This is it.

My Babci, Mom, me and Dad, and if you look closely at the head of the table closest to the camera, you’ll see the ears of our dog, Oscar. This is circa 1987-88, when I was the last kid still at home with the adults.

I can’t tell a story about me and my mom that doesn’t include my dad. For my mom, all roads always led back to my dad. And I think that for my dad, all roads also, eventually, led back to my mom. There is no version of the story in which me, and my siblings, are not, at all times, exactly the both of them, swinging like a pendulum from being like one or like the other of them—and even sometimes, magically, the best (and worst) of them both, at once. When my mom loved what I did, I was her daughter. When she hated what I did, I was just like my father. When my dad loved what I did, I was his daughter. When my dad hated what I did, I was just like my mother. All the feelings about their relationship, about each other, and about all the things they created and did together (including raising their children) can never be separated. It’s a family constellation that began when their two galaxies collided, and brought with it all the star stuff they’d inherited—which now lives on in me, my siblings, and their grandchildren. The best any of us can do with all of that is find our thread, and follow it through to the end.

My dad died in 2018—just two years after my mom passed. Those two years were so hard, and all he wanted the entire time, was to be with her again. And so, now, maybe—hopefully—they are.

Mom and Dad, waaaay before there were any kids.

No clue, but guessing it was after one kid max. My Mom was very fashionable, and this looks still 60s to me. I’m sure she dressed my Dad in that Stayin Alive outfit.

This is about 1984. We were all born, but past the baby years and so Mom was back to work.

Same, 80s era. No idea what was exhausting them. Likely, their children.

This was the 00s. I can’t remember when, but it was the last family photo we ever did. The photographer always did the matriarch and patriarch portrait as part of the package.

After the re-marriage, polka-dancing.

I almost never saw them laughing hysterically like this together. Individually, yes…together? Not so much. But this photo gives me incredible hope.

Thanks for listening.

—MBF