Dealing With Birthdays...

Neither my sister Susan nor I like to celebrate our birthdays any more.  But we do have to recognize them, and so I feel obligated to announce that today is my sister's birthday, and tomorrow is mine.  I won't say how old Susan is, except to state that she is much, much older than I am.   The photograph on the left was taken when she was two years old in Abilene, Texas.  She and my mother Mary took the train down there to visit my father Nelson, who was in the army doing basic training, and soon to be shipped off to Okinawa.  Just looking at this photograph, you can see she was already on her way to becoming "a piece of work," as Miss Collins, one of her teachers at Fort Dearborn Grammar School, located in Chicago's South Side Brainerd neighborhood, referred to her during a talk with my mother.

And tomorrow is my birthday (my 64th), and the diptych on the right was taken of me when I was at my most charming best, just before the long slow slide to where I am today.  In the photograph on the left, I am being held by my mother Mary and in the photo on the right by my father Nelson.  The night before I was born was my sister Susan's 11th birthday, and she and my parents celebrated at the Rosewood Inn, a restaurant owned by my father's friend Art Houle in the southern Chicago suburb of Blue Island. They celebrated Susan's birthday, and then took my mother to St. Bernard's Hospital, where I was born the following morning.  My sister desperately wanted a baby sister, and was absolutely crushed when I showed up.  Happily she forgave me for this outrage on the occasion of my 60th birthday, so it all worked out.