Memories

I need to thank another poster for sharing this photo.

It’s 2015. April, in fact. I am 55 years old.
WAIT.
No, I’m not. I’m 6 years old. In my jammies, riding in the station wagon with my Dad. The very early morning sun is yellow and pale orange. I have my spindly legs tucked under me, wiggling my toes in my fuzzy slippers. Waiting and waiting to make that  left turn onto Seymour Street.
There she is! Her silky scarf tied tightly under chin, her pocketbook hanging from her arm. She stands there waiting for us.
My Nanny. My grandmother. An angel in my life.
Weekdays, my father would leave our home on West Walnut Street in Lancaster, PA very early in the morning and head south. He would pick up my grandmother on the corner of Seymour Street and bring her back to our home, where my mother had her beauty shop. She would care for my brother and me while my mother worked and my father was working in Calendar at Armstrong Cork Co.
Whar a treat it was to be awake and be able to pester him to ride along :)
Seeing this photo online took me back to those golden mornings. Like it was yesterday.
I cannot remember what I ate two days ago but I can see Nanny in her midcalf coat, her pocketbook hung on her wrist, that scarf covering her head. I can smell her Cashmere Bouquet.
I hope and pray she knows that I am reliving those precious moments. I suppose it’s a curse of the human condition that we don’t see just how precious moments are until they are memories.

Always Returning...

It's been a very long time since I've been here. Life takes over and there just aren't enough hours in a day, or in a month, to attend to all the facets of our lives that should be tended to.
That being said, I now have some time. Unexpected and unfamiliar but here just the same.
Marian Louise Baker is never forgotten. She taps on my shoulder often reminding me that she is still waiting for someone, anyone to let the world know what a gift and blessing she was and that her untimely murder back in the Camelot days of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania should be remembered.
Nothing can change what happened that day. Nothing can erase the horror and brutality of that heinous afternoon by the Harnish cottage. But just as the murder of Jan Roseboro in more recent days clearly screamed that intersection life lines can sometimes lead to an unescapable conclusion, the murder of Marian Louise Baker was in the cards.
Ed Gibbs chose Marian. Or at least his depraved and violently electric mind chose her. But there was to be a victim, don't ever doubt that. The actual identity and circumstances of the killing were variable. A classic case of Marian being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But the bubbling, fermenting and oozing hate that was smothering Ed Gibbs was going to be released somewhere, on someone.
It may be easy now to look at the whole sad story and say "Of course!" It seems fairly clear that the players in Gibb's life set the scene years earlier. Crazy lines intersected and Marian Louise Baker paid the price.
It's occurred to me that Helen Gibbs dodged the bullet, or the lugwrench. I often wonder what kept Ed from snapping and killing the one female in his closest proximity. Perhaps it was the timing. Helen wasn't an arms length away from him that cold, gray January day. Marian was.
I wonder if Helen ever shuddered through the years knowing just how chillingly close she came to a brutal death.
Ed Gibbs killed Marian Louise Baker. But he had co-conspirators.
His parents, his teachers, his past girlfriends. Every human being that reminded him that he has no choices in life, no free will to succeed, to fail or to be human.
What is most astounding is that at the time that the people in Ed Gibb's life were binding him emotionally so tight that was snap was inevitable, they really had no clue.