Here are two of the promised pictures; in the first I, and the middle two of my siblings, are waiting outside my grandmother's house in Florence. I'm the one with the brown hair.

This second picture is one of my all-time favorites. It was taken at Roan Mountain, where my family camped when I was growing up and where I became the person that always went with hiking with my Dad. Getting to this place is actually a very short hike, but when I was a kid and my Dad and I would take cheese and crackers and black olives and strike off on the mile or so hike that it takes to get there, I thought being the oldest child was clearly the best thing in the world.

We are going here this summer and introducing my niece to the place, but we'll have a cabin. It's wussy, but my sis will be six months pregnant and both I and my parents have become wusses in our old age.