In honor of Easter...
Four cousins (I'm the one with ribbons in her hair). Vickie and Shelly are older and the little boy is actually the cousin closest in age to me.
Denver was the closest they ever lived to the rest of the family--which makes it pretty impressive that they made the effort to return to the Bay Area to share Easter with my grandparents.
I was always pretty shy and the older girls filled me with awe.
Little Larry however was my bud. We shared Necco Wafers behind the foyer door where the others couldn't look. We made a tent using my daisy quilt with the lumpy cotton stuffing. Inside was our own purple-tinted world filled with imagination. I looked forward to his infrequent visits as his parents added child after child to their family and they travelled in a converted bus (precursor of today's RVs) from Ohio to California.
Then one day, my adolescent pal ran away from home (after an argument with his Air Force dad, as I recall, perhaps incorrectly). Adolescents don't need much of a reason to act irrationally though. He was hit by a car and killed. The news hit me hard even though we were basically strangers at that point.
A future where he and I shared our childhood memories with our offspring instead became a drawer that contains a lumpy daisy-strewn quilt and a fondness for Necco Wafers.
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