Jew Eat Yet?

Jeff Tweedy Is 40!

My brother-in-law Jeff turned 40 today, less than two weeks after my sister’s 50th birthday. I’m so glad we get to celebrate this milestone with him. We managed to escape the monsoons of Chicago last night and wing our way back to California. On Thursday it was warm and sunny when we entered the bunker-like Museum of Science & Industry but when we emerged four hours later, images of coal mines, hatching chicks, and Nazi submarines dancing in our heads, it looked like Armageddon had hit. A freakish thunderstorm had barreled in out of the blue with winds up to 75 mph and tornado sightings, and trees and power lines were downed all over the city. It took us hours to crawl home in the paralyzed traffic. As much of a cliché as it is, I have to say how much I prefer the boring climate of southern California to the wild meteorological mood swings of Chicago. As a kid I enjoyed the crazy weather which included everything from sudden 50-degree temperature drops to furnace-like temperatures that enabled me to literally fry eggs on the sidewalk in front of our house to dangerous arctic freezes that had me pulling tiny icicles out of my hair during morning classes. It’s fun to witness the ominous crackling of late summer electrical storms when I’m visiting but as a rule I prefer walking out of my house in L.A. and not having to worry about what extreme weather phenomena might hit before I get home. I’m sure my family members would laugh at that comment since they firmly believe that the imminent threat of a city-destroying earthquake we live with in southern California trumps anything they might face in the Midwest.

I do love Chicago, though. I always get defensive when Chicagoans (including my family members) trash Los Angeles, and there’s so much here that I enjoy, but overall I think Chicago has a lot more going for it than L.A. Its rich cultural life, stunning architecture, fantastic restaurants, beautiful parks, and diverse neighborhoods combine to create a kind of quality of life that I find extremely appealing. I won’t be moving back anytime soon, but I can imagine doing that some day in the future. That is, if the current spate of violent storms doesn’t wash the entire city into Lake Michigan.

My sister and nephews came back with us last night, thus violating my grandparents’ neurotic rule of too many relatives traveling on a single plane “in case something happens.” There were a few moments last night when we wondered whether they had the right idea. Just before takeoff, an irate and seemingly drunk passenger insisted that he be let off the plane. To my surprise, the crew allowed him to leave, but this set in motion an intense search around his seat and the necessity of removing ALL of the bags from the baggage compartment to make sure this guy didn’t plant anything. All a little jarring, especially when the flight attendants invoked the memory 9/11 in their supposedly calming explanations of why we were delayed.

Today we’re celebrating with my brother-in-law who has a day off from the current west coast Wilco tour. I’m so looking forward to the Santa Barbara, San Diego, and L.A. shows this week, and you can check out Wilco’s performance on Jay Leno on Thursday night. If any of you folks are at these shows, be sure to say hi. I met up with two bloggers while in Chicago. Leah Jones of Accidentally Jewish was nice enough to brave the downpour and come to my nephew Spencer’s Blisters gig at Millennium Park. Leah told me that she didn’t know how to find me because most of the photos I’ve put on my blog are over thirty years old. Is that a symptom of my arrested development? Just open those images in Photoshop, add a hundred pounds, delete the hair, and you should have a pretty good idea of what I look like. We also had a wonderful dinner at a lively kosher restaurant on Devon (only Jews could make that much noise while eating) with True Ancestor’s David Gottlieb and his very fun family. I’d already met David before but every time I see him I feel some kind of weird past-life connection between the Gottliebs and the Millers. Also current-life—his son Gabe and my nephew Spencer became close friends at their summer camp last month. What are the odds that they’d be at the same camp and in the same cabin?

I’m grateful for this time with Sue, Jeff, Spencer, and Sammy, and thrilled that Jeff’s 40th birthday coincides with the opportunity to hear him share his powerful music on four different California stages. If there’s one thing that my obsession with old photographs has taught me over the past two weeks, it’s how important family is and how much we should all value our loved ones while we have them near us. Happy Birthday, Jeff!

