The first thing I remember is passing through South Pasadena, CA, the town I lived in as a kid, about to leave and head back up north.  As I was about to head out I thought it would be better to at least stop in for a quick visit in my old neighborhood; afterall, how rare was it for me to be down there at all these days? I turned around in order to check out the buildings around me, to get oriented with some recognizable features and set my course.  It appeared to be the area on the north side of town, around Fair Oaks Blvd, so I knew I needed to head southeast.

Suddenly I was on my old street with Mr. and Mrs. De Lorenzo, an ethnically hispanic couple who were medical professionals, lived about three doors down from me, and had three kids around the same age as me who my sister and I played with all the time.  It was a pretty typical interaction at first, with greetings and normal catching-up kind of talk.  Mr. De Lorenzo sat in a cushy red recliner off to the right, and seemed a bit emotionally distant, staring blankly straight ahead even as I passed in front of him as I moved through the smallish room where they both were.  Mrs. De Lorenzo was on the right side of a small sofa/love-seat, to the left of Mr. De Lorenzo, and I sat next to her.  She immediately gave me a hug and proceeded to curl up and snuggle in the nape of my neck as we sat there and talked.  I just got the sense that she was starving for affection, so I just continued to hug and cuddle her.  The topic of conversation then turned to a piece of neighborhood trivia: the question was who was it that took care of a little dog that belonged to me that one time I went on vacation?  Ohh right, Mrs. Dana Patterson, the awesome lady right across the street from the De Lorenzo’s, who taught college biology and kept a bunch of snakes as pets, and whose husband, Danny worked at JPL in Pasadena.

About