One day last week I posted a picture of my brother, Walt and me on Facebook. It was one of those photo's popular in the early 1960's where companies solicited doting mother's to have a 'professional' picture of their children taken for a low cost, while at the same time cleverly advertising their company brand. For this photo, the company was Foremost Dairy. It's a sweet picture, made more fun and memorable with the Foremost logo in upper left hand corner, and 1963 calendar below.
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I recently came across it in one of my Mother's albums; Seeing the picture brought a sense of happy nostalgia and made me smile, but not until a writer friend of mine commented "there must be a story to tell behind this photo" did I think of it from that perspective. So I decided to look at the picture more closely to see what story there might be.
I studied the girl and boy in the picture and knew we were happy kids, our lives still young and innocent, secure in our Mother's embrace. I thought about our parents being divorced and Walt longing for our father's attention, how the world had been in the midst of the cold war and drop drills were the norm in classrooms throughout southern California. How after my parents divorce we moved to an apartment next to the railroad tracks. I remember the first night after we moved in a train loudly chugged by with all its bells and whistles, and my little brother ran from his bed to mother's room asking if the Russian's were coming. While it seems a funny story now, then it was tender and endearing , and completely understandable that a frightened 9 year old might ask that question, especially since the week before he and other classmates took cover under their desk in response to a drop drill in fear of the Soviet Union bombing the U.S. Only mother's assurance 'all was well ' gave Walt comfort and peace before he could fall back to sleep.
In 1963 I was at that awkward age, 13. Kind of twixt and in between. No longer a little girl, but not yet grown up. I still wanted to play outside games with the MacInnis kids, ( our good Catholic neighbors and school mates), but also wanted to be popular and pretty enough to have a boyfriend.
I suppose if there is a story to be told, it's my brother and I were always the best of friends. We liked each other, had fun together. Oh, that's not to say we didn't get mad at one another, we surely did, and Walt would be the first to tell you, I was his bossy big sister. And as we got older, I was sometimes disappointed in decisions he made, like one that took him far from his roots and home. But no matter, whatever differences we may have encountered were overrode by the bonds of love we shared - a bond that our Mother instilled in us from the day she brought Walter Rod Cooney home from the hospital, and introduced me to my baby brother.
I recently came across it in one of my Mother's albums; Seeing the picture brought a sense of happy nostalgia and made me smile, but not until a writer friend of mine commented "there must be a story to tell behind this photo" did I think of it from that perspective. So I decided to look at the picture more closely to see what story there might be.
I studied the girl and boy in the picture and knew we were happy kids, our lives still young and innocent, secure in our Mother's embrace. I thought about our parents being divorced and Walt longing for our father's attention, how the world had been in the midst of the cold war and drop drills were the norm in classrooms throughout southern California. How after my parents divorce we moved to an apartment next to the railroad tracks. I remember the first night after we moved in a train loudly chugged by with all its bells and whistles, and my little brother ran from his bed to mother's room asking if the Russian's were coming. While it seems a funny story now, then it was tender and endearing , and completely understandable that a frightened 9 year old might ask that question, especially since the week before he and other classmates took cover under their desk in response to a drop drill in fear of the Soviet Union bombing the U.S. Only mother's assurance 'all was well ' gave Walt comfort and peace before he could fall back to sleep.
In 1963 I was at that awkward age, 13. Kind of twixt and in between. No longer a little girl, but not yet grown up. I still wanted to play outside games with the MacInnis kids, ( our good Catholic neighbors and school mates), but also wanted to be popular and pretty enough to have a boyfriend.
I suppose if there is a story to be told, it's my brother and I were always the best of friends. We liked each other, had fun together. Oh, that's not to say we didn't get mad at one another, we surely did, and Walt would be the first to tell you, I was his bossy big sister. And as we got older, I was sometimes disappointed in decisions he made, like one that took him far from his roots and home. But no matter, whatever differences we may have encountered were overrode by the bonds of love we shared - a bond that our Mother instilled in us from the day she brought Walter Rod Cooney home from the hospital, and introduced me to my baby brother.
