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| My Parents |
In the late sixties, our post-depression, post-war parents were giddy with their successes. Dads rode the pre-dawn train to work and martini lunches in New York City. They sported narrow ties and dark suits. Moms car-pooled, gardened, emulated Julia Child and worked for the Junior League. They all wore Ray-Bans. On weekends, most parents drove sports cars and partied to shake off the long days of working, striving and managing their growing progeny. Cocktail parties were the rage –see The Graduate- and children were preferably seen-and-not-heard. And we did our best to remain unseen, acting out our harmless preteen dramas, tuning in the distractions of friends and folly, tuning out our parents. We were rebels, or so we thought.
All the while, unbeknownst to me, my parents were planning a rebellion of their own. In 1968, they broke out of the country club circuit. Were they set off by assassinations, war, social/personal unrest or were they just on a lark? We’ll never know, but the course they set for us in spring of '68 sent our social sphere into a spin…
