Mrs. Hill

(that's her in the middle, with the gloves--a few years ago)

Here are some of the memories I treasure:

**Doing math flash cards with her when I was a preschooler.

**The Garfield birthday cakes.

**The night she sneaked into our bedroom, face plastered with cold cream, and gave me the fright of my life. I think I actually managed to climb the wall.

**She finally drilled me & drilled me on those damn math time tests (100 addition problems in three minutes! it took me a year and a half to successfully pass the first level!).

**How she would step into a taxi cab with such authority: derecho lang!

**Visiting her in the hospital just after she gave birth to my youngest brother.

**That time she made me re-write & re-submit the John Paul Jones research paper--for no credit--just to make me do it the right way.

**Her valiant typing-up of my middle school research papers--late into the night.

**We used to go scuba diving--she would sit up on the boat & "watch for the bubbles," as she put it.

**Listening to her and Aunt Carol tell stories from the Dagupan days, including the one about the rats, and the one about the scissors.

**She and Dad never missed a performance of any kind, not one.