Another "Puzzle Piece" of My Life Found

I don't know if this sort of thing is happening to my peers, but of late, now in "late middle age," I've been rediscovering/reconnecting with old friends and have made contact with relatives I hadn't seen or heard from in more than a half century but I'm now in contact with a branch of relatives I had barely known existed. Internet and facebook are fantastic tools for reuniting.

A few months ago when I had written Dancing Memories... about the dancing school run by a Mrs. Sullivan in her tiny basement, I mentioned that I was looking for the friend who is next to me in the picture. Just a few days ago, my friend Margaret found me!

I woke up to an email from her, and yesterday, before Shabbat, we spoke on the phone, and we must talk more and meet in person, even though the logistics are complicated. What timing; I just returned from the states and had spent over a week in Manhattan. But I shouldn't complain, because at least I found out that she had felt the same. We have never forgotten each other.

And along with others who grew up, or at least spent the best years of our childhoods, in Bell Park Gardens, Bayside, New York, we considered it a Garden of Eden for kids. We had a freedom and security that doesn't exist nowadays.

PS Now out of the five of us in that picture, only two are unknown to me, the girl in the middle and the blond next to her. The picture was taken either in spring, 1953 or 1954, when we were four or five years old. If anyone has a clue...