Johnny, now consumed with fear of being caught by his brothers, quickly changed out of his special birthday outfit, the moment we reached the house.

He stashed it in my closet along with the shoes, then joined me in the kitchen where I was gathering the ingredients to make his favorite 'from scratch' birthday cake; red velvet with cream cheese icing.

It was the cake he insisted on having Ma bake for him every birthday. I personally didn't know how to make this cake, so it was fortunate that Ma had spent countless hours in the week's before her death, filing a spiral bound notebook with the recipes to make all the wonderful dishes of hers that each of us loved.

Once the cake was in the oven, we cleaned the kitchen up before starting on dinner.

This afternoon we were making Johnny's favorite; slow oven baked, fall off the bone BBQ ribs, with a side of buttery toasted slices of Texas toast, homemade cole slaw, and honey glazed, sweet potato chunks.

We prepared the ribs, and as soon as the cake came out of the oven, the ribs went in. I then showed Johnny how to put the icing on the cake and while he took care of that, I started started peeling sweet potatoes.

Once the ribs and potatoes were in the oven and the cole slaw made, I whipped up a batch of lemonade, then Johnny and I went out to sit in rocking chairs on the porch so we could relax with ice cold mason jars of the lemonade, while waiting on dinner.

We welcomed the nice summer breeze as we began to talk about how Johnny's first experience getting to wear a dress.

"You know you could still have your dress on, if you hadn't got so paranoid. The way you got out of it so fast, does that mean you don't want to ever do this again?"

"No, I still want to wear it again. I just think we should be more careful next time. When will be able to do it again?"

"Having a another girly day together will be really hard to pull off outside of your birthday school skip day, but I'll work on coming up with a time we could do it without your brothers finding out."

I got up to go check on the oven and Johnny jumped up to give me a big hug.

"Thank you, sis. I really did enjoy our picnic. If you think Mr. Johnson won't say anything, I trust you and can't wait until next time."

He sat back in the rocker and took a big gulp of his lemonade while I headed inside.

I had just returned to the porch, after checking the not-quite-ready sweet potatoes, when Jessie and Jimmy came running up the road from school.

As they neared the porch Jessie, already several steps ahead of Jimmy, called out, "Last one in the door takes out the trash tonight."

"No fair, you're already ahead of me."

"Get your homework done, you two," I called out to them as they loudly stomped across the porch, headed towards the screen door. "Jimmy, show Johnny his assignments so he can get started. You guys gotta get your Sunday best on for dinner tonight, so hurry up on the homework."

"Yes ma'am," Jimmy called out as the screen door slammed behind them.

I heard them both burst out in laughter as they headed up the big wooden staircase to the second floor.

Sunday best at dinner was another of Mama's traditions, honoring the birthday person by having everyone dress up nice and being on their best behavior for the birthday dinner.

It was something we all enjoyed and looked forward to. It was the only fancy dinners we ever got to experience.

Once the boys had knocked out their homework, they went to change for dinner, and I was checking the ribs when Timmy came walking in with a box wrapped in birthday paper.

"You're home early," I exclaimed when he entered the kitchen.

"Geez, it's nice to see you too, honey," Timmy playfully teased.

I laughed. It didn't bother me that he called me honey, I actually liked it. It was endearing and made me feel good, besides, I knew he didn't mean anything weird by it.

He wasn't wrong either, technically. In many homes, honey is a term the man of the house called the woman of the house and that's what we basically were, man and woman of the house, so it just felt like it fit, even if we were brother and sister and not a married couple.

"I worked it out where I could get off work early tonight. Since it's Johnny's first birthday without Ma," Timmy explained. "I thought it'd be nice to be at dinner for him. I'm gonna go get a quick shower and change."

The ribs were almost ready, so I turned the oven temperature down a little and went to get changed myself.