This picture is 75 years old.
I looked through all of the pictures of my parents, Les and Gertrude (Trudy), on their wedding anniversary, March 12th, that I have posted on this blog. Interestingly, from 2005, when I started the blog, to 2011, the year my mom died, I didn’t post any. Since my dad had died in 2000, I didn’t even think to mention their anniversary.
After she died, though, I felt liberated to write whatever about them. And it also recontextualized how I saw them as a couple. My sisters and I often have ZOOM conversations on Sunday afternoons, which started during COVID, and early on, a lot of conversations were about their dynamics individually and as a couple.
Still, I often used a group photo, as I did here on March 12. It’s probably because I think it’s a hoot; it looks like a bunch of wary relatives.
Changing it up
But to my knowledge, I’ve never used this photo. My sister Marcia, the keeper of the pictures, posted it on Facebook eight years ago, and then sister Leslie reposted it recently. I have no idea who took it. If I were a betting man, it would probably be one of my maternal grandmother Williams’ brothers, Ed or Ernie Yates.
This picture is in the First Ward of Binghamton, NY, near 13 Maple Street, on March 12, 1950. I was always grateful that they decided to get married in a year ending with a zero; it made the math much more straightforward. So I can remember the family drama on March 12, 1995, for instance, a story for another time.
My father looks happy in this photo. But my mother is more contemplative, wondering what she’s gotten herself into, which is a reasonable concern. Or maybe she’s just looking at someone, maybe a younger cousin. I use the terms “mother” and “father” loosely because I wasn’t born until five days shy of three years later.
My parents were married 50 years and two days shy of five months.