Patience: Ritma Jurevics

I will never forget my Aunt Ritma's patience.  When I first moved in with her, back in 1987 or 1988, she was looking after this old W.W.II vet who had lost his mental faculties.  She would spend hours on end with this fellow, when an ordinary person would have been hard-pressed to spend thirty minutes with him.  My one memory of "Fred" was a silly exchange where we talked about how crazy the Italian campaign had been.

In all my time with Ritma, I can't remember her losing her temper or her patience -- this is all the more unbelievable, but yet true, when you take into account the fact that I lived under her roof for five years.  I wasn't all right at that time.