The Memory of Joy. My Mother with Her Lover, Charles, on Holiday in Washington, D.C. 1950’s.
My parents broke up for a decade or so before I was born. During that time, my mother began to see a man named Charles. He was a twin, and adored her. My mother’s given name–Miriam–was shortened to Marie when she was a girl. When she was involved with Charles, he shorted it further to Mimi, or Meme. (I cannot pass Cafe Meme in the West Village without thinking of them both.) I sometimes wonder if he made a twin of her name. My sisters adored Charles, and then things changed, and then my parents got back together, and then I came along, and I love this photograph of my mother wearing a dress she made herself–including the rosette–and I wonder if Charles loved the upper part of her arms, as I did, and the way she would toy with her bangs sometimes, and her little incredulous squint, which was the only way she could hide her shyness in the face of love, could this be happening to me?, as Charles, smiling broadly, stares broadly into the sun of her touch.
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