A Sister's Perspective

My sister Hanna says she did not get to know our father well. After all, she did not live at home much of the time. In her teens, she worked as a live-in housekeeper.

Here's what she does remember ...

She remembers talking him into buying a typewriter when she was in school, promising to type his letters for him. She does not remember typing any for him. He never asked.

She remembers that Dad did not make life easy on himself. He had a car in the garage but walked to work.

She remembers that Dad did not like his daughters to wear lipstick -- so they would put it on while on their way to school. Hanna got caught, though. He saw her his way to work, or maybe it was coming back, and she had not wiped her lips hard enough.

She did not ask our parents to attend school activities, because she was embarrassed to be seen with them. (I remember feeling the same way because our parents were different from other parents, foreign.)

She remembers that Dad did not like things broken down. Shortly after she and her husband purchased their house, he drove down with a trunk full of stair forms and put in new front steps. Those steps are still in use today, 40-some years later.