Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir Read Online Free PDF

my sisters shared, and watch them get ready for their dates. Jeanne was shorter than Charlotte by more than half a foot, but had the same dark hair, thick brows, and large eyes. They shared a dressing table with a fluffy white organdy skirt, arrayed with brushes, combs, tweezers, emery boards, and colognes. I watched in admiring bewilderment as they brushed their hair, fifty strokes at each sitting, and put cold cream on their faces. And I can still see, reflected in the vanity mirror, the expression of discomfort on their faces as they held one eyebrow taut to tweeze imperfect hairs from their perfectly shaped brows. I was something of a tomboy, more comfortable in pants than dresses, with skin that freckled and blistered in the sun. I could not imagine that the day would ever come when I would voluntarily put myself through pain for the sake of beauty.
    After Charlotte finished high school, she entered a three-year diploma program at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York to become a registered nurse. She had picked nursing, she liked to say with an ironic turn of her lip, because, “besides saving lives and all that other noble stuff, I’ll get to wear a great uniform—all white, freshly starched each day, with long sleeves, French cuffs, and matching stockings.”When I was five, I accompanied my family to Charlotte’s capping ceremony, which symbolized the end of her six-month probation period and the beginning of the intensive training to become a nurse. Emerging from the train station, I was overwhelmed by the wondrously mingled noises, the sound of police whistles and the multitude of cars rumbling along the streets, and the crowds of shoppers hurrying past the vast and glistening window displays.
    The ceremony was beautiful. About sixty student nurses marched in a solemn line toward the stage, lighted candles in hand. The glow from the candles cast a strange and wonderful light on their faces. “Why are they carrying candles?” I whispered in a loud voice to my mother. She explained that the candles were in honor of Florence Nightingale, the founder of the nursing profession, who carried a burning light as she tended to the wounded soldiers in a makeshift military hospital during the Crimean War, earning herself the name “Lady with the Lamp.” When Charlotte’s name was called, she walked to the center of the stage, where she received a white bib with “Miss Kearns” embroidered on top in blue letters, and an organdy cap with a ruffled back which looked like a miniature chef’s hat. I was so excited I stood up and cheered, shouting her name as if she had just hit a home run.
    The next summer, when I was six, Charlotte took me to Rockefeller Center and Radio City Music Hall. Before we left the house that morning, she used the curling iron on my hair until the strands on both sides curled up evenly. Unfortunately, before we reached the train station, one lock on the right side drooped downward—the same rogue piece that appeared that year in my first-grade photo, giving me a page boy on one side and a flip on the other. Our first stop was Saks Fifth Avenue, where Charlotte plannedon buying me a new dress. As we walked up Fifth toward 49th, the rhythmic click of my sister’s alligator shoes on the sidewalk seemed to draw the attention of everybody nearby, even the poodles on their leashes and the mannequins in the store windows. At Saks, she knew exactly what she wanted for me; I had to try on only two dresses to find a light-blue one we both loved. From that moment, I valued her opinion on style far more than my own. It was she who taught me not to wear pink with red, not to combine plaids and polka dots, not to wear white past Labor Day. If I didn’t always follow the rules, at least Charlotte had made me everlastingly aware of them.
    Entering Radio City Music Hall for the first time, I was amazed by its majestic foyer, its grand stairway and gold-leaf ceiling. The auditorium, seating more than six thousand