Bill glanced down at the sidewalk to make sure he wasn’t about to stumble over anything, then went back to the old black and white photograph he’d pulled out of his wallet. A pretty, dark haired girl smiled back at him. The black and white picture didn’t do her justice. He stopped walking and closed his eyes and there she was in living Technicolor. Straight white teeth, green eyes, high cheekbones, full red lips, and almost black hair.
They’d been so young then. But in the middle of the horrors of the war
to end all wars, far across the sea in a tiny town in Belgium, against all
odds, they’d met. And fallen in
love. Eloisa had been his first love
when he was a scared and lonely eighteen-year-old Kansas farm boy, far from
home and missing everything and everybody.
“’Scuse me, mister.”
Jostled out of his reverie by a young guy brushing past him
to scoot through the doorway Bill had somehow managed to reach. Lost in thought, he stood motionless on the
stoop and blocked the entrance with his big, six-foot-two frame. The big man blinked his deep brown eyes and
gave his head a little shake. “Sorry,
fella,” he muttered, but the guy had already disappeared inside the dimly lit,
smoke-filled cavern on the other side of the threshold. He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket
and carefully placed the photograph back inside.
*Note: This account of how Mom & Dad met is my
version of what Mom told me. The conversations are made-up and I've given their friends names because I can't
remember their real ones. Also, the part about the picture is fictionalized, but based on a
real picture Dad had in his WWII memory box, which as far as I know is
still in there.
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