VPP = Very Personal Page
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| © Oliverio Somewhere in Oklahoma |
Halfway between
Linda's birthday
and her Mother's
last day on earth
would be Tuesday,
October 13.
That is when this
picture was taken,
at the sixth of ten
gas stations where
I pumped up
my car.
I left New York at 6AM
By design, I departed
on my sister's birthday.
The plan was to leave New York
with my fiance and introduce her
to a wonderful future as a newly-wed
in Southern California.
But the fiance had unfinished business
to attend to.
Thus, my 2004 Honda Civic was occupied
by one human, six suitcases, and
the ghost of a sister.
Linda would have been sixty-nine years old
but she was thirteen when she walked out
of the water in the above photo.
This image of her has appeared on these pages at least
three times but, for the first time, the foreground
is showing the bagel my mother is offering
to her daughter after Linda's midday swim.
Today, October 16, my Mother–our mother–
celebrated her forty-fourth birthday
with our Father, who immortalized
my sister with his Brownie camera
that sunny summer day in 1959.
Today, is my first full day back in Long Beach
after driving 3100 miles in four days.
Sam died six months before Grace did
and Linda joined her parents four years
later in 1975.
But I had some wonderfully funny conversations
with that Holy Trinity while driving through
New Mexico (or was it Arizona?).
The only sadness about the cross-country
return journey is that my fiance was not
in the car with me.
She is not here in Long Beach on this day
but that is guaranteed to change very soon.
Very very soon!
And the wonders of being a newly-wed
at 66 will never cease.
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Footnotes
The next Linda Oliverio page is here.
It is another VPP.
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