YES, MARION, YOU ARE CORRECT: We Roach sisters share a story about a particular and powerful photograph (and not the one of us in our annual matching Easter dresses from your recent post re: all this). And as you say it was an image that changed my life forever, even though you, my only sibling, never saw it, remaining safe from awareness until adulthood when it was easier (maybe) to handle than when I found the photo, at age 9.
I just wanted ice cream. A Good Humor to be precise. I ran upstairs to get a dollar from Mommy’s red clutch-style wallet as we used to do on summer evenings after supper, when it was still light and the ice-cream man was driving slowly through the neighborhood, bells ringing.
Short version of the story: No dollar bill, but a photo of someone we knew, Daddy’s friend, our friend’s father. Tucked in Mommy’s wallet, a memento, where even at 9 I knew it shouldn’t have been. Where pictures of us or of Daddy would have seemed correct, but not this photo. No.
Mommy was never careful, and as the older child I suppose I got the brunt of that, being just old enough to grasp that our picture-perfect life there in that house and community were more Peyton Place than Donna Reed.
We can talk about it again, circle back as we have for decades, but for now, simply this: I just wanted ice cream.
No related posts.
First time here? Here's the idea: 
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Oh, and a P.S. for Marion:
This is in response to items number 9-12 in that post of yours the other day, “25 Random Things About Our Childhood.”
It’s not that I wasn’t paying attention.
Your Big Sister