Today is my older sister’s birthday. Bonnie was four years my senior, a gap that meant she left for college in Colorado as I was just entering high school, and remained on the mainland through almost all of her adult life. For most of our lives, we thought we were the only siblings. We were family, but with kind of an arms-length relationship that comes with only seeing each other occasionally over 40 years.

She returned to Hawaii after her second husband’s death in 2007. She died of cancer in Honolulu in 2016.

I give her a wave and a shout-out every year on her birthday, and this one is no exception.

This year, I’ll share one of my favorite documentary photos. It’s a photo of Bonnie and my mother in the living room of Bonnie’s home on Loma Verde Avenue in Palo Alto. It was August 15, 1969. Later that day, Meda and I were married in a small ceremony in the municipal court office of Judge Sidney Feinberg.

Bonnie and her then-husband, Larry Lamont, really helped us out that summer. They let us move in for a couple of months, and then hosted our small post-courthouse party. Mostly family, plus just two friends from college who were in the area.

The names on the swinging glass doors into the court building reminded us where we were.

“Welcome to Municipal Court,” one sign said.

Then lettering on the swinging glass doors spelled out the details.

Traffic Citations.

Small Claims.

Criminal Department.

And us. Waiting for Judge Feinberg.

The photo was taken during a lull the action. We were soon to head off to court to do the legalities. My dad had also flown in for the occasion with his 84-year old mother in tow, but they hadn’t arrived at the house yet.

The photo says so much about the day. Both women are smoking. A sign of the times, perhaps also a sign of the tension just below the surface. It was complicated. So many levels of tensions. We didn’t know at the time that Bonnie’s marriage was rocky, although we had moved into her house for several months that summer. And my parents, although married and living together, were estranged in their own way, arriving for the wedding separately, and returning the same way.

In the background, a card table has been dignified with a table cloth, and you can just see our wedding cake in its box, along with what looks like a punch bowl waiting to be filled when we gathered after vows were said and done. There are a couple of guitars in the background, although I’m not sure if they were his-and-hers played by Bonnie and Larry, or just two of hers.

In any case, thank you, Bonnie. We remember how much you did for us when we really needed it.

And now, at the end of almost every day, we relax on our back deck in the shade of the two mango trees, one planted to mark Bonnie’s birth, the other planted when I entered the world. We’re still intertwined in many ways.

So, again, Happy Birthday.