WWWWW

When Fio gets to heaven, she's going to reunite with all the people she's lost touch with through the years and catch up with their lives, starting with Jannie Orchid (Janet Orcutt), her first childhood friend.
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When did "thoughts and prayers" come to mean that not a damn thing is going to be done about gun control?
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Why are the Arab countries at war with each other THIS time?
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Welcome to autumn. The sky is clouding over, the leaves are rattling down the driveway, and Fiorella can breathe again.
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WayMo, an arm of Google, is going to put a self-driving rental car on the road next year, just in time for Fio's next high achool reunion. Hmmm...

Ergo!

Fiorella told the psychologist that she remembered when her mother, Fio's new baby brother in her arms, was carried into the house on a gurney.  The whole neighborhood was gathered around in the front room. and when the ambulance personnel halted the gurney, Fio looked at the baby and said, "He's wide asleep."
Everyone laughed, but in a warm way, which made Fiorella feel good.

The psychologist told Fio this was a false memory, that post-partum women were not brought home on gurneys, even back them.

Fiorella stubbornly held onto the memory, which was just as real as when she and Janet Orcutt (Janny Orchid) washed their dolls in the Orcutt bathroom sink and saw their painted faces slide off.  Or when she sampled some of the cherries from the Orcutt cherry tree and discovered they were sour.  Or when she realized she'd gotten a strawberry stain on the front of her new sailor dress.

Which is all building up to Fiorella waking up this morning with PROOF, albeit circumstantial, that her mother came home on a gurney: she remembered that, years later, Mother told her that the woman who who took care of Baby during her convalescence was careful that Fio never saw him naked.

Which means that Mother was not immediately able to care for Baby when she came home from the hospital--ON A GURNEY.

On Stetler Ave

You might wanta skip this one--Fiorella's going to take another stroll down memory lane.  First, she's going to tell you about a major scientific discovery she made when she was about three--that sand will stick to wet legs.  She made several trips back and forth between her sandbox and the lawn sprinkler to be sure the experience wasn't random, then announced it to her mother, who was less than thrilled. The properties of water were also involved in another of Fiorella's memories.  She and friend Janny Orchid (translation: Janet Orcutt), who lived catty-corner from her on Stetler Avenue, washed their dolls in the bathroom sink at Janet's house--and thus washed all the paint off the dolls' wooden faces.

And then there was learning how to tie a knot.  Babysitter Marilyn Capitosto taught Fio that trick, but Fio learned to tie the sash of her dress in a bow behind her all on her own.  She can still remember the glow of accomplishment.