SINCE AT THIS POINT I have a readership of exactly ONE, I will make this post in honor of her...my dear Shishe. Her actual given name is Shirley and you may be able to guess her approximate age just by knowing her name... a liability for those whose names are not classic and timeless, such as (just for example, of course) Kathryn.

I am the middle child of five, earning that distinction by virtue of arriving in the family line-up six minutes ahead of my twin. Shishe was the first in that same line-up, and she was excited by the two live "dolls" that her mama brought home from the hospital just in time for her seventh birthday. (My older brother was a little ants-in-his-pants five-year-old at the time). Poor little Shishe did not know how two newborns arriving at once would change her world. She was in for some serious work! But of course I don't remember all that. I only remember her reading to me on the roof, along about the time I was three or four. You see, we shared a bedroom on the second floor and we had a handy window opening out onto the garage roof. When Shishe and I climbed out there with an umbrella (the sun was hot) and a Childcraft book, I felt like I was on top of the world.

The two little neighborhood friends I played with in those days had no older siblings, let alone a sister. I was the lucky one! Shishe was full of creativity...and I was the beneficiary. We made buildings from plumbing fixture boxes (our dad, the master plumber). Alas, few photos were taken in those days or surely there'd be one of the two-story house and the store, each furnished to the last detail (the house with it's curtained windows, the store with its empty tins of pepper and spices, its empty mustard jars painted yellow inside and the ketchup jars painted red, its egg cartons filled with imaginary eggs.)

In the double bed we shared at night, Shishe would produce a little flashlight and shine it on the ceiling as she told me tales of creatures called amoebas. She spent hours with me cutting out paper families from the J.C. Penney catalog (all those women in their shirt-waist dresses and high heels) and painting seasonal decorations on the front windows of the house with tempera paints (We had a mother who let us do such things). My dolls were clad in little dresses hand-sewn by Shishe, and slept in cradles she helped me to fashion from empty Quaker oatmeal boxes. When I begged to be rid of my long ponytail, she took scissors in hand and chopped off my hair. (Nevermind she gave me no help in handling the scraggly shoulder-length remains, a fact she finds hilarious when I mention it today.) She was, and remains to this day, ever willing to oblige and always generous.

By the time I gained another sister six years into my life, Shishe was a teenager and the boys were after her like...hmm...well, like teenage boys after a smart, pretty, fun-to-be-with and voluptuous young woman (you know, sexy, except we never used that word in our house). She got married so young that by the time I was into adolescence, she was taking care of a baby of her own. From then on, both of our childhoods were a matter of history, but she will always figure large and beloved in the memories of mine.







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