An envisioning. July 1996, Five o’clock and a half hour to go until dinner in Sandisfield, Oregon.

Oh, to be here.

A different skirt to change into and half an hour to watch the new talk show before they come around and get everyone. Assisted living, and that hard if you are used to ordering dinner from cook whenever you like as long as someone else is hungry. But the egg salad delightful, and never having to spend the morning tasting anyone’s pickles down at the town hall pickle judging contest until the sourness makes your stomach ache and your willpower melt until an entire quart of strawberry ice cream somehow vanishes with the help of a spoon.

But a little color television set of one’s own and a long way from when the children watched Wide World of Disney down the street, gathered around the only television in the neighborhood that was in Living Color. People the right color or a sick green color when you get bored and fiddle with the dial until they all look like seasick Martians. Air conditioning twenty-four hours a day, with someone else paying the rent, making it almost free with no husband to complain the bill will go sky high.

Funny. An accountant and lots of money made around tax season with enough left over in July to send the children to camp for weeks and a little emeralded up something every Christmas after his parents sent their annual check.

All that but a commercial coming on and a memory from before . . . first husband that Mother had thought was a dud but handsome as the day was long with a smile as dazzling as the kind the actors have in toothpaste commercials . . . Not much else really but a boat that went like mad along the beach and a big hat to wave to the tourists . . . gone he was when the thing flipped over and a shark got him . . . things fine after but the razzle-dazzle part . . . no not fifteen and that required to dazzle up.

Advertisement for the LAKENSEA Boat Corporation. They pioneered the manufacture of fiberglass boats in Boca Raton, Florida USA in 1956. This image can be found here https://lakenseaorg.wordpress.com/2020/08/01/by-the-numbers/ or https://www.instagram.com/bocahistory/p/DIeEoC_A8ZA/?hl=en