Her given name was Emmeline, but her real name was much older and secret.

Sometimes when she remembered her secret name she would climb up on the roof-top and turn cartwheels along the roof-line.

Seven is a magical age, anything is possible, and secret names are a given!  My friends all had secret names, there was no secret to it among ourselves.  Our parents never thought about secret names, of that we were sure. 

I remember overhearing my mother say something about seven being the “age of reason.”  I tucked that idea away and wondered about it for another whole year before I timidly asked if I had passed through the age of reason since I was now eight.  No, she told me, now that you’ve reached it you will always be in it – it just begins around the age of seven.  Then she told me that our bodies and sometimes our minds, changed every seven years for the rest of our lives.  I secretly wondered if that’s what happened to adults – too many times they had been recycled through the sevens and had forgotten their secret names.  I vowed never to forget my own secret name – time passed and some years I did forget; however, some years I made up a new one.