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Oops! he misunderstood the message.

Freda Savahl
3 min readSep 7, 2022

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How do I tell him?

Photo by Євгенія Височина on Unsplash

One morning in 2019 at 6.30, I responded to the knock on my backdoor, and there stood barefoot Roberto in his pajamas! He is my brother-in-law’s son.

Roberto & his wife live four doors away from my house.

“Whatsup, Bud?” I inquired.

29-year-old Roberto has a learning disability. However, he is excellent at fixing things. He keeps an immaculate yard with pretty plants & a veggie garden.

Celeste & Roberto married five years ago.

I invite him in & offer him a cup of coffee.

“I came to see if you had seen Sestie because she was not home when I got home from work last night. It was late & I fell asleep.” (His nickname for Celeste is Sestie.)

“I want to tell her there is nothing wrong with the fridge. She left this note on the fridge door. Here, read it, Aunty”. The note says;

‘It is not working. I am leaving.’

Then Roberto says, “I checked the fridge well this morning. It works fine.

Oh Lord, I thought to myself, how will I tell him what Celeste meant?

Finally, after he finished his coffee, I explained to him what the note might mean.

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Freda Savahl
Freda Savahl

Written by Freda Savahl

Retired Nurse Practitioner WHC /Contract Provider Deployment Military Services. US Citizen. Immigrant from South Africa 1978.

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