Our mothers shared the same birthday. Stephen’s mother would have been 99 today, mine 101.

I cropped this picture of Stephen and mom from a full-length I shot maybe 15 years ago; she’s actually standing on a stairstep. Diminutive, confoundingly sweet, perpetually chic.

The second picture, my mother and father, lifted from a photo with my brother and me.  Snapped February 8, 1968 by the next door neighbor with a Kodak heaven-knows-what, the day I left for Crete.  I’d lived on Crete for over a year when I received word my father had died.

When I originally unearthed this picture, I considered both that this was the last photo of the family together, and not so long afterwards that there was no reason to imagine a later photograph of my father existed.

All highlights and no shadow detail, a photographer’s kvetch.

My parents, aren’t they beautiful.