My Parents

I always loved this picture of my parents. It is how I have always wanted to see them. For me, this is how life should have always been. Avery marriage, every pair of lovers, should have a photo like this. It is peaceful somehow.



My mother has always loved shoes and clothes. This skirt is a little short for the 40's, do you think? But, paired with those shoes, she can carry it off. Those shoes---- do they not look like they came right out of a 2010 fashion magazine!! It is always sad to me that she was always throwing out the old and getting the new. These shoes whould have worked today.


All of my life, I can't remember a time when I saw my mother in the water. She had been abused in the water by her teasing brothers and subsequently became filled with dread. So it was always understood that you might as well throw in live electricity the moment she steps into water, that is how much she always hated it. That is what it felt like to be in it. And now I see this picture and I don't see that fear and loathing on her face. So, now what am I supposed to believe?

If I am correct, I was once told that Mom's dress was made from parachute silk. Her mother was, at that time, working in the mill yard for a manufacturer making parachutes which were at the time constructed from a tightly woven silk similar to Habotai silk which is still used today in making kites. I wonder if Mom still has the dress in that mysterious cedar chest she has in her bedroom~~~


This is my mother's oldest brother, Arthur. Uncle Arthur was the one who was killed in the war. After his death, Pepe just shut down and never really recovered from the impact. He stopped playing his fiddle, stopped participating in life. If you remember, by the time we knew him, he pretty much just sat in his rocking chair and spit in in his spittoon.

Next to Uncle Arthur is Mon Oncle Treffle. Uncle Tom. The cab driver. Don't they look like gangsters!