Checkers

When I was a kid my Opa taught me checkers. One of the rules he played by was that if your opponent offered you a jump you had to take it even if the move wasn't in your best interest. This particular rule is interesting. It led to me beating Opa a year or so later... We didn't play any more games of checkers after that... Next came chess and poker and Boule.. a game Opa may have learned in Italy but favored in France. Great camping game.

Oma was from Brittany. Her family was rich enough to have servants. WWII put a crunch on that... She was suddenly in a convent reading by candle light. She said you'd lose all your banks reading. She was 18 at the end of the war. Years go blank. Mourning... Fixing... One day Oma gets out of there.

She spent time in Cuba before all hell broke loose. I'm figuring she was there around 52' give or take. She worked there and elsewhere as a nanny.

As I'm writing this story it occurs to me that I've made a move I must follow up on with an additional move I don't want to take...

I've just realize... dun dun dun... There's either a hole in my memory regarding Oma's story or there's a hole in Oma's story.

Oma got pregnant around 55'... Where was the child born? Don't know... Do know the child was adopted.

Years pass... Oma looks up her lost daughter. Daughter agrees to meet. Wonderful crazy painful things happen to bind them together.

How did the child get to California? Ahhhh....

Now I remember...

She was a nanny for a star. They were vacationing and perhaps filming in Cuba. Then back to Hollywood.... Of course... she provided the info just not in order.

But then she goes back to France after the baby is born. She recovered... Then back to the US to pick up and climb. But then on the trans-Atlantic cruise she runs into Opa... a handsome 37ish, well spoken 6 foot drink of water who happens to be a good dancer and a magnificent artist headed back to his home state of California. Boom. He seduced her with is copious skills and before you know it they were married. They honey mooned in Death Valley... Same as Aimee and I. Oma has a wedding picture holding a bottle of Sonoma wine but she's holding the bottle just so... She's in profile with her red hair and red grin... you can just see OMA on the bottle.

It's all fitting together now.