Linda

Linda and me at recent dinner

I got an email from my little, sister Linda yesterday in Boise. She had read my entry yesterday and was concerned about my mom’s upcoming move to my brothers home from the care center. I guess few of the family know this is happening outside of the Utah folks. I do not know if this slip of information is intentional or just an oversight. Well one way or the other the cat’s out of the bag now and I am going to be the one to blame. Seriously what difference does this information make. Mom is unhappy with where she is at and she is going somewhere else. And that is that. You really have to know my mother to appreciate this.

My little sister Linda is my sweetheart. Linda is my younger sister. I have few memories of really being a big brother to her in the true big brother sense but the one memory I do have is once At the Idaho State Fair. One of the few time I took her to the Fair that year. Again, one of the few times I remember doing anything specifically with my sister. This happened before I broke my neck so I had to be fourteen years old. This would make Linda 7-8. Actually, now that I ponder this I may have been younger because she seemed to me younger the seven or eight. We were just alking round the Fair when she spotted a “Hall of Mirrors” you know the weird mirrors which distort your figure making you look strange. The mirrors were actually built on the back end of a semi-trailer with a narrow stairway in and another at the rear of the mirror hall. Linda asked if she go in and I figured “Why not?”. It was her quarter. I let go mover her hand and she ran got her ticket and got in line to enter the hall. Finally her turn came, she gave up her ticket and entered the hall. In seconds after she entered I heard her scream. She was just inside the door way and had seen the first distortation and lost it. There were some bars , it seems, separating the different mirrors and they were open to the outside of the of the trailer. She had fold of the bars in a death grip. The operation came to a halt with this little girl terrified. A couple of the grown up tried to intervene but Linda would have nothing of this. I eventually stepped forward and identidied myself as her brother. I remember the carnie let me in and I thought to myself This is great I am getting into the funhouse free! This did not seem right but still this was what I was thinking all because my sister is screaming and hanging on the bars. I went in and Linda released herself from the bars and clumped onto me and I carried her out, but to do so we had to go through the entire Hall of Mirrors and like I said I don’t remember anything of what I saw. Strange. But, I felt like a protector that day. I felt like an older brother like I did something I was supposed to do. Thinking back to that day I wish I had been a better older brother—maybe if I had not had the wreck when I did I could have connected better in this role. I don’t know.

Linda grew up to be quite an exotic person, one I have always enjoyed. I hope she knows that I love her.