Revisionism Revisited

I realize I’m going overboard with my personal family archives but I’ve been on a scanning frenzy here in Chicago and I could stare at these Kodachrome images all day long. This color image of my parents from the early 1950s was a new find. I don’t know where the photo was taken but I’m dazzled by the unbridled youth staring back at me and I wish I could jump into the frame and get to know this young couple. The heavy plastic covering on the upholstered furniture looks familiar but this is not a house I remember from childhood. My mother’s hairdo is slightly uncharacteristic and her simple black dress wasn’t really her style. My father’s shiny black suit and silver tie indicates that they were on their way to some fancy event, but what was it? Why is it that my parents in their early twenties seem more adult than I do in my late forties? Except they weren’t really, certainly not emotionally. More like kids playing dress-up.

Although I’ve never seen that image before today, I admit that such photos are subject to interpretation by the viewer. Another brand new discovery was this photograph taken of my parents and sister at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. I gasped when I found it because it is the only photographic evidence of a trip that has haunted me for over forty years. My family drove out to Flushing Meadows in New York for the World’s Fair, with a chocolate-scented stopover in Hershey, PA. For some reason, at the age of 5, I was left at home with my grandparents. I have barraged my family members with questions about this decision for decades (with no satisfactory response) and I’ve written about it twice on this blog, causing my sister to leave the following comment: “Danny, the New York Word's Fair was 43 years ago. Do you think maybe it might be time to…I don't know...maybe…GET OVER IT?!” The secret truth is that I’m not sure I was the least bit traumatized by this experience back in 1964, my outrage came much later. But I’ve talked about it so much since then and laid such a guilt trip on my parents and siblings that I feel like I’ve reached back through time and given that little boy the makings of a persecution complex that otherwise didn’t exist.

I’ve only recently started to ponder the possibility that some of my memories of deep childhood angst have been radically colored by my adult perspectives. Readers of this blog who knew me as a kid have often told me how surprised they were to hear about some of the stuff I was going through back then since they thought I seemed like such a happy child. Certainly I had a lot of issues that were not evident on the surface—doesn’t everyone?—but is it also possible that my understanding of myself as a young boy is one that is continually evolving and maybe I’ve been creating a mythology of the younger me that is no more “true” than the perspectives shared by the people who claim life wasn’t as dark as I’m painting it?

Our most amazing find yesterday as we went through a cache of old family junk was a bag of reel-to-reel tapes recorded in the mid-1960s. As luck would have it, my sister recently found our old Bell & Howell tape recorder that miraculously still worked even though it hadn’t been plugged in since Linda Bird and Lucy Baines Johnson roamed the White House. I carefully threaded one reel of brittle magnetic tape and pressed play. My sister and I nearly jumped out of our skin when we heard the 12-year-old voice of my brother narrating a 1966 car trip to a family wedding in Toronto. There we all were, my 32 and 34-year-old parents, my 8-year-old sister and 6-year-old me. I had never heard this tape or even known of its existence, and I’d certainly never heard myself at that young age. My parents seemed playful and fun, my father doing riffs on old Calypso songs with my mother gamely following along. My brother Bruce has always been the broadcaster in the family, and even at 12 he described the proceedings with the skill of a young Edward R. Murrow. I am not heard very often on this tape—apparently I was far more interested in the coloring book that I had brought along for the trip. At one point, as only a big brother can, Bruce playfully taunts me about my activity. “I thought only babies color, Danny,” he says. “Are you a baby?” Listening to that now, I expected my six-year-old self to crumble under the weight of such a shame-producing comment. Similar mockery today can instantly induce a mood swing and I waited to hear the young me burst into tears or ask my parents to intervene. Maybe I’d even throw my coloring book out the window of the car, humiliated to be further associated with such an immature object. Instead, I heard a defiant high-pitched voice respond to my brother. “NO, Bruce, coloring is NOT for babies!” I shouted, completely unfazed by his teasing. “You’re crazy if you think that. EVERYONE IN THE WORLD COLORS!” Wow. Who is that self-assured kid and where did he go?

