When they did need to find us, our meeting place outside the school building was 'the Big Tree.' 'Wait at the Big Tree,' they told us. It's where they dropped us off and picked us up. After all these years that tree still stands at the corner of Cresent Street and Newtown Avenue in Astoria Queens. The school is gone, the nuns are gone, our parents and most of the family are now gone. There are no sounds of bells ringing, no kids lining up on the block, but that tree is still there. The only remaining vestige of my school days. It's funny and maybe a bit symbolic given the sanctity of this particular ground; that in a city a tree would out last a building and our very way of life.In the sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking saga of the Sirianni family of New York City, author Fran Sirianni captures the zeitgeist of a generation that was born in the 1950s, questioned things in the 1960s, and came of age in the 1970s. Fran's first person narrative tells the story of her family's arrival in the United States and how they embraced the opportunity of the America Dream to build a life of prosperity. When tragedy strikes, the family comes together to carry on, despite the uncertainty of the times in which they live.Wait at the Big Treeis a story of family, of loss, and of the inevitable change that occurs as we all come into our own.