Linda, the Dramatic One

Linda was the dramatic one in our family.  She loved to be the center of attention, and she was so cute, she could do it.  While most of our family had dark hair, Linda and Phillip were both blond.   Phillip’s hair was kind-of sandy, but Linda was a tow-head when she was little. 

Because Linda and Phillip were less than a year apart, it would be reasonable to assume that they would be almost like twins, but they weren’t.  Perhaps Linda grew up the way she did because she felt like she had to fight to be noticed.

When Linda did something, she did it all the way.  If she was happy, she was really happy.  If she was down, she was really down.  When she became a teenager, she went through a melodramatic stage, where she turned everyday living into one long drama.

At the cabin, she loved to walk down to the Indian ruins and sit and reflect.  She would find a good, not too pointy rock, and sit and daydream about the ancient people who had lived and died there.  She would imagine children and young people playing and working on the very spot she sat.  She would daydream that they had looked out over the same hills, felt the same sun, smelled the same scorched smell of summer grass baking in the heat.  Sometimes she would make up stories about how they had died and been buried right where she was sitting, and she would work herself up so much that she would be on the verge of tears before she left.  In her mind, she really came to understand those poor people who were gone and forgotten, and she would feel like a heroin, as she paid tribute to their long departed spirits.