Melinda I am so sorry I cannot be there for Linda’s memorial. I hope this little anecdote might make you smile and bring you comfort. I had to reflect for quite a while before an inspiring
memory seeped into be brain—there is so much trauma and tragedy in our childhoods.
Linda was a scholar always a scholar. I was 6 or 7 and Linda was 14 or 15; every evening after school she and Shirley would do their homework. I wanted to do homework too. (Like all little sisters, I wanted to do everything just like them!). I suppose I was something of a distraction, because Linda would sometimes send me off on little errands to fetch things for her. After a fruitless search for what she sent me after I would return and ask her, “Where’s it at?”
Linda would ALWAYS reply, “Before the ‘at.’” (This little verbal exchange occurred more than once!)
Seven year olds haven’t learned about verbs and nouns as parts of speech yet, much less prepositions, so this conversation left me wondering how that was going to help me find the missing item. It was only much later, as a high school student myself, that I “got” the joke!
So, that is my little tribute to Linda’s memory: At 14 she was already an English teacher!
