Norma

 I recently learned that my oldest surviving cousin, Norma Byrd Hauser, passed away last week.  

I always liked her although we were never particularly close - The Byrd family lived in Denison, she was six years older, and when we did get together I was usually with her younger brother, Mike, who was my age.

Thinking back, two incidents stand out in my memory.

First, she sang "In the Garden" at my mother's funeral.  I had no idea that she had such a pure, beautiful voice.  I was truly moved and amazed. At her mother's funeral, I joined in with the congregation singing the University of Texas Fight Song, but that's another story.

The second memory was actually from several years earlier.  

I was ten or eleven, so she was sixteen or seventeen.  Their family was visiting and we went to our weekend place at Chocolate Bayou.  Norma had a brand new, lily white, one piece bathing suit and when she went in the water it disappeared.  It was still there, but it became so transparent that she could have shucked the suit and gone skinny dipping in the altogether without displaying any more.