "As I think of those days I feel most poignantly the tag end of summer, the bright, dry times when we began to have a sense of shortening days and the imminence of the cold."
4.2. As time goes on you will find yourself with more responsibility.
4.2.1. "After our few chores around the tumbledown shanty, Joey and I were free to run wild in the sun with other children similarly situated."
4.2.1.1. "By the time I was fourteen, my brother Joey and I were the only children left at our house, the older ones having left home for early marriage or the lure of the city, and the two babies having been sent to relatives who might care for them better than we."