The Parents Group

When our son was born in New York Hospital I was asked if we’d like to attend The First Year of Life,  a series of quarterly lectures by Lee Salk,  the renown child psychologist.  Of course we signed up and over the following year we attended four wonderful lectures held in a hospital meeting room.

Most of the others in the room were first-time parents like us,  all eager to learn how to navigate in our new roles.   Dr Salk was kind and informative, took time to answer our questions, and imbued us with some needed confidence.  At the end of the final session – now all parents of one-year-olds  –  we thanked  our lecturer and were filing out of the room when someone held up a sheet of paper.    “If you’d like to stay in touch”,  he called out,  “give me your name and we can continue to meet.”

Six or seven couples did,  including us, and in fact Danny and I offered  to host those parents and their one-year-olds in our apartment for the first meeting of what we came to call our “parents group”.

After that we continued to meet with our kids in each others’ homes,  in parks and playgrounds,  at restaurants and theaters,  and during one memorable summer at a rented beach house.  Over the years some families moved or dropped out,  but four couples remained and we became a close-knit group  – Janet & Les (the guy who held up that piece of paper almost 50 years ago),  Janet & Harold,  Lorraine & Eric,  and me & Danny.

Then all too quickly the years passed and our kids got older and went their separate ways,  but we adults continued to meet for dinners.  And then more time passed,  and a heart attack took one of us way too soon,  and memory loss has sidelined another,  and our parents group was sadly diminished,

But we’ll always have our memories of the joyous times we shared and the golden friendships we made in that wonderful community of eager young parents and their kids.

– Dana Susan Lehrman

They say man plans and God laughs. On the big day, it rained steadily from sun up to midnight.
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Inks and Derek: Art and the Cricket Scores

In the early 1970s my husband Danny accepted a stint in his company’s London office.   (See Laundry Day in London,   Kinky Boots,  Valentine’s Day in Foggytown,  Intro to Cookery,  and Munro)

He’d be working for a guy named Derek whom I hadn’t met,  but Danny assured me I’d soon come to adore Derek and his wife Inks – and I did!

In fact soon after we’d settled into our Chelsea flat,  Inks took me under her wing,  and we realized that we shared a passion for art.  And so Inks took me to museum and gallery exhibits all over London,  and we enjoyed lovely lunches together in elegant members’ dining rooms.  Inks,  I learned,  also collected art and sculpture  – both British and African – much of it displayed in their house in St. John’s Wood and their wonderful country retreat in the Cotswolds.

And she and Derek took us to concerts and theater,  memorably to Athol Fugard’s stirring Master Harold and the Boys, and Trooping the Colour in honor of the Queen’s birthday.

And years later when we were back in the States we drove down to Richmond, Virginia to join Inks and Derek in celebrating their eldest son’s wedding.

And we joined them on a wonderful trip to South Africa – Derek’s homeland – and met them at a business conference in Barcelona where we explored Gaudi’s amazing Sagrada Familia together.

Over the years we’d see each other whenever we were in London or they in New York,  and I always found Derek to be larger than life – warm, bright, generous of spirit,  and an outstanding athlete who played cricket well into his 70s with teammates half his age.  And I was always touched by the way he ended emails and phone calls  “With fondest love.”

Then four years ago we got the devastating news that Derek had been diagnosed with cancer.  We kept in touch with Inks and their sons about his condition, and when Derek died we asked about his last days.

He was quite weak at the end,  we were told,  but he always asked for the latest cricket scores.

Thinking of Inks and remembering Derek – both with fondest love.

–  Dana Susan Lehrman