Looking up my Past

 I remember my friends Raymond and Viola, the parents of two daughters.  The older of whom was considered very beautiful, the younger of whom was considered homely.  This is because the older favored the mother, who was a beauty, dark haired and sprightly, and the younger, one year older than us, was quite unlovely, like her father.  Patsy, the older one, went to college up north, and there she found a man who she later married, though it didn’t’ last. They had two kids.  Nancy married her college sweetheart at VPI, and eventually they had a daughter Stacy.  These two people became important to my family, as, after college, they came to California and stayed with my parents, and my dad helped Nancy find her first job.  She was into textiles, and she went from success to success.  Her husband John was an architect and he worked for the city of Hayward.  They were frequent guests of my parents, and often had dinner with them on holidays.  They were the people my parents should have had as children.  They were interested in money and class, and they stayed in San Mateo next to my parents.  Myself and my brother were so unlike them, that they must have often wished we were strangers, and they were the children.  When they had a child, Stacy was very close to my mother.  She often stayed with them, and they were glad of it.  They made up somewhat for the lack of enthusiasm which we lacked.  They were godparents to my parents.   I still am in contact with them, though they now live in Texas.  I’ve told them how much they’ve meant to my family.  My mother, if shed’ had any education or training, would have made a wonderful designer or some such thing.  I often wished she’d have tried.  As it was, she was a hero to many young people, and she could knit, croquet, sew, paint, do practically anything she wanted.  I 

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Looking up my Past

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