My Aunt Ellen left her diaries to her daughter Doris, and when Doris died, her son Charles offered to share them with me. He had prepared me, but not well enough, that I might not find what I was looking for in them. He was correct. I was prepared to enjoy some glimpse at least into the rich and imaginative thoughts and feelings of the woman who had left her Minnesota hardscrabble farm with her husband and four children in the Dust Bowl years, traveled to Southern California and started anew. It was my Aunt Ellen who sent me her picture in her bathing suit at age seventy, having just learned to swim at the La Sierra Plunge.

What a let down, then, to find the most revelatory comment I could gather from her diaries went like this: “Monday. Leslie home. Fixed tuna fish sandwiches for lunch.”? My Aunt Ellen, I continue to believe, had a rich rush of thought and feeling every day of her life, but it was never put onto the pages of her diary.

What was I to think this morning as Shirley and I drove up La Cholla on our way to Ina, to have Shirley tell me, albeit with twinkle in her eye, that I looked normal enough? Choosing not to leave a turn unstoned, I asked what she had in mind. Well, she told me, when the rest of us are wondering what to have for dinner, your head seems to spin fantastically out in deep space.”

It’s true. No tuna fish sandwiches will likely appear in this blog, though I thought of taking some umbrage in the attribution of “fastastico.” When I think about it, however, “fantastico” is Italian for he who has let his imagination run away. I may thereby claim Italian ancestry, and what’s not to like about that?

Coda: When I showed Shirley this true account, she put Ruth Reichl’s Tender at the Bone into my hands with the following passage underlined: “Everything here is true, but it may not be entirely factual. . . . I learned early that the most important thing in life is a good story.”