Photograph series: II

Going for a ride with mom

My mother drove a Vespa when I was first born. We drove up and down the coast, me tucked into the sidecar, wind in my eyes and salt in my new teeth.

In this photo, we are ready to fly. I have a handkerchief around my head, tied neatly at my throat. Although it is light gray in the photo, I remember it was actually faded red, washed over and over in a small basin on the sunny side of our yard. My mother has short dark hair and a straight nose, and although I look somewhat like Ed Asner in most of the photos from this era, I will grow up to look exactly like her.

My parents met when they were in the ninth grade, which means that by the time I was 16, I was already behind schedule. My father remembers the day he saw her, wearing a crisp white shirt and a barrette in her hair. Her family had just moved to the kibbutz where my father lived- it was the first day of school. My father remembers the tree he stood under, how she turned to look in his direction, but instead, stared somewhere far in the distance. He was smitten, but it was my mother who asked him to take a moonlit walk just a few weeks later. He kissed her by the side of the pond where the kids cooled off from their fieldwork on hot summer days.