If anything, this ancient audio revealed a boy who was used to getting his way, who did not take kindly to negative feedback, and who had no problem telling people what he thought of them. How is it that this kid bares so little resemblance to my memory of myself at the age of six? Today we’re going to try to screen some old 8mm movies we found and I’m almost scared to look at them. Will I have to rewrite all of my blog posts?

Past-Life Regression

It’s almost impossible for me to be here in Chicago and not regress into an earlier version of myself. No matter how much I’ve evolved in the 21 years since I left this city, no matter how much work I’ve done on my “issues” or how much therapy I’ve had, being in this environment can instantly transform me back into a 12-year-old…or younger.

I think the nadir of my regression came a few days into the trip when I was in my father’s basement with my sister (in the house where we grew up) and we started pulling out old family photos and other mementoes. My sister and I immediately launched into our longstanding scarcity routine in which we each lay claim to the item in question. “That’s mine!” I insisted, barely considering the content of the object. “No way! You’re NOT taking that!” Sue countered with equal passion. This exchange quickly escalated into a King Solomon-like match in which we came close to tearing priceless artifacts in two with me thinking that I am the true family archivist and therefore all such objects are rightfully mine, and my sister worried (not without reason) that as soon as something lands in my possession and leaves the state she’ll never see it again. We both came to our senses in the end and simply left the items where they were. My behavior forced me to realize that we weren’t fighting about “stuff” at all, it was more a desperate desire to hold onto a past that that no longer exists. Maybe if we possess the photographs of these departed loved ones, we can bring them back? Can we somehow transform back into these younger, thinner, prettier versions of ourselves?

Not that I’d ever want to go back to being that clueless, scared kid. Our friend Ellen, who lives in New York and had flown with me to Chicago for my sister’s birthday, said to me point-blank after the basement episode, “I like you so much better when you are with us in Brooklyn. You act so differently here.” Gulp. Today, after being here for a week, I feel a lot more in touch with my adult self. I love being with my family but it’s often a fight to stay conscious and not revert back to the patterns I mastered in the 1960s and 70s where I either checked out completely or else adopted the persona of a spoiled brat.

At least now I’m more aware of these patterns. I feel more of the adult me coming through during this trip than it ever has. But why does there have to be any struggle at this point? Is it related to the guilt I feel for leaving in the first place? The grief at the absence of my mother, grandparents, and others who once inhabited these spaces? The unresolved pains of childhood that prevented me from experiencing so many things because I was too terrified? We just got back from picking up my nephew Spencer from camp in Wisconsin and as I walked through those grounds watching all the exhausted, dirty, mosquito-bitten kids saying goodbye to their friends and counselors, I found myself welled up with sadness and regret that I never went to overnight camp. My brother and sister did, but I never wanted to go. Why did I always deny myself the kind of bonding experiences that I would then spend the rest of my life craving? Why didn’t my parents make me go to camp? Did anyone notice how I was increasingly closing myself off from the outside world?

We had a wonderful Shabbat dinner last night at my cousin Sarah’s house that so reminded me of the Friday night dinners we spent every week with my grandparents when I was growing up. Sarah was only nine years old when I left Chicago and now here she was with her husband and three children. I think part of me somehow thinks that time should stand still when I’m not there to see it. Is that the rallying cry of the narcissist? It’s always a shock to see how life has simply gone on, year after year, with a whole new generation of people present in this city who were not born when I left, and a whole other generation that has mysteriously disappeared from the canvas. Where did they go? I love being around the remaining representatives of this generation and I can never stop asking my dad and other relatives questions about the past.

