During World War II, we lived in the Thamesville section of Norwich. Children walked to school, to the local A&P store, to the playground. It was a time of one-car families and gas rationing.

Friday afternoons at 4:30, my sister had her piano lesson at Miss Whiteman’s home. I was 11 years old and my sister was 7. It was my responsibility to be my sister’s guardian for the three-block walk up to Greer Avenue. I was entrusted with her safety, her promptness and the $3 for the lesson.

The walk to Miss Whiteman’s home took us up the Geer Avenue hill. Winter in those years meant nature’s bounty of snow remaining on secondary streets for days. This was terrific for neighborhood children using their sleds before the blackness of the road intruded on their alpine adventures. Geer Avenue was glorious; yet somehow in the ensuing years, that mountain has become a slope.

Of all the seasons we liked the Geer Avenue walk best in the fall. Drafts of air hugged the ground, sending fallen leaves scurrying in little whirlpools, scraping against the sidewalks. Passing by familiar houses at dusk, we were cheered by the soft yellow lights filetering through curtains of downstairs windows. We would stop to gather some horse chestnuts that had shed their burrs. We gloried in their mahogany color and the many uses we would fashion from them.

I was always asked to wait in Miss Whiteman’s parlor with her two cats. I was of little interest to those animals; one glance at me and they walked away. I was an overactive tomboy — always chasing a ball, racing on my bicycles — so it came as a surprise to me how much I loved listening to my kid sister run through her scales and play a few pieces of simple music.

The walk home was almost in darkness except for the porch and street lights. We could catch wafts of cooking from kitchen windows. The enticing aromas made us hurry home.

I was to hold my sister’s hand while we crossed West Thames Street.

Would that I were able to protect her our whole lives.

Judy Brown lives in Norwich. This remembrance of her sister, whom she lost to cancer 14 years ago, was done as part of a memoir writing class Brown attended at Three Rivers Community College. Now retired, she holds a master’s degree in teaching from Connecticut College.