Happy Birthday to you, Louise!

I've always loved this picture that Dwight took of Louise and me doing the dishes. We didn't notice that our surroundings were very humble (enlarge the picture and look at the details!). The picture tells a lot. Louise, being older, was always the leader and example for me. She directed traffic - she washed and I wiped. Water was heated on the stove in the teakettle and the big reservoir at the end of the stove. Sometimes the dish water would get "cold", so we would put the red and white enamel dishpans on the stove to re-heat while we went to play or just fiddle around. Working together was a great opportunity for us to tell each other about our day, or to re-enact movies, especially those that Louise, being older, got to see, and I had to stay home and baby-sit (yes, Steve, Ann, and Judy - that's what it was.) We solved our problems, occasionally quarreled, tried to hurry so that we could hear Lux Radio Theater on Monday nights, or lingered in the kitchen doorway
if we weren't done in time for the radio programs. Sometimes Mother would step in and remind us to finish our chores. Our family may have been among the less affluent, but the stack of dishes after each meal demonstrated several things - one, that our big family always ate meals together, enjoying the friendship, banter, general conversation that went on, and, two, that we always had food on the table, prepared well by the cooks in the family.
Happy Birthday, Louise! These are just a few of my favorite pictures of you. And I get to be in a couple of them with you. I especially love the one in the lower right-hand corner. That was a first-day-of school picture taken by Dwight, who posed us in the middle of the road as we waited for the school bus. Louise looked so pretty in her brown and white dress and shoes, and I, wearing a made-over dress from the old clothes we got from friends in Cody, with my pigtails, glasses, and penny loafers. Louise has guided me through a lot of things in life - now, she is my quilting guru, and I constantly bombard her with questions about how I can solve those problems, as well as my problems about life. Now, this blog has become far too wordy, and I think I'll go and eat a piece of that chocolate (devil's food?) cake with the brown-sugar or penuche frosting. Enjoy the day, and I hope your birthday celebration continues throughout the week. May you have another wonderful year! Lots of Love to you, Elizabeth.