But enough of my self-diagnosed therapy. Kendall and Leah arrive late tonight which should go a long way towards reminding me that I’m 47, not 7. Among the new cache of family photos I discovered during this trip (and thanks to modern technology I can simply scan what I find and avoid my sister frisking me as I leave), there were several shots of me at Universal Studios during our 1971 trip to Los Angeles with my Super 8 movie camera in hand. Leah finished her filmmaking camp at Universal Studios yesterday and this morning attended a screening of her first film which I’m very bummed to have missed. It’s incredible to me to see how different she is from me at that age—so much more mature, more aware of the world around her, fearless about trying new things, and eager to meet new people. Thank God for that.

My dad is calling to see where we all want to go to dinner. Has eating always been my family’s religion? Why does all of the self-control I have in L.A. take a hike whenever I’m in this town? By the time we head back to California next Friday I will be in desperate need of a sensory deprivation tank and a gastric bypass. But until then, I will continue to see if I can break my old patterns and remember who I really am.

Susan Miller Tweedy Is 50!

Back in Chicago for my sister’s birthday. How is it possible that she’s reached the half-century mark? I still think of us like we looked in these photos. What is that smeared all over my face in the first one—chocolate? An apt shot for today since our only plans seem to revolve around food. The problem with birthdays is that they don’t provide enough meal opportunities—it’s a good thing we already stopped at Superdawg on the way home from the airport last night.

I need a therapist to analyze all these old family photos I’m finding. Is it significant that in every photo of the two of us, my sister is on my right? Check out the heavy plastic covering on the couch in the second shot. What’s with the grapefruit appetizer for the Shabbat meal in the third one? Some short-lived health kick my grandmother was on? Jesus, were we really ever as thin and tan as we are in that last photo?

I like to find new ways to torment my sister on her birthdays. One way is to figure out the birth year of people who were the age she is now at the time she was born. In other words, I point out that people who were 50 years old when my sister was already on the planet were born in the year 1907. Effective, no? Yikes, that means that both our grandparents were younger than Sue is now when she was born.

Ah well, these are just numbers. My sister is, and always will be, young at heart. Here’s to many more years of joys and oys. I personally plan to liveblog from her hundredth birthday. But now I have to run—we have four meals planned for the next three hours. Anyone for some Lou Malnati’s pizza?

Happy Birthday, Sue!

From Yonkers on Down to the Bay

I’ve been in New York for the past three days working on a freelance gig and loving every minute of being in this city. Spent all day yesterday working with an amazing group of teachers in Yonkers, a city I’d only ever heard of from “Hello, Dolly,” Neil Simon’s trilogy, and as the home of Bakelite, Otis elevators, and Ella Fitzgerald. Yonkers was settled by the Dutch in the 1600s and the name actually comes from the Dutch word “Jonkheer” which means “young gentleman.” After decades of urban blight, there is an incredible revitalization overtaking this city, which is the fourth largest in New York, and the people I was meeting with had just moved into a gorgeous office in a restored historic trolley factory. Go, Yonkers!

Of course I managed to fit in two plays, both of which were excellent, I’m happy to say, since the current slate of Broadway offerings doesn't seem all that innovative or exciting. First I saw “Frost/Nixon,” a surprisingly powerful dramatic play centered around the 1977 interviews between Richard Nixon and David Frost. Such material could have fallen flat on stage, but it was a riveting night of theatre that showed the maddening aspects of Nixon’s personality quirks and paranoia while at the same time giving us a peek at his vulnerabilities and the shell he built around himself following his resignation. Tony winner Frank Langella, not an obvious choice, nailed the essence of the former President without resorting to caricature. Langella was almost unrecognizable in the part, even though they didn’t go overboard with makeup or prosthetics. It was only during the curtain call when he released himself from Nixon’s stooped posture and facial tics that he looked anything like the Frank Langella I remember. An even bigger revelation to me was Michael Sheen as David Frost. Just as he painted such a sublime. layered portrait of Tony Blair in “The Queen,” Sheen was able to show the crass, opportunistic, and somewhat sleazy side of Frost’s persona while still keeping him a sympathetic and even lovable character. What a great actor. I just read that Ron Howard is making a film of “Frost/Nixon” later this year with Langella and Sheen reprising their roles (good move, Ron!). My favorite bit of casting news regarding the upcoming film is that Pat Nixon (not a character in the play) will be portrayed by none other than Patty McCormack, most famous as the deliciously evil Rhoda Penmark from “The Bad Seed,” a movie she made when she was 11 years old. Do you think she’ll be asking Nixon for “a basketful of kisses?”

