A Fond Childhood Memory

With the coming of Spring I am reminded of my Childhood in California... When I was a young girl I lived just outside of Oakland Ca. My father worked in a big building in Downtown San Francisco. I have a memory of a day when I went into the city with my father. My mother had dressed me in my Sunday best floral dress with lots of layers and ruffles. Little white gloves on my hands... We would wear white gloves whenever we went somewhere" fancy".

I remember going to Chinatown. What a treat! A wonderful cultural experience all its own! All of the beautiful dolls and fun little toys one would find there. Riding Cable cars, their bells clanging feverishly, up and down the steep streets of San Francisco.

One of my fondest memories of that day in San Francisco is of my father and I walking hand in hand through the bustling city and he stopped at one of the many whitewashed, wheeled flower carts. Lush with every kind of fresh and beautiful bloom. He asked for a small bunch of violets for me. She lifted the purple posies from the cart and wrapped them in a small bit of green paper. I remember raising my little gloved hand to clutch the beautiful bunch. How wonderful that my father had stopped to pick out some lightly fragranced violets just for me!

Fast forward some 15 years... We attended a wedding in California and my father and I, once again were walking along together in Ghirardelli Square. The sun was just peeking below the building and , once again, Spring was in the air... when we came upon a flower cart. I looked at dad and he looked at me...He stopped and asked the attendant for a small bunch of violets, again wrapped in paper, and this time tied with a neat little satin ribbon. It was all I could do to hold back my tears. Harkening back to a sweeter time, a simpler time...that special day when my father and I walked hand in hand through the streets of San francisco. What A wonderful memory for me ...as I lost my father to Cancer some 8 years later.

He is greatly missed!