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Sat 7 May, 2016 05:32 pm
In lower grade school, I knew a girl with the most beautiful and infectious smile I ever saw. She was not a friend of mine, but I shared classes with her, two years in a row. I was happy just to bask in the glow. Her parents likely were southern imports to the area, as were we nearly all, in our part of Fresno. Her beauty was simplicity and personality. I never saw her she did not seem happy. In later life, I named one of my daughters in her honor.
The only smile I could point to, to rival hers, in my highly subjective view, was a woman who visited relatives at the apartment complex, where I worked. For perhaps five years, she would come and go, sometimes with her husband, often alone. She never failed to say hello, in passing. The times she smiled I saw pure beauty.
There was no wanting to touch these smiles. I asked nothing but the occasional opportunity to be a witness to them.
I figure that when I liked Monica in first grade, her smile probably mattered. In first grade, I was your manifest scaredy cat, having only been to a couple of months of kindergarten. I don't know if there were preschools in the WWII years. I remember crying and people around me when I was dragged/gathered into the first grade class. Can picture the first small room, sort of.
In memory, we must have talked at least a little at recess, 1st/2nd grade at Saint Monica's. I was fairly new to talking as my mother told me I didn't talk until I was four (only child, and who knows why else, but I remember looking around much earlier).
When I was in fourth grade, my father was back in LA making commercials and I was let back into St. Monica's for a few months and shortly enough she taught me how to play jacks. I wasn't bad at it, but she and others were sharp. I liked all that. And then we left again. Still it was a big step for me, having a girl remember me. I was a traveling kid.
Monica Oliveras, where are you?
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