Since today is Veterans Day, I’d like to give thanks to those in my family who served our country.

So here’s my Dad being visited by my Grandfather Elias and Aunt Sara while in the Navy, alongside a photo of my Uncle Jack that looks as if it was taken in front of scenery in a photographer’s studio.

By the way, Uncle Jack, my father’s brother, who passed away nine years ago, is the man who first turned me on to science fiction by bringing over shopping bags full of books and magazines every weekend when I was a kid.

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I dreamed last night that I was in the large waiting room of a train station sitting with my father. I had no idea why we were there or where we were going. I didn’t know whether both of us or just one of us would be traveling, and if only one of us, which one.

As we waited and chatted (I can remember nothing of our conversation), I looked across the room and through the crowd saw Connie Willis standing and talking with three or four other women of a similar age and type. I got up from my Dad and walked over to her to say hello.

As Connie and I talked, I pointed my Dad out to her. I waved at him, but he couldn’t seem to make me out from across the room, and so he didn’t wave back.

I woke before the dream progressed any further.

As a followup to yesterday’s post about my father’s 75th birthday, here we are before the celebration begins, both miles and years away from that shot of Coney Island.

I look forward to our roles being reversed, and him showing up decades from now to help celebrate my 75th!

My father, Barney Edelman, turns 75 today. Here he is as a teenager on the beach at Coney Island, several years before I came into the world. I believe that he’s sixteen. That’s the parachute drop and the boardwalk behind him, and it’s about as iconic a photo of Coney Island, or of him, as you can get. The past year been rough for him, with many health challenges, so I’m thrilled that he’s still here with us today. Whatever has happened in the decades since a friend of his snapped this photo on the beach, this is how Dad will always be in my heart and head—handsome, smiling, triumphant.

I’m not the only one who embraces what this photo represents. Amazingly, strangers have taken to it, too. Thanks to the Internet, this picture was just printed in the latest issue of Quintessentially, a high-end British magazine. (more…)