And here they are: not all, but a substantial part of my family (on my mother’s side) in the 1940s. If you enlarge it, you’ll be able to see the faces of my childhood, named below.

Top left: My bathing beauty mother, front and center as always; her parents (my Zayde and Bubbe, seated); and I have no clue who the woman behind them is. Maybe this was the first photo bomb.

Top right: My mother’s brother, Uncle Bem, with three-year-old me on his knee.

Second row left: My Aunt Selma (married to Uncle Monty, pictured later), holding little me, with my sister Merna standing beside us, squinting in the sun.

Second row right: My mother’s older sister, Aunt Minnie, holding my little cousin Andy. Note the tumor under his right eye — he was born with it, it was benign and was successfully removed when he was a little older.

Third row left: Me, around age five, looking cute.

Third row right: Uncle Bem again, with his wife Simone (white blouse dark skirt) and his sister, my Aunt Ethel. In the rear are Aunt Minnie again (left), and a lady we nicknamed “Aunt Minnie in the green dress,” to differentiate her from the real Aunt Minnie. I can’t for the life of me remember what the relationship was, but I remember that we liked her.

Fourth row left: Little Andy, sullen little me.

Fourth row right: Me again, seated in an inexplicably uncomfortable position.

Bottom row left: My sister Merna, holding cousin Andy.

Bottom row right: A rare photo of my maternal great-grandmother, with my Bubbe, Aunt Selma, and her husband Monty (my mother’s other brother). If you look hard enough, you’ll also see my sister Merna hanging out on the porch in the background.

So there we are: a “typical” American family. Only, who can say what is typical? In our case, we’ve got a great-grandmother and grandparents who were all born in Russia, and left because they were Jewish and saw the handwriting on the wall — the pogroms against the Jews. We have two sons/brothers/uncles in the Army (and another, not shown here, in the Navy), all of whom served overseas — and survived — in World War II. Other “typical” families may have come from France, or England, or Poland, or China. But together, we all made up the patchwork that was, and is, America.

Just sayin’ . . .

Happy 4th of July, America!
Brendochka
7/1/23