Younger Sister

WAS IT JUST SOME parental joke to let me get my driver's license, then never actually let me drive?" my son asked.So began another round of the continuing family debate addressing the outrageous limitations I have placed on my children just because I felt like it. According to my son, my depression over the loss of my youth exhibits itself by refusing to let him have any fun.I reminded him the depression began the day I received the notice of a $1,450 increase...

Sylvia S. Shoken, a Holocaust survivor who owned several Baltimore neighborhood grocery stores with her husband, died Thursday of complications of a stroke at Milford Manor Nursing Home. She was 73.She was born Sylvia Szmulewicz in Zdunska-Wola, Poland, and was 16 when the Nazis occupied her country. The Nazis marched members of her family, along with others in the Jewish ghetto, to the town's Jewish cemetery, where they were shot."Her mother, brother and younger sister escaped, only to be lost and were probably later gassed," said a son, William R. Shoken of Baltimore.

MY SISTERS AND I have been communicating ferociously during the past five weeks, both by telephone and electronic mail, since the eldest of us had a mild heart attack the day before Easter and later was diagnosed with lung cancer.Though this is not the first intrusion of reality in this generation of our family, we're relearning coping techniques, supportive attitudes and the delicacy of dealing with her husband and children."Her gallows humor is intact," our younger sister said. But how deeply should we probe what the humor may camouflage?

I AM A PRISONER. I do not need more sorrow or regret. Yet in November 1991 I suffered a blow far more aching than was caused by the six police bullets I caught in 1972. From the former blow I will never recover.I was told by a guard to return to my housing unit. I asked why. To receive a telephone call, he said.Had a judge come to his or her senses, realized that my rights had been violated in 1972, and ordered my release? No, I decided. I would have been summoned to court first.Had Janet Jackson finally concluded that life without me was intolerable and she was eager to fly into my waiting arms?

Q: What do you do when a 9-year-old acts more like a parent than a child?My daughter constantly tells her younger sister what to do as if she was her mother.Is there anything I should do about this?-- Diane Ortiz,! Philadelphia, Pa.A: This is an age-old problem that has everything to do with age and being older. When you're 9 years old, age means power if you have a chance to lord it over a smaller child.A certain amount of bossing of younger siblings by older children can be expected, and whether a parent should intervene depends on the degree of bossiness and why the child might be doing it."

For nearly four decades, David Powell has been trying to put a face to a name.The face is that of his younger sister, a face he hasn't seen in nearly 60 years and has long ago forgotten. But the name is one he thinks of almost daily.Last year, using his own money, he published a book of all the things he doesn't know about his sister, all the things he'd tell her if only he could. Its title: "Sadie Lee, Where Are You?"But the 100-page book could just as easily have been called, "Sadie Lee, Who Are You?"

Michele R. Marks is a slight woman who carries a heavy psychological burden.About 18 years ago when Michele was seven years old, a neighbor allegedly sexually abused her for an extended period. This supposed friend of the family did things to her in his basement and car, she says, that still haunt her.Michele's story is one of dozens of cases of sexual child abuse and assault that are tried every year in Carroll County. In Carroll, these cases receive a fair amount of attention because there are so few other violent crimes on which to focus.

A Westminster area man is being held in lieu of $75,000 bond on rape and sexual assault charges tied to alleged sex acts involving his teen-age stepdaughter and her younger sister.The man is accused of having sexual relations with his teen-age stepdaughter, and recently forcing her younger sister to watch the sex acts and engage in perverted sex acts with him, said state police Cpl. Wayne Moffatt, a spokesman for the Carroll County Child Abuse-Sexual Assault Unit.The suspect was charged with second-degree rape, and second- and third-degree sexual offenses involving the teen-ager and with a fourth-degree sexual offense involving the younger sister.

"Overseas," at the Charles, has three things right with it: It is overintelligent, overinsightful and over here.A graceful choreography of ironies and epiphanies on the subject of the decline of empire, the French film follows as three sisters, beauties all, begin 1946 as the inheritors of the mantel of stewardship of Algeria. We see them first in a dinghy approaching the shore from a beach outing: fair, windblown, delicate and yet beaming with strength and confidence. The daughters of a powerful retired Colonial officer, they look forward to that which befits their status: prosperity, honor, stability, a sense of belonging.

"Overseas," at the Charles, has three things right with it: It is overintelligent, overinsightful and over here.A graceful choreography of ironies and epiphanies on the subject of the decline of empire, the French film follows as three sisters, beauties all, begin 1946 as the inheritors of the mantel of stewardship of Algeria. We see them first in a dinghy approaching the shore from a beach outing: fair, windblown, delicate and yet beaming with strength and confidence. The daughters of a powerful retired Colonial officer, they look forward to that which befits their status: prosperity, honor, stability, a sense of belonging.