MY SISTER WAS AN ONLY CHILD IBD

Sinopse

This is the story of my Irish-American family from the period of the Great Depression to the Eisenhower years. The struggles of the family were marked by a string of calamities and opportunities that may seem unlikely, but they marked our experience and shaped us all:âÇóMy grandfatherâÇÖs totaládisinheritance in 1900 plunged my father and his brothersáinto poverty for most of his youth.âÇóThe early death of my motherâÇÖs father in 1913 sent her family into poverty when she was nine. The youngest of her three brothers was still in the womb.âÇóA special act of charity toward an ailing aunt unexpectedly helped the family buy the house on 7 Webster Place in 1930.âÇóMy motherâÇÖs dreamágaveámy father the winning numbers he played on his way to work, saving the family home from foreclosure in 1933.âÇóMy motherâÇÖs youngest brother botched a bank robbery and found himself in the army in 1942.âÇóMy fatherâÇÖs rescuing an abandoned aunt with AlzheimerâÇÖs disease proved one of the most painful experiences of the middle 1940s.âÇóMy fatherâÇÖs alcoholic brother broke in oneánightáand threatened us with murder.âÇóA daring Christmas Eve burglary while the family slept completely shocked our sense of security in 1948.âÇóWith one grandmother in bed with cancer and the other grandmother in bed with a stroke, our house became a hospice until 1949.âÇóMy beautiful sister suffered an unhappy childhood and, after jilting her wartime sweetheart, married the wrong man and made her life difficult and painful.âÇóWhite Flight in 1952 ended our years on Webster Place and began a series of moves that reduced the circumstances of my parents but gave them some security in their old age.The story of my Irish-American family living in East Orange, New Jersey, coversáa period of great political and social change.á7 Webster Place housed ten people in 1935 when I was born.áI thought of myself as an only child, as did my older sister. We became aware of our conundrum only when we were much older and all the people of our youth were gone.áá