It is twilight in San Pedro, California around 1931. I am a little girl of three or four, sitting on my father’s lap next to my mother and grandma, Mary, on a porch swing. The weather is warm and balmy. Everything is peaceful and quiet, except for the rhythmic chirp of crickets and grandma's laundry flaping on the clothesline.

My grandpa, Archie, who built our home, is there too with his black suit and vest and black-rimmed hat that covers most of his silver-white hair. Indoors, the hat would be off. Being the sweetest grandpa in the whole wide world, sometimes he lets me brush his beautiful hair as he reads me fairy tales in the old wicker chair…but that is another story.

I am at the age when I can walk and talk and I love to sing. Communication with my parents and grandparents is easy and fun…not so much of a struggle as it used to be.

This warm, enchanted evening brings a huge, mellow moon and myriads of twinkling stars. I feel that I can almost touch them. While gazing at the moon, this fiery jewel in the heavens, my father asks: “Mary Lou, why do you think the moon has a chip out of it?”

I reply without hesitation, “Daddy, I took your hammer; I threw it way up there and knocked a chip out of it.” Laughter followed this innocent remark like rippling waves from a stone thrown into a still, quiet lake.

Why, at such a young age, would I make such a remark and feel so convinced about it? Comfortably cradled in my father’s arms, perhaps I wanted to please him, or was it just my over-active imagination, that little friend and companion who likes to come and play with me?

Copyright © 2007 Mary L. Ports