Regarding Fredricka Maister’s Back Of The Book essay, “To Have And Have Not” (Aug. 30), while I am sympathetic to her childhood problems, she says that, “When my sister would spot me across the cafeteria and excitedly wave, ‘Hey, Ricki,’ I’d cringe in shame and pretend I didn’t see her. It was too mortifying to acknowledge her at the table with the kids whose moms worked.”
Did Ms. Maister ever consider how her actions affected her 8-year-old little sister when she would not acknowledge her? Here is a little kid so happy to see her sister and she was ignored. How painful that situation must have been for her. And who knows, maybe her sister enjoyed her lunches with the other children — they were, after all, in the same boat.
As an aside, around the same time as Ms. Maister’s childhood, my mother worked because my father had died and my brother and I never experienced shame or mortification. We must have lived in very different neighborhoods.
Battery Park City
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