Dear Group, I'm writing this at the ridiculous hour of 4:00 a.m. and my sister just managed to make her way up the stairs to go to bed after her exciting evening. You see, it just so happened that the death of her ex-mother-in-law (Grandma) coincided with my sister's planned visit up here on the occasion of the 55th class reunion of the Class of 1945 of Niagara Falls High School. And when she returned home around midnight I just HAD to grill her about all of the details of the reunion. Oh she absolutely glowed with the memories of the evening! She let me know who she danced with and what the "smooth talkers" still had to say about how they had remembered her back in high school. And, of course, I had to put my own two cents worth in as to how I had felt last year at my own 50th class reunion. Such a glorious experience! High school class reunions bring you back to the feelings you had when you were just innocent teenagers and even though you're now in your 60s or 70s, it's a wonderful feeling of pealing back all the years to when you used to jitterbug together and yet when the band strikes up a slow dance in the vein of "Star Dust," you can just drift into the arms of some classmate and recapture the feelings of "back when." And from there, Norma and I talked about when we were kids together and then teenagers together. I let her know how I cried when she got married. I've never figured it out as to why I was so upset over her getting married--I could only come to the conclusion that I was losing her as a sister. We talked at great length about when Daddy was in a coma in 1958, I had rushed back home from the Navy and when I arrived there he came out of his coma, recognized me, called me by his favorite nickname for me--Stinky (don't ask me to explain!) and then let me know that he was so proud of me because I had been selected as a possible candidate for a commission in the U.S. Navy. Daddy wasn't one to say such stuff to us kids. As I recall, he died the next day. Norma and I continued to reminisce about our childhood, WWII, the boys she had dated and the boys I had dated and we just continued to talk on and on, more than we had ever talked before in our entire lives. The bedroom we used to share and all of the aggravation of our living together. She even brought up the time when she had to be the chaperone at my high school sorority cottage in Canada which, of course utterly ruined my social life there when I was around 16 years old! So now Norma is now tucked into her bed with her sweet memories of the evening of her 55th high school class reunion and now that it's after 5:00 a.m., I'm also heading up the stairs to my bed and no doubt both of us are treasuring the memories that we have shared this evening. I guess it takes a long lot of years for sisters to really appreciate each other. vee