Auntie M’s younger sister and only sibling turns fifty today. Yes (BIG SIGH), the big 5-0, which means to those of you out there astute enough to figure it out, that I’ve been there, done that already.
It doesn’t seem so long ago I was holding her hand and walking her to Sunday School in Floral Park, Long Island, where we grew up. Our early childhood was idyllic. The area was cloistered and safe, a suburb of the big city a half hour away by train. All of the streets were named for trees and flowers, the brainchild of John Lewis Childs, a premier garden supplier of the time who subsequently had a school named after him.
Her hand seemed so small in mine. I remember the cracked sidewalk on the corner outside Allen Leslie’s house, where we stopped to wait for a passing car on Walnut Avenue. I told her: “One day your hand will be bigger than mine.”
We both giggled, because certainly that could never happen.
Happy Birthday, Little Sister~
