19 - Volume Two - Olive

One Saturday afternoon in April, I walked over to the Rex. Don't recall at this time, who I was going over to see, but it was likely to catch the Swing Shift Big Band.

As is often the case, The Rex was fairly packed. There was one free chair near the stage, so I asked the woman sitting across from it if it was in fact free, and it was. We got to chatting. She is a fascinating woman and we had plenty of good laughs. She lives in the neighbourhood and is at The Rex quite often just like me.

I told her about my little project and she offered up something very special that she has been carrying with her for years. Her grandson's fish tank was against a blank wall, and Olive figured it could be jazzed up a bit. So she painted this backdrop for the fish tank. She had been carrying this photograph of it with her and now it is in my journal.

This is one that I suggest double-clicking to see it in more detail.



Within a week, Stephen and I were at our usual Friday night after-work locale, Quotes and .... sitting just a couple of tables over....is Olive! She was there with her husband, and her daughter and a friend of her daughter's. Her daughter, Toni, offered up a (hopefully expired) membership card for the AGO, and she also had with her the print-out from having ordered tickets to see La Boheme by the COC. My sister, Lynn and I were going to be seeing La Boheme within the following week, coincidentally. Toni created one of the types of entries I really like: an expression of what the journaller feels very strongly about.



A week or so later, I snuck in the back door of The Rex on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, saw an empty chair, snuck over and sat down, looked up and .... there across the table from me was Olive! She had apparently grabbed something and put it in her purse to add to my Something From Your Wallet Journal the next time she saw me, so she pulled it out and asked me if I had the journal with me (which, of course, I did).

It is a very heart-warming story about a snippet of her childhood. Olive and I had discussed the fact that she and my Mom grew up in the same era, and lived through the same challenges of being a youngster during the Depression, and then as a teenager, staying at home while all the men went off to war. Olive is a couple of years younger than my Mom. If my Mom still had her wits about her, she and Olive would have gotten on famously.


Here it is unfolded: