Seven days now

In one week's time things are going to change.  A lot.  Changes of the fundamentally sort.  Life altering, you could say.  Before that happens, there are a few stories I would like to tell.  At least two.  Maybe more.  We will see.

My first memory of Demetra is not of the time I met her.  That time we were all sitting around the table in the Hopkins House classroom.  The bookshelves hemmed in close enough that you couldn't walk past when someone was in a chair, and I was sitting to face the door.  We were all introducing ourselves.  Leslie was the miracle girl from Saipan.  Patrick wanted to go on to become director of the CIA, Supreme Court justice or pope.  Stephanie wanted to design roller coasters in France.  Andrea's father was formerly of a religious order.  Franciscans, perhaps.  But I don't remember what Demetra said, where she sat, what she looked like.

My first memory of Demetra is of the second time I saw her.  She pulled the nail from the hypnotist's nose during orientation.  She laughed.  I saw the nail again later that year when visiting her apartment.

That was near five years ago.  That was a long while ago.