Last night I finally made it to the acclaimed Shakespeare in the Park summer series to see a wonderful staging of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” starring the beautiful and always brilliant Martha Plimpton as Helena and a large cast of talented actors including Tim Blake Nelson as Peter Quince, the part that Leah played a few years ago (at the age of 9!). Director Daniel Sullivan did a great job with this production but Martha told me the terrifying story of how he fell through a hole in the stage floor during the first tech rehearsal and was so badly injured that he wasn’t able to come back. I could see Plimpton in anything and it was especially fun to see her play the lovesick Helena, one of my favorite characters in the play. What can’t this woman do? Kendall and I saw her last year on Broadway in “Shining City,” she got a Tony nomination (and a Drama Desk award) for this year’s three-part “The Coast of Utopia,” and she’s going into another show after she finishes this Shakespeare run. What a great career, and I’m so glad she’s doing it her own way and not letting herself be fucked over by the idiots in Hollywood who would try to mold her into something she’s not. And as far as talented actors go, she’s one of the nicest people on the planet. This show was so good that I didn’t even mind sitting outside in the freakish winter-like freezing rain that suddenly turned New York from Hades into the Arctic. I was very underdressed (it had been scorching hot the day before) and at one point I was shivering so badly that the woman behind me yelled at me to stop fidgeting in my seat. Oh, those compassionate New Yorkers.

The company I’m working for is headquartered in SoHo and I just walked over to Balthazar for some coffee and soft-boiled eggs. Heaven. Despite yesterday’s insane weather (I swear it wasn’t just my thinned-out California blood!), it’s sunny and gorgeous again and I’m about to walk up to the Union Square greenmarket. How is it possible that I live in California and yet I find the produce (and most food products, for that matter) to be of such higher quality here in New York? I love this city and hope to be back soon.

Off to Chicago later today to help my sister celebrate her FIFTIETH birthday tomorrow. Gulp, aren’t we both still in our twenties?

Clinically Depressed Swedes, Vanessa Redgrave Topless, and an Irritating Laugh

Damn, they were dropping like flies this week. First, word came from Sweden that director Ingmar Bergman had died at the age of 89 and then, less than 24 hours later, Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni was dead at 94. Who’s left from the Old Guard, what with Robert Altman dying last November and Truffaut and Fellini long gone? I admit I’m less familiar with Antonioni’s work than Bergman’s although I saw “L’Avventura” in film school. The only movie of his that I remember well is his first English-language film, “Blow-Up,” which I saw when I was very young. The film made a big impression on me (and not just because it featured a topless Vanessa Redgrave—although that sure didn’t hurt). This was my first exposure to the swinging London scene of the 1960s which I thought was the coolest place on the planet. The sequence I remember most was when photographer David Hemmings straddled supermodel Verushka and barked commands at her as he snapped one photo after another. “This is for me babe, for me. Love me, baby, love me.”

Antonioni’s earliest collaborations were with director Roberto Rossellini though he soon veered away from Rossellini’s neorealism. I’m guessing Antonioni knew Rossellini’s wife, Ingrid Bergman, who was also on my mind this week. Although Ingrid wasn’t related to Ingmar Bergman, she starred in what I believe was the late Swedish director’s greatest film.

