I grew up in the small town of Maple Shade in Southern New Jersey in the 1950’s and sixties. At that time Maple Shade was populated by a mixture of Irish and Italian Catholic and Protestant families. My family was Irish Catholic.
You couldn’t ask for a better place to grow up. We were a family of eight living on a tree-lined street called Fellowship Road. Our stucco Cape Cod house had four-bedrooms. It was located two doors down from Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church and the OLPH Elementary School. We heard the church bells peal out whenever there was a Mass, wedding, funeral, or christening.
Father’s old car
When I was young, my parent’s bedroom was on the first floor, and my older brother Harry was across the hall from them. Harry was nineteen years old when my twin sister, Karen and I were born. In fact, he drove my mother to the hospital when she was in labor with us.
My three sisters and I shared one bedroom. While my oldest sister Jeanie had a room across the hall, she was fifteen years old when Karen and I were born.
In the room I shared with my three sisters, Karen, Eileen, and Betty there was little in the way of decorations aside from a crucifix on the wall. The front half of the room open to the eves of the roof. It was large and uninsulated. There was only one heating vent. The room was freezing in the winter, and unbelievably hot and humid in the summer.
The floor was a worn green linoleum. It had small, circular indentations from my sister Jeannie’s high heels. A queen-size bed resided on the left side of the room. My twin sister, Karen and I slept on that side. And my sisters Eileen and Betty slept in the other bed on the right side of the room.
My parent’s conversations downstairs in kitchen drifted up through the heating vents in the floor. My father always seemed to be unduly concerned with the number of garbage cans our next-door neighbor, Mrs. Rice put out. And that she had the unusual habit of cutting the grass in the rain. We always knew what we were having for dinner since the aroma made its’ way up through the vents.
Our bedroom had one window. It faced the Lombardi’s house. Their bedroom windows face ours. The Lombardi’s used to have loud arguments, although some of it was in Italian. We could hear every word. My father installed an exhaust fan in the window in the summer that would suck all the hot air out. The fan was the only thing that kept us all from expiring through those long, summer nights. We would pull the sheets over our heads to avoid the mosquitoes buzzing our ears and biting us.
The only thing that occupied the eves was a pole that ran the length of the space. We hung our clothes on that pole. Whenever I was alone, I would try on my older sister Jeanie’s gowns. I would dance and spin around the room. Jeanie had worn these beautiful dresses to formal dances and as a bridesmaid in her friend’s weddings.
One day when I was about nine, I decided I would cut some of the fabric off of one of her gowns. I wanted to make some pretty dresses for my dolls. Needless to say, my sister, Jeannie, was upset with me. I wished I could take back my careless act. I was afraid she would never forgive me. But she was a kind and forgiving soul, and eventually, she did.
It may sound strange, but I felt very lonely in that room full of sisters. Karen and I were fraternal twins, but we didn’t spend a lot of time together. We had different friends. I was a different kind of child than her. I was gifted with a lively imagination and made friends with all the dogs and cats in our neighborhood. My sister, Jeanie, was fifteen years older than I. My sisters Eileen and Betty were one year apart. This was called Irish twins. Eileen was eight years older, and Betty was seven. It might as well have been a hundred years.
My oldest sister, Jeanie
The day arrived when my sister, Jeanie, left for good. She was getting married and moving to White Plains, New York, with her new husband, Patrick. I will always remember how beautiful she looked that day. She came upstairs to say good-bye to me. I knew it was her before she stepped through the doorway. I heard the click, click of her high heels on the linoleum floor as she came up the steps and through the hallway and into our bedroom.
She was tall, even taller in her heels. They were very high and had a black bow with a rhinestone clasp on top. I pretended to be asleep.
“Susan, I know you’re awake. Come and say goodbye. I won’t leave until you do.”
I looked up at her. I loved my sister Jeanie most of all. She had a wonderful sense of humor. Whenever she was home, laughter filled our home. I thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world. I hoped that I would grow up to look just like her.
She had short, shiny black hair, and high cheekbones. She wore tangerine-colored lipstick. Her eyebrows were perfectly arched. Her eyes were blue-grey and slightly slanted. They sparkled when she laughed. She had an exotic look. As if she was a princess from some far-away foreign land.
Her laugh was contagious. She possessed a great sense of humor. She was fun to be around, always joking. It was easy to love Jeanie.
That day she moved out of our house, she wore a lavender suit with a silk blouse. Whenever she wore this suit, she would say, “Susan, did you know this was Marilyn Monroe’s favorite color.” And on her earlobes, she wore pearl earrings, that were ever so slightly tinted a pale purple.
She leaned down and kissed me on the cheek. She smelled like the honeysuckle that grew in our backyard on a warm sunny afternoon. She whispered in my ear,” I’ll see you soon, Susan. I’ll miss you.” I closed my eyes tightly, but a tear escaped and ran down my cheek. I felt a knot forming in my stomach. It began to ache.
She turned and walk out the door and into her future while I was left behind. I decided then and there I would never wear high heels, and I never did. After she moved away, the house seemed somehow empty.
She had left her beautiful gowns behind in the eves of the house, and when I missed her, I would put one on and dance and twirl and spin in the eves, whenever my parents weren’t home.