No Strings

She was an only child for the first ten years of her life. The winters in Philadelphia were snowy and damp and every winter she was ill, wistfully watching the other children careening down the hill beside her house on their magic carpets better known as Flexible Flyers. She was, in those long-ago days before television, blanketed on the carpet next to the big, bay window, in front of a huge Westinghouse radio that sat on the floor, as tall as she was in the beginning. She kept busy with coloring books and paper dolls and listening to music