I know critics, film professors, and Woody Allen go nuts for Ingmar Bergman’s earlier movies such as “The Seventh Seal” and “Wild Strawberries,” and I should give those films another chance since I last viewed them when I was 19 in my European Cinema class at Northwestern. At the time I thought Bergman’s imagery was too much to take. I came away from those films thinking that everyone in Sweden seemed intelligent but completely miserable and probably on a suicide watch. Didn’t we always hear that Sweden led the world in suicides? I just checked the latest figures from the World Health Organization’s website and discovered that Sweden has been bumped out of the top ten. It turns out the suicide rate in Sweden has been steadily decreasing since its heyday in the 1960s (um…wasn’t that also Ingmar Bergman’s heyday?) but don’t start throwing any happy parties for your blond-haired brethren just yet—suicide is still the most common cause of death in Sweden in the age range of 15 to 44 years. Yikes!

The first Ingmar Bergman movie that really blew me away was “Persona,” a fascinating study of two women whose personalities merge into one. A young nurse named Alma (the magnificent Bibi Andersson who starred in many of Bergman’s early films and had a brief relationship with the director) is caring for a famous actress named Elisabeth (Liv Ullmann in the first of many collaborations with Bergman) who suddenly stops speaking during one of her performances. An intensely close relationship develops between the two women with Alma telling Elisabeth every intimate detail of her life while Elisabeth seems to be listening intently. But is she? I found Alma’s gradual taking on of Elisabeth’s persona fascinating but terrifying. Was this why I was often attracted to but nervous around people with very strong personalities? Was I afraid that I’d lose myself? Was this really the story of two different aspects of one woman? The genius of Bergman was that he wasn’t afraid to leave a ton of ambiguity in his films, something that was unheard of in the American films of that era. I found his refusal to explain what was really going on in his films very refreshing. Watching a Bergman film was like looking at a Rorschach test—everyone saw something different depending on what was going on in their own life.

Several years later, Andersson and Ulmann were together again in another of my favorite Bergman films, “Scenes from a Marriage,” which was actually an edited down version of a Swedish TV series. Watching this agonizing and shockingly realistic exploration of the marriage of Marianne and Johan (Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson) as I was living through my own parents’ divorce, I’m surprised I didn’t swear off the institution for life. Bergman said that after the original TV series aired in Sweden, the divorce rate skyrocketed in that country as did the number of couples who sought marriage counseling. Ullmann continued to perfect the devastating stare she used to such great effect in “Persona.” Liv and Bergman had a child together (novelist Linn Ullmann) though they never married. Following the success of this film, Liv Ullmann was courted by Hollywood as Scandinavia’s Hottest Babe and made a series of American films (“Forty Carats,” “Lost Horizon”) that nearly destroyed her brilliant career.

Luckily, before more damage could be done, Ullmann hightailed it back to the depressing gloom of northern Europe and in 1978 filmed what I think is Bergman’s greatest masterpiece. If you’ve never seen “Autumn Sonata,” you need to put your computer in sleep mode and get to the video store before it closes. This is the most honest and nuanced portrayal of a difficult mother-daughter relationship that you will ever see and it is Ingrid Bergman’s first Swedish film since she left Stockholm for Hollywood in 1939. Bergman plays Charlotte Andergast, a world famous concert pianist, who, because of her wildly successful career, has spent little time with her daughter Eva (Ullmann). Always desperate for her mother’s attention, approval, and love, Eva has squelched all of her feelings of abandonment and is thrilled to welcome her mother for an extended visit between tours. Now married, Eva is also taking care of her mentally disabled sister Helena whom Charlotte had placed in an institution years earlier. Charlotte is shocked to find Helena at Eva’s home and pretty soon decades of repressed feelings come charging to the surface and the fragile peace between the two women is shattered irreparably. The trademark Ullmann stare goes into overdrive during this film, particularly during the devastating scene in which, after Eva plays a long piece on the piano for her mother, Charlotte plays it again, ostensibly to show her daughter how it should be played. I haven’t seen this film in years but thinking about all that delicious family angst, emotional repression, and cut-throat recriminations makes me want to make a late-night run to Blockbuster myself. This was Ingrid Bergman’s last theatrical film and it was a tour-de-force capper to a brilliant career. And how great to hear her acting in her native tongue.

