Every year on our birthdays, Uncle Martin and Auntie Stella would drive to our concrete house behind the carpet factory and gift me and my brother a book. They brought me Haffertee Hamster and Haffertee’s First Easter. They brought Alex Betsy Glowworm Shines Her Light and Friska, My Friend. There was a biography of the African American surgeon Ben Carson. My first Children’s Illustrated Dictionary.
Even when our parents forgot our birthdays, this elderly couple always remembered.
