When you were born in Miami we lived in the bougainvillea-covered bungalow on Sheridan Avenue with the kitchen floor like frozen confetti. Grandpa was sick and needed his own room so you slept in the bedroom with mommy and daddy (but half the year daddy was gambling at the dog track in Boston so it was just mommy).  I slept on a cot, in the dining room with Stu and grandma. You got the better deal. You had a crib.

Your hazel eyes were fringed with Dutch-Boy bangs (mom really did cut your hair with a bowl at least once), and you walked around the house on tippy-toes because grandma couldn’t always control her bladder and that was before they invented Depends.

When daddy hit the big one we moved to the big art-moderne house on Royal Palm Avenue and you slept in a room with Stu and I slept with grandma but at least we all had real beds. And you ate dinner in the living room with Stu and I ate in the dining room, and dad ate in the breakfast room and grandma ate in the kitchen. And mom waited till we all finished and ate what was left over.

You had the pool birthday party at the hotel next to the Fontainebleau and you apologized because I never had a birthday party with kids and you knew mom liked you better but you couldn’t do much about it.

Aunt Hilda called you “Quicksilver” and I was “Princess.” I liked my name better. And Aunt Hilda liked me lots and that made up a bit for mom.

Our feet have high arches. We called them “lamb chops.”

You would peek when I was making out with my boyfriend in his ‘57 pink Chevy when we parked in front of the house like dopes, instead of in the back by the garage where you wouldn’t see us.

You were the cheerleader, the calendar girl. I was the editor, the “deeper” one. (When I couldn’t make cheerleading I decided I was an intellectual, right then and there.)

You confessed you took my honors gold tassel the day I was to graduate from Beach High and we looked for it for hours except you didn’t lose it. You had lost some gold ribbon from a package. We found the prized tassel in time for my graduation. Never mind.

You had a friend named Susan Gesundheit and that always made me laugh and want to sneeze.

You tell hilarious stories that remind me of I Love Lucy. Like the time in high school you were on a first date and were waiting in stalled traffic to get into the Orange Bowl for a Miami Hurricanes game and you had to poop urgently but you were embarrassed and you told your date you were nauseous and you ran into a little house where the nice owners spoke Spanish and they let you use their one bathroom and then you stayed in the bathroom until someone else could walk in without fainting and your date was kept waiting in the living room with the homeowners and wanted to run away from all of you.

When you tell your stories your eyes flash and your arms wave and your voice mimics the different accents and the words spill out like a waterfall. You could have been an actress and maybe that’s why your daughter the poet was in the Improv group at Harvard.

You used to cackle, but you haven’t for at least a dozen years. Now you beam. You gleam.

You love the movie Best in Show. Alot.

You married the good looking guy without much upstairs who dunked my baby son in the pool like he was a ball when the baby couldn’t swim. You left him for the psychoanalyst with lots more upstairs who never threw anything in a pool except chlorine.

You were a nurse, but you lost things like life-saving pills, so you became a shrink like your hub. You still lose things --even more than I do: glasses, scarves, pens, keys -- three iPhones!  I always go through the drill with you before you leave.

Once you left your skirt.

You’ve always been star-struck, and now David Cassidy and his wife (your high school buddy) are close friends, although I don’t get him maybe because I was older when he was a teen idol.

You have to pee all the time and I’m a camel. Neither of us can get over the other.

Right after my husband Chaim died and I wanted a Maine Coon cat you drove from Atlanta to the breeder in Alabama and you chose Sweetie and slept with her the first few nights, and then brought her to me in Miami. And you were so enchanted you went back and chose her half-sister, Peggy Sue.

You used to put grated cheese on everything you cooked. You cook wonderfully now and order out wonderfully too, and always enough for the entire military of the US of A, including the Coast Guard.

You were beautiful and brave and honest and scared when you were diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer. You got past the five-year mark with timely clinical trials of herceptin and some blessed luck.

And when I had my cancer you flew to New York and nursed me in the apartment my kids  sublet  for me near them in Chelsea, so I wasn’t alone with the cat.

And you didn’t lose me or the cat.

You gently discover things out I wouldn’t ask, about my own sons. Otherwise I wouldn’t know half the things that go on in the family.

You claim “Bussey Luck” – the original name I try to avoid --when it comes to finding parking spaces. I don’t have it (or maybe I have a longer car).

You go all out, in spurts: playing guitar, learning Spanish, painting. Not as much as our brother the doctor, lawyer, pilot, amateur architect, union president, vintner and sometimes realtor.  (I guess none of us can be considered underachievers.)

You adore your Scottish son-in-law, the MBA student who looks like a rock star and acts like a mensch. I do too.

I see you every couple of weeks when you come down to South Beach to the condo right where dad played the greyhounds most nights, and sometimes we order stone crabs from Joe’s across the street, and if we don’t finish you make me take them home.

I never really knew you until 1993 when mom died and we could talk. We’re still learning about each other. She managed to keep us apart, but the day you mentioned the word “sadistic” in the same sentence with “mom” I felt you understood.

You have cool gay friends who throw the best parties and have an apartment with a bathroom that changes colors.

You always pitch in.

You roller blade and bike and play tennis and swim and sit in the hot tub and you love your hub and he loves you.

You're a beloved mom, grandma and aunt, too.

Carol, my little sister with the Dutch-Boy bangs, you turned into a sexy broad with a few miles on her now, who still makes me smile. We’re all so grateful for this milestone birthday. Love and health for 60 more.