Suddenly,
a memory stirred and shifted.
?
I
wondered if my father wrote those letters to my mother because of what not
writing one had once cost him. Gene Kilroy, my father's old business manager
and lifelong friend, told me about a girl Dad had had a crush on when he was a
teenager. "It was when he flew to Rome, for the Olympics. He went over
there and never wrote to her. By the time he got back, she had a new
boyfriend."
?
He
never wrote to the girl because he didn't know how to spell
"Louisville" and was too embarrassed to ask anyone in the Olympic
Village.
?
When
he got home, he went to her house and found her sitting on the front porch with
another boy.
?
"I'm
sorry, Cassius," she said. "I thought you lost interest because you
never wrote me."
?
The
relationship was too new to be love, but I'm sure my father remembered the
feeling of losing what might have been.
?
Maybe
he wrote so many letters to my mother because he didn't want to make the same
mistake twice.
?
?
Hani Ali "At Home with
Muhammad Ali: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Forgiveness" (2019)
?