Two summers ago I wrote about what ended up being Ingmar Bergman’s last film, “Saraband,” and marveled at the talent and beauty of Liv Ullmann, especially because she gave us the rare opportunity to see what an actress looks like when she ages naturally. This was a sequel of sorts to “Scenes from a Marriage” with Ullmann and Erland Josephson picking up their roles from thirty years earlier. Bergman admitted years after the first film came out that the brutal arguments between Johan and Marianne were based on his relationship with Liv Ullmann. I am all for artists incorporating their own demons and torment in their work, and Ingmar Bergman was clearly a master.

The third death from this past week that I feel compelled to comment on was TV talk show host Tom Snyder’s. I was addicted to Snyder’s late-night “Tomorrow” show throughout the 1970s. His guest list was amazing (everyone from John Lennon to Charles Manson) and his format light years away from anything you’d see today—90 minutes of concentrated, focused time. No sound bites, just real, no-holds-barred conversations. Though I never missed a broadcast, part of the appeal of Tom Snyder to me was that I often found him so irritating I would scream at the television. This was not a man with a small ego, and he was very much a part of every discussion, never taking a back seat to his guests the way Johnny Carson did. Today I admire this trait but back then it annoyed me to no end, especially with his cackling laugh (so perfectly imitated by Dan Ackroyd in those great “Saturday Night Live” bits) and the way he was constantly making inside jokes with his crew. In 1977, former NBC anchorperson Kelly Lange took over for Tom Snyder for a week when he went on vacation. I was so thrilled by the absence of Tom’s idiosyncrasies that I had the temerity to write Lange a fawning letter. This is the letter I received back. With all due respect to Ms. Lange, now an author of sexy mystery novels set in Hollywood, WHAT WAS I THINKING? Today I would give anything to watch the honesty, candor, and good humor that Tom Snyder displayed on a nightly basis. Forgive me, Tom.

And farewell to three amazing innovators.

My Mother’s Hair Has a Special Day

Today would have been my parents’ 54th wedding anniversary. Because I only have about 10 minutes to write this, and because I’ve never posted this crazy photo of my mom and dad, I’m going to let the picture do most of the talking. I’m also going to refer back to the anniversary post I wrote two years ago today in which I proved that my parents were dead ringers for Lucy and Desi. They really were—take a look at the photos from that post if nothing else.

My mother wasn’t that much taller than my dad—it’s purely the hair that makes her look like an Amazon. She had the most beautiful red hair but I wouldn’t be surprised if this style was supplemented with the extra pieces we'd find pinned to styrofoam heads back in the day. Those ratty bits of hair always came in handy—they could be moustaches, beards, small rodents, or even snakes in our playtime. Or maybe this is all my mother’s hair and it’s just teased and sprayed within an inch of its life. If I had to speculate, I’d say that my mother is responsible for the destruction of at least 10 square feet of the ozone layer. I remember ingesting her hairspray fumes on a daily basis along with carloads of second-hand smoke. It’s a wonder I didn’t spontaneously combust.

Because of the hairstyle I want to place this photo in the early to mid-sixties but she looks pregnant so that would make it 1959. Is that possible? Maybe it’s just the style of the dress that makes her look pregnant. Do they still make clothes in that salmon color? Do women still wear brooches? What about my dad’s skinny tie? It looks like we're already into the Kennedy administration here.

I’ve written several times about the ugly end of my parents’ marriage. I’ve also mentioned how after the pain and recrimination faded over time they developed a close friendship that was important to both of them until the day my mother died. Just like Lucy and Desi.

Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad.