Poem to Mommy (1959)

Early Saturday Evening at the Apache Junction Health Center: Our Mom and Dad on their 62nd Wedding Anniversary

Sixty-two years ago today, on the Saturday evening of Memorial Day weekend, May 28, 1949 at the Park Manor on Eastern Parkway and Rogers Avenue (now the First Baptist Church of Crown Heights),

our parents were married.

They met several years before that. Here are our mom and dad at the bungalows of Rockaway Beach, September 4, 1946, on Labor Day weekend.

We always remember them being so glamorous, as in this photo from our middle brother's bar mitzvah in January 1968 (when we were a senior at Midwood High School)

or as in these pics we took in 1970 when we were a 19yo college sophomore:


As he has done for the last nine months, our dad went twice today to the Apache Junction Health Center to spoon-feed our mom, who's had Alzheimer's disease for many years, both breakfast and dinner.

It is inspiring and beautiful to see them still together.

We've been accompanying our dad every morning and evening since we got here, and in the evenings we're usually joined by one of our brothers. Our middle brother was here in the morning

and this evening our youngest brother arrived

with his girlfriend, and after dinner,

we went out, as we usually do, to the pretty garden courtyard after our mom has finished her (puréed) meal.

Recently we came across a little memo pad that had notes we made from listening to a talk at Changing Hands Bookstore a few years ago (so we could blog about it). In riffling through the pages, we found this. We must have asked Mom to write something to see if she could still write. She lost that ability, along with many others, years ago, but we're all very grateful that she's still with us.

More wedding photos at Facebook album.

Fifty Years Ago in San Juan: Puerto Rico, July 1960

On July 13, 1960 we flew to Puerto Rico with our parents. Here we are getting on an Eastern Air Lines passenger plane (not a jet) at Idlewild Airport that day and with our mom at the Caribe Hilton in San Juan on July 15, 1960.

The flight took about six hours, and Dr. Stein, our pediatrician whose offices were at Turner Towers across from the Brooklyn Museum on Eastern Parkway, prescribed us a tranquilizer -- children's Librium or something to quell the anxiety about our first flight. Our mom's luggage was lost en route, so the next day we had to go to the Gonzalez Padin department store to buy her a bunch of new clothes. That night John F. Kennedy was nominated for